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English: Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Father Thomas O'Reilly

Named in honor of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Immaculate Conception Church began as a parish when Catholics held mass in private homes and a school in 1846. They erected a frame church on this spot in 1848 and called their first full-time priest in 1851.
Father Thomas O’Reilly, a native of County Cavan, Ireland, came to Atlanta in 1861 by way of Albany, Georgia. During the entire period of the war he labored tirelessly to assist the wounded, suffering, and displaced people in Atlanta. Fr. O’Reilly received an appointment as a Confederate chaplain in early 1864, after which Bishop Augustin Verot sent him to aid the Federal prisoners at Camp Sumter (Andersonville). Later that year he returned to his urban parish. When the fighting near the city, Fr. O’Reilly went to the downtown train depot to give aid to the wounded being transferred from the battlefields to the hospitals. During the ensuing battles for Atlanta he took care of the dying and dead from both armies.
In November of 1864, Union Major General William T. Sherman ordered his men to destroy the military-allied facilities in the fallen city of Atlanta. Fr. O’Reilly asked Union Major General Henry Slocum, who commanded the 20th Corps stationed near Immaculate Conception Church, to protect it from destruction. General Slocum knew O’Reilly well, as the priest had welcomed Federal soldiers into his parish and had given succor to the wounded. With Catholics in the Federal ranks who might find burning the church a sacrilege, Slocum agreed to provide protection that saved not only Immaculate Conception, but also Central Presbyterian, Second Baptist, Trinity Methodist and St. Philips Episcopal, as well as Atlanta’s City Hall and surrounding neighborhood.

The wartime use of Immaculate Conception Church as a hospital had left the sanctuary in a terrible state of disrepair. A growing Catholic population required a new building. Fr. O’Reilly commissioned noted architect W. H. Parkins to design a larger brick sanctuary on the same site, although the priest did not live to see the new edifice. The war had undermined his health. The diocese sent Fr. O’Reilly to recuperate at Chalybeate Springs, Virginia, but he died there September 6, 1872, at the age of 41. The Atlanta parish buried its beloved priest in a specially designed crypt under the alter of the new church. Having laid the cornerstone in 1869, the congregation dedicated the new building in 1873. Then in 1945, the Atlanta Historical Society, the five churches, and the City of Atlanta, placed a marble monument on the grounds of City Hall in commemoration of Father Thomas O’Reilly’s role in saving an important part of the city during the war. After renovation in 1954, Immaculate Conception Church was rededicated as a Shrine.