Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin - Legacy

Legacy

His parishioners saw Gallitzin as a great power for good. Gallitzin's part in building up the Catholic Church in western Pennsylvania cannot be overestimated; it is said that at his death there were 10,000 Catholics in the district where forty years before he had found a scant dozen. Loretto today is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

In 1899-1901, the steel industrialist Charles M. Schwab funded the construction of a large stone church, which is the current basilica, at Prince Gallitzin's tomb. Schwab also provided funds for a bronze statue of Gallitzin.

The nearby town of Gallitzin, Pennsylvania is named for western Pennsylvania's first English-speaking priest. It is in this town that the Pennsylvania Railroad would tunnel through the summit of the Allegheny Mountains. Eventually, the railroad would operate three tunnels through the ridge into Gallitzin, PA. The Gallitzin Tunnel was closed as part of Conrail's massive double-stack clearance project in the 1990s. In the mid-1960s, Pennsylvania christened a new nearby state park in honor of Prince Gallitzin, as he is fondly called locally.

Among Gallitzin's pamphlets are: A Defence of Catholic Principles (1816), Letter to a Protestant Friend on the Holy Scriptures (1820), Appeal to the Protestant Public (1834), and Six Letters of Advice (1834), a reply to what Gallitzin saw as attacks on the Catholic Church by a Presbyterian synod.

On June 6, 2005, it was announced that Gallitzin had been named a Servant of God by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the first step on the path toward possible future sainthood.