St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

It also offers three Masses each weekday in the lower church, at 7:45 a.m., 12:05 p.m., and 5:15 p.m., serving the numerous shoppers and an estimated 200,000 workers in the dense Center City area.

[2] This extensive sacramental schedule is offered even though the current number of homes registered in the parish is only 821 (due to the largely commercial nature of the surrounding area).

[4] The charter for the parish was granted on December 27, 1830, the feast of St. John the Evangelist, by the Bishop, Francis P. Kenrick, to the Rev.

A Mass to pray for them was held later that month in the Academy of Music, since the upper church was unusable.

Not only was there financial support from Mexican merchants living in Philadelphia, but, when the exiled Mexican Emperor Augustín de Iturbide was executed by Santa Anna upon his return in 1824, his family moved to Philadelphia and his widow, ex-Empress Ana Maria Huarte de Iturbide, is buried in St. John's Churchyard Cemetery, along with some other members of her family.

During the anti-religious persecution in the 1920s, the Sisters of the Visitation were expelled from Mexico and lived on the church property at St. John's for several years, before moving to their current monastery site.