William Matthews (December 16, 1770 – April 30, 1854), occasionally spelled Mathews,[a] was an American who became the fifth Roman Catholic priest ordained in the United States and the first such person born in British America.

He played a significant role in the founding of Washington Visitation Academy for girls, St. Peter's Church on Capitol Hill, and the parish that now includes the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle.

He was born into a prominent Maryland family and became a close adviser to Archbishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States.

He believed that because Catholics enjoyed the freedom to practice their religion in the United States under the Constitution, they had a duty to contribute to the "moral and physical good" of their communities.

[4] His paternal aunt, Ann Mathews,[a] became a Discalced Carmelite nun in Hoogstraet, in what is now Belgium, taking the name Sister Bernardina Teresa Xavier of St. Joseph.

[1] In 1790 Sister Bernardina returned to what was now the United States and established a Carmelite convent in the village of Port Tobacco, Maryland, where she had been given land for this purpose.

[40] In 1821, the Propaganda Fide in Rome removed Norfolk, Virginia, from the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, placing it within the new Diocese of Richmond.

She was in poor health; several doctors and numerous other witnesses had attested to Mattingly's advanced and worsening illness and their inability to treat the disease with the medicine of the time.

[44] Matthews, along with Stephen Dubuisson and Anthony Kohlmann, turned to the German priest and reputed miracle worker Prince Hohenlohe who prescribed a novena for his cures to be effective; he also set aside the tenth day of each month for offering Mass for the sick outside Europe.

Following nine days of public prayer at St. Patrick's parish,[45] on the night of March 9, 1824, Matthews visited Mattingly at 10 pm to hear her confession.

[44] He compiled A Collection of Affidavits and Certificates Relative to the Wonderful Cure of Mrs. Ann Mattingly, Which Took Place in the City of Washington, D.C., on the Tenth of March, 1824.

[48] Soon after his election, Matthews became disillusioned with the Society of Jesus and quit the Jesuits on November 1, 1809, resigning the presidency of the Jesuit-run Georgetown at the same time.

At the same time, Georgetown College sought to move its seminarians to a location removed from "worldly distractions", and several within the Society of Jesus wanted to turn St. Patrick's into a Jesuit parish.

While the Jesuits prepared to move into the new building, they allowed George Ironside, an educator and former Episcopal priest who converted to Catholicism,[52] to use the structure as a school for lay students beginning in 1817.

[53] Since this arrangement did not provide Matthews with the assistant priests he initially sought, he wrote to Archbishop Maréchal expressing his desire that the Jesuits, who he viewed as trying to take over his parish, be removed from the land of St.

When word of the arrangement reached the Jesuit Superior General in Rome, Luigi Fortis, he ordered that the Seminary be suppressed on September 25, 1827.

He led a successful campaign to raise money by selling library stock, which was invested in Washington's banks and real estate.

Matthews acquired 3,000 volumes of Peter Force's collection on American history,[58] doubling the Washington Library's holdings; doing so required a personal loan from him.

[65] On several occasions, the board of trustees requested that Matthews obtain the funds from the City Council that were statutorily promised to them; he separately solicited private donations as well.

Matthews further acted as a member of a committee charged with persuading President James Madison to sell his stable on Fourteenth and G Streets to be used as the new schoolhouse for the Lancasterian school.

[67] He had requested that several nuns of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Emitsburg go to Washington to care for the orphaned girls of the city.

[69] In 1832, Matthews persuaded Congress to equally divide between St. Vincent's and the Washington Orphan Asylum a plot of land that was valued at $20,000.

Matthews' friendships with many of Washington's social elite drew contributions to the orphanage from people such as Mayor Thomas Carberry and President Andrew Jackson.

[71] The initial purpose of the institution was to be an orphanage for girls, but since its founding, it was operated as a free school for poor children of Washington that educated orphans and non-orphans alike.

He and Timothy O'Toole, his successor as pastor of St. Patrick's Church,[35] oversaw the establishment of the new orphanage, and Matthews served as president of its board from its founding.

[14] Matthews had a strong spiritual commitment, and he was especially fond of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, encouraging it in his parish and in churches in Baltimore.

[84][85] The following year, Matthews officiated at the wedding of Mary Anne Lewis—a ward of President Andrew Jackson and a Catholic—and Joseph Pageot, the secretary of the French diplomatic legation to the United States.

[90] Matthews believed that since Catholics were granted the freedom to practice their religion by the Constitution of the United States, they had a duty to contribute to the "moral and physical good" of their communities.

[94][g] The corpse was laid in front of the altar, where it remained during the All Souls' Day Mass, before being reinterred in the priests' section[96] of Mount Olivet Cemetery.

During the latter part of his life and after his death, Matthews was nicknamed the "patriarch of Washington" due to his contributions to the religious and civic worlds of the city.