George Washington's Deathbed Conversion?

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since shortly after he died in 1799, questions have circulated about whether George Washington converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. The evidence isn't conclusive in either direction, but a number of factors point to this possibility. Chief among them is that Washington requested that a Catholic priest come to his bedside as he lay dying. One of the Neale brothers who was a Jesuit priest in Piscataway, Maryland, right across the Potomac from Mount Vernon, attended Washington and was with him for nearly four hours. If Washington became a Catholic convert many would not be surprised, as he had displayed an affinity for Catholics and for the Catholic Church for most of his adult life. In this episode we consider all of the evidence for the potential deathbed conversion of the Father of America.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History.
0:08.1	If you like our podcast, be sure to follow us, give us a five-star rating, and a great
0:13.0	review, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:15.0	And please become a supporter at Americancatholichistory.org slash support.
0:20.0	I'm Newell Heister Crow.
0:21.8	And I'm Tom Crow.
0:22.8	Today, we're talking about George Washington and the very interesting question of whether
0:28.6	or not he became Catholic before he died.
0:31.4	Cue the dramatic music.
0:32.6	Dun dun dun dun!
0:34.2	Yeah, and this isn't some wild, oh, he's one of ours, too, speculation.
0:38.2	This has actually been a question since shortly after he died in December of 1799.
0:44.2	We've talked in other episodes about how Washington was friendly towards Catholics
0:48.7	and how he really led by example in making religious liberty a way of living as an American.
0:54.4	Right. And the three examples we've already given predate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
0:59.4	The first was in the episode about Commodore John Barry, the father of the U.S. Navy.
1:03.7	George Washington made him the first commissioned officer of the new U.S. Navy.
1:08.6	The second was the episode about Lieutenant Colonel John Fitzgerald,
1:12.0	who was a merchant in Alexandria and a friend of Washington's before the Revolutionary War.
1:17.7	During that war, Fitzgerald was one of Washington's most trusted a camp during the revolution.
1:23.9	And the third time was in our episode about the anti-Catholic tradition of Pope Knight, the American version of England's Guy Fawkes Day.
1:30.9	Washington was instrumental in quashing that devilish revelry.
	...

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