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The “Stealing of the Statue” is an annual St. Patrick’s Day tradition in Mt. Adams, a suburb of Cincinnati. A yearly Mass honours St. Patrick and the local members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians who have passed away over the last year
The Mass culminates with stealing the St. Patrick statue from the church at 3 p.m. It’s blessed and then carried along a short parade route through the streets of Mt. Adams, accompanied by men wearing kilts and carrying bagpipes.
Stealing the statue has its roots in the fact that, historically, German and Irish Catholic congregants were often at odds in Cincinnati. On Mt. Adams, where Irish and German working-class families lived, there were two Catholic churches, the Church of the Holy Cross for the Irish and Immaculata Church for the Germans.
Holy Cross parish was established in 1873 to serve the Irish immigrants on the hill. Immaculata was dedicated in 1860, fulfilling a promise made to God by a fearful and distraught Archbishop John Baptist Purcell when he crossed the Atlantic on stormy, tossing seas. With a German congregation, Immaculata was part of Purcell’s adroit handling of the ethnic differences in the 19th-century Cincinnati archdiocese. Read more
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