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This is the only official website of the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin, 6581 Hylan Blvd. Staten Island NY, 10309. Fr. John Christopher Drumgoole originally founded the Mission in 1871. The current site on Staten Island was founded in 1883. Fr. Drumgoole was responding to the urgent needs of his time by creating a home for some of the thousands of homeless and orphaned children who lived on the streets of the City after the Great Potato Famine and then the Civil War. As an Irish immigrant himself, having come to this country by himself at age nine, Father John escaped life on the streets through the efforts of his mother, who had come over prior to his crossing. In turn, he supported her through his work as a sexton in St. Mary’s church, founded in 1826 as the city’s third parish. He longed to become a priest, but felt he could not do so while caring for his mother. Through the early loss of his father and his dedication to his mother, young Mr. Drumgoole became devoted to children who had no homes. He began to shelter them in the basement of the church. Many years passed as John Drumgoole struggled to fulfill the vocation he felt had come to him from God. He began studies in basic education age thirty and continued working for the next nineteen years. His mother finally moved in with friends so John could study for the priesthood at a seminary in Niagra, New York. He became ordained at age fifty-two, exceptionally old for a brand new priest, especially in 1868. Father Drumgoole never lost sight if his goal to help children. The conditions in New York for children had not improved, and many young Catholic children were being sent away to the mid-west to work for families of other faiths as farm laborers. One response to this crisis was the founding of the Newsboys’ Home on Warren St. by members of the Saint Vincent DePaul Society, called the Vincentians. The name came from the primary occupation of the homeless boys: they sold newspapers on the streets, making pennies per day. In 1871, Fr. Drumgoole assumed full control of the Home, which evolved into a ten-story building at the corner of Great Jones and Lafayette streets called The Mission of the Immaculate Virgin. The Franciscan Sisters of Buffalo, whom Fr. Drumgoole met when he was at seminary, responded to Fr. Drumgoole’s request for assistance and came to the City to teach and raise the boys. Fr. Drumgoole was a great innovator in the field of childcare. The layout of the Mission was designed to provide plenty of light and air to each resident so as to avoid the spread of influenza and tuberculosis, which was common in the tenements of the day. Fr. Drumgoole felt that the general environment of the City at the time was a great threat to younger children, so he sought out a more rural setting. He looked to the Borough of Staten Island and found a farm for sale that must have reminded him of his earliest years in County Longford, Ireland. With the purchase of this and several adjacent lots, Fr. Drumgoole founded Mount Loretto, named as a tribute to the Sisters who accompanied him there to teach the children on a completely self-sufficient farm. Perhaps the greatest innovation made at the Mission was the introduction of vocational training. Children at the St. Joseph’s School at Mt. Loretto learned shoe making, woodworking, baking and printing. In fact, the children contributed much of the interior of the Church Of Sts. Joachim and Ann and printed their own paper, The Homeless Child. Subscriptions to the Homeless Child and memberships to St. Joseph’s Union, a religious Fund-raising organization generated the funding which sustained the Mission for one hundred years. At the time of his death in 1888, the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin had two residences, the City House at the corner of Great Jones and Lafayette Streets in Manhattan and the farm at Mt.Loretto, the largest farm in the State of New York. The Mission housed almost two thousand children. It was completely solvent. Fr. Drumgoole did not owe anyone any money as a result of his work. The Mission continued its practice of providing a very religious, structured yet nurturing environment for children. Waves of children seemed to come following the tragic events of the modern world. Orphans from World Wars One and Two, children of the Great depression, refugees from the Cuban revolution, from Vietnam and from epidemics of drug abuse and violence in our own country all made their way to Mount Loretto at one time or another. There were cultural clashes and disciplinary problems and some corporal punishment. They were great opportunities for future success and friendships that have survived many decades to the present. There was a religious and moral structure that shaped the caring of the Sisters and the Priests. There were the successors to Father Drumgoole, like Fr. Mallick Fitzpatrick, who was the Director for thirty-five years, and Fr. James Kenny, who raised generations of Mount Loretto kids for forty years and Msgr. Victor Pavis, who continues his ministry into his eighties. There were the nuns who donated all of their work for one hundred years to the Mission, who still come home to Mount Loretto when their work is finally done, so that they can rise again as one on the Last Day. None of this work was perfect, it was very human in nature. Often the conditions were difficult, sometimes worse than that. There was always hope, though, that the loneliness of a shattered family would not overcome the future of a child. In 1972, the Mission began to undergo a radical change. Legal challenges to the foster care system in the City of New York changed the nature of the system so that the influence of religion was minimized. The concept of the large institution was somewhat abandoned in the field, in favor of individual foster homes and adoption. The Mission began to create programs for children with special needs, like those with disabilities and psychiatric disorders and behavioral problems because these were the children that the City could not find individual homes for, despite the fact that MIV had its own very large foster home program. By the late 1980’s, these populations became the majority at the Mount, while the numbers of the religious became fewer and fewer. After a number of difficult years of trying to maintain this very needy population on ever dwindling resources, the Board of Trustees, with the approval of John Cardinal O’Connor, elected to end MIV’s foster care contracts with the City Of New York in 1995. One of the residences for the developmentally disabled, named for Msgr. Kenny, remained open because the Office Of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities of New York State funded it. Of the foster children that remained at the end, a number were also developmentally disabled, so small residences were established for them at the Mount. We subsequently opened five small, family-like homes for developmentally disabled older children and young adults and these programs became the core of today’s Mount Loreto. In 1988, we also opened a Day Care center, Tender Care, for children from the local community. This began a process of refocusing the Mission toward services for people from Staten Island, as opposed to children from all over the City. This was consistent with City agency policy and with the wishes of our neighbors on the Island. The most recent programming development has been the creation of Children’s Developmental Services(CDS). This a natural evolution of the specialized residential services that began her in the 1970’s, but applied to today’s Staten Island. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of children nationwide being diagnosed with autism. On Staten Island, the per capita number seems to be even higher. In 2002, a non-profit agency called the GRACE Foundation, which was formed as an advocacy group for parents of children with autism, asked MIV for help with this problem. The result has become a department of three distinct, yet connected programs: the Summer Camp, the After School Program and the Center for Social Communication Enhancement. Collectively, they provide non-residential, specialized services for children with autism and similar developmental disorders as the CDS department of MIV. MIV began to form partnerships with other Staten Island social service agencies with the goal of improving all of our abilities to help people. As the directory of services shows, this has been quite successful. Today, over 1000 people come to Mount Loreto on an average day for all kinds of services, from Day Care to the senior center, from autistic children to those in recovery from addiction. They are served in many ways, by many partners, as well as by the staff of the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin. We may not have been able to duplicate the almost miraculous work of Father Drumgoole, but we have worked very hard at preserving the tradition of Christian Charity through dedicated service that he has inspired.
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