St. Joseph's Church (Staten Island)

The Church of St. Joseph is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and the oldest extant Roman Catholic church on Staten Island. The nearby cemetery is the second-oldest Roman Catholic cemetery on the island. The church is located on Poplar Avenue in Rossville, Staten Island, New York City, New York.Parish historySt. Joseph's was established in 1848 as a mission of St. Peter's Church by that church's pastor, the Rev. Mark Murphy. Fr. Murphy celebrated the first Mass on July 2, 1848 for 58 Catholics in a house on Rossville Avenue. In 1851 a small chapel dedicated to St. Joseph was completed on Poplar Avenue. The mission was upgraded to parish status in 1855 and thereby the chapel upgraded to church status with Rev. Francis DeCaro, O.F.M., being appointed as first pastor. With its 1855 establishment, St. Joseph's is the third oldest of Staten Island's 36 parishes after St. Peter's and St. Mary's. However, the influentially encyclical The Catholic Church in the United States, etc. Vol. 3 (1914), reports the parish establishment date as 1878. In 1914, the parishioners numbered around 400, the value of the church property was $20,000 with a debt of $4,000.PastorsRev. Mark Murphy (1848-1855), pastor of St. Peter's Church, in charge of the mission of St. JosephRev. Francis DeCaro, O.F.M. (1855-?)Rev. C. Rigney, (?-1892), transferred to become pastor of the Church of Our Lady of Mercy (Bronx, New York)Rev. Peter J. Harold (as reported in 1914)