Denver Newsroom, Aug 19, 2020 / 23:25 pm
For more than 170 years, Catholics in Pittsburgh have observed a day of thanksgiving for their parish's deliverance from a cholera pandemic that killed hundreds of local people in the mid-1800s.
The annual Cholera Day Mass is held each year in August, fulfilling a promise from a prior generation of parishioners.
When cholera hit Pennsylvania in the summer of 1849, more than 1,000 people in Pittsburgh alone died from the disease. Saint Michael's Catholic Parish was hit hard - the parish was nearly wiped out by the epidemic.
An Italian priest at the parish then invoked the Blessed Mother and St. Roch, a 14th-century saint who dedicated his life to the care of diseased people in Italy. The priest asked for their intercession for the parish's safety and promised to observe a day of gratitude each year in remembrance.