Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church

The parish began as St. Philomena, a mission for Pass Christian's Black Catholics served by Josephite priests. Father Samuel Kelly directed the foundation, and local Black families helped build the church, finished in 1911 after about twenty years of mission work. After the 1961 golden jubilee the Vatican renamed it Our Mother of Mercy, and the Sisters of Mercy ran a school here for forty-six years, until 1967. Head Start then used the building until 2005 and became a national model. After Katrina, parishioners from the white St. Paul's, whose chapel was gone, attended Mass here too.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ship Island and Fort Massachusetts — 18 mi
  A barrier island twelve miles off the Mississippi coast with a brick fort burned half-built in 1861, a Union prison camp, and the garrison post of the 2nd Louisiana Native Guard.
• Biloxi Beach Wade-In Marker — 21 mi
  The beachfront parking lot beside the Biloxi Lighthouse where state markers recall the 1959 and 1960 wade-ins that opened Mississippi's public beaches to Black residents.
• Biloxi Lighthouse — 21 mi
  A cast-iron tower lit in 1848 on the Biloxi beachfront, kept by women for most of its first century and still in service after Camille and Katrina.
• INFINITY Science Center — 21 mi
  NASA's visitor center for Stennis Space Center, at the Mississippi welcome center near the Louisiana line, with a Saturn V booster outside and a story of five river towns that were moved.

More markers nearby

• J.W. Randolph School — 0.3 mi
• Dixie "White House" — 1.3 mi
• Boggsdale — 4.7 mi
• St. Stanislaus College — 5.0 mi