Eighty Years of Intercession in Philadelphia

This year marks the 80th year of uninterrupted intercession in a continuous novena at the Shrine of Our Lady of Clemency at S. Clement’s Church, Philadelphia. Novenas are a common devotional feature of Roman Catholicism, but very uncommon outside of it; they simply mean focused prayer with one intention for the course of nine days or nine weeks. The use of nine days conveys a sense of extreme duration even beyond the more familiar octaves that extend a liturgical observance beyond a week and one day. It is also a patterned imitation of the nine days during which the apostles waited after the Ascension for the descent of the Holy Spirit.

This notable American Anglican Marian shrine takes its name from the 16th-century Litany of Loreto’s invocation “Virgo clemens, ora pro nobis” or “O merciful Virgin, pray for us.” It resonates with the text of the late medieval hymn Salve Regina — which closes with the line “O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria” or “O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary” — and with the dedication of the church, chartered in 1855 and built between 1856 and 1859 by acclaimed American architect John Notman.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Clemency was the brainchild of the towering 20th-century Anglo-Catholic leader Franklin Joiner (1887-1960, rector 1920-55). The New Jersey-born Joiner was educated in Easton, Pennsylvania, and at Nashotah House before ordination in the Diocese of Milwaukee in 1918. He served as superior general of the American branch of the Guild of All Souls from 1924 to 1958 and as a member of the Diocese of Pennsylvania’s Standing Committee for a record 26 years (15 of them as president) during a period of extended high-water marks in Anglo-Catholicism. His work to establish an American Marian shrine corollary to the revived Walsingham took first shape in a 1938 fundraising appeal to his parishioners.

Funds were more than adequate by 1942 to commission a carved wooden image designed by New York architect Wilfred Edward Anthony (1878-1948) of Cram, Goodhue, & Ferguson. It was executed by Italian-American sculptor Enrico Henry Beretta (1889-1975), whose other significant work includes furniture at the Church of the Transfiguration in New York, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the Church of Our Saviour in midtown Manhattan. The gilding and polychromy were by Montana-born church artist Robert Robbins (1899-1975), active from the 1930s to the 1960s.

The 25-foot-tall shrine was dedicated and blessed on the Feast of the Annunciation, Thursday, March 25, 1943. The continuous novena, offered initially in connection with war intercessions and prayers for peace, began on Easter Monday, April 10, 1944. Within the first few weeks after the beginning of the novena, more than four dozen requests for intercession had been received from individual parishioners.

The depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary is somewhat uncommon in Anglicanism in its omission of a representation of her son as an infant, taking instead the scriptural text from John’s Apocalypse as the inspiration for its imagery: “A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12: 1).

Fr. Joiner was keen to explain further the attitude of the virgin: “With the scepter she holds in her right hand, she points us to the altar where her son’s sacramental presence is enshrined. Our Lady’s one thought is to direct us all to her Divine Son. Her answer to our prayer is always, ‘whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.’”

A key aspect of the devotion’s beginnings is the immediate background of the Second World War, and Fr. Joiner’s seeming prescience in fundraising to create a place for permanent intercession just one year before the German invasion of Poland, but several years after the Japanese invasion of China and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. It is clear in hindsight that he saw the imminent eruption of another situation of permanent war footing in which Christians would need a fresh focus for their prayers for peace. The earliest novena intercessions were coupled with an anonymous prayer submitted by “a young lieutenant airman” under an unusual form of address to the Blessed Virgin:

Fairest Mother of Airmen, who from thy throne in the Heavens watches over all thy children, guide this thy son today. Send him wings of courage and strength to do his duty, and at his last flight, merciful Mother, raise him up to heaven in thy loving arms. Holy Mary, Help of the Innocent, protect and pray for the guiltless of all nations who unjustly suffer through the wickedness of the guilty. Holy Mary, Help of Sinners, pray for forgiveness for one who, to serve his country and protect his people, must bring suffering to the innocent as well as to the guilty. Amen.

An overlooked dimension of this shrine’s creation is the urban history of the neighborhood around S. Clement’s Church. The construction of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, in emulation of the Champs Elysee in Paris, began in 1917 and culminated in the movement of the church building by 50 feet in 1929 to accommodate the widening of 20th Street. This change caused the loss of 400 families from parish rolls in one decade and a complete reorganization of neighborhood-based parish life. Worship, guilds, societies, and Christian education continued in characteristically robust ways for a center of Anglo-Catholic life still riding the wave of the interwar Congress Movement. Fr. Joiner created a place for devotion centered on unquestionable Christian ideals — peace, clemency, mercy — with the promise of daily, uninterrupted maintenance of prayer. Thousands of interested parties from outside of Philadelphia supported his parish’s devotional life with interest, remote involvement, and donations.

The continuous novena was a fixed feature of newspaper ads for parish worship in The Philadelphia Inquirer from the late 1940s until the 1960s, when it disappeared. It was revived in print in 1980. The novena was also mentioned in a formulaic, small advertisement in The Living Church from its inception more or less regularly until 2011. For several periods, the continuous novena has included controversial intercessions related to the maintenance of catholic faith and order in the Anglican Communion, including petitions against “the Lutheran Concordat” of full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and “for the removal of the scandal of the attempted ordination of women.” These prayers were discontinued in 2014.

The shrine began a formal association with the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in 1960 during the rectorship of the Rev. William Elwell (1901-77, rector 1955-64). Fr. Elwell was largely responsible for the beginnings and propagation of Walsingham devotion in North America. He served at Grace Church, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, from 1929 until his arrival at S. Clement’s and began there in 1951 — at the renamed Our Lady of Grace — an annual pilgrimage that continues to this day. The continuous novena is also linked closely with the appointed intercessory prayers and intentions of the Guild of All Souls, a devotional society founded in 1873 to promote prayer for the faithful departed, and active in the United States since 1889.

Today, the shrine continues to receive petitions for intercessory prayer from far and wide, offered daily without any interruption, and supported formally by a group of 28 guardians (men and women) in the United States, England, and France. The rector of S. Clement’s, the Rev. Richard C. Alton, serves as Master of the Guardians. The Rt. Rev. Rodney Michel is protector, and the Rt. Rev. Martin Warner of Chichester provides a supportive link with Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England.

Guardians process as available in purpose-made blue capes and medals during feasts at S. Clement’s, and they are installed annually according to vacancies on the titular feast of Our Lady of Ransom on September 24. More than 60 supporters of the shrine are remembered in intercessions, generally on their birthdates or personal anniversaries; this group includes Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Byzantine Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Continuing Anglicans. The shrine’s Facebook page was begun in 2012 and now has more than 10,000 followers.