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362 • Part III. Christian Morality: The Faith Lived
He financed this and other projects from a subsidy he received from
his mother. He encouraged migration by buying land and offering it to
settlers at a low price. He declined several calls to become a bishop
in order to stabilize his local community. In 1816, Fr. Gallitzin planned a
town and laid out its two main streets. He changed the name of the area
from “McGuire’s settlement” to Loretto. He became vicar-general for west-
ern Pennsylvania. The strong Catholicism he established is reflected in
the area’s heavily Catholic population today. Called the “Apostle to the
Alleghenies,” Fr. Gallitzin planted a durable seed that became a great
tree, a community of the baptized where the Eucharist nourished the faith.
Fr. James Fitton was born in Boston in 1805 to Abraham Fitton, an English
wheelwright, and Sarah (Williams) Fitton of Wales. James Fitton attended
public school in Boston,and Claremont Academy in New Hampshire.When
he asked to become a priest, Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick of Boston
oversaw his theological studies and ordained Fr.Fitton in 1827.He soon took
up missionary assignments in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and central and
western Massachusetts.
In 1831, Fr. Fitton was the only priest serving in what is today the
Archdiocese of Hartford and the Dioceses of Bridgeport and Norwich in
Connecticut and Springfield and Worcester in Massachusetts. He brought
the Mass and the other Sacraments to two thousand Catholics scattered
across that region. By contrast, today there are nearly two thousand
priests serving about two million Catholics in that same territory.
Fr. Fitton was the typical circuit-riding priest of that early period. He
was known to have celebrated the first Mass ever in many locations in
what is now known as the Worcester diocese. A pioneer in Catholic edu-
cation, he founded Mount St. James Seminary, Worcester, which became
the College of the Holy Cross run by the Jesuits. Fr. Fitton was the first New
England priest to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary as a priest. He died in
1881 and is called the “Apostle to New England.”
These two men realized that observing the Day of the Lord meant pro-
viding the faithful the opportunity to attend Mass. They did it by establishing