Background
Alfred Allen Paul Curtis was born of an old but obscure family at Pocomoke, Worcester County, Maryland on July 4, 1831.
Alfred Allen Paul Curtis was born of an old but obscure family at Pocomoke, Worcester County, Maryland on July 4, 1831.
Educated in the local public schools, he studied for the Episcopalian ministry and was ordained a deacon in 1856 by Bishop Whittingham.
He entered St. Mary’s Seminary, Baltimore, and completed a two-year course in theology.
Appointed assistant curate at St. John’s Church, Baltimore, he was soon transferred to St. Luke’s Church, Baltimore, thence to a small congregation in Frederick, Maryland, and eventually to the rectorship of a church in Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland.
In 1862, only six years after ordination he was honored with the pastorate of the important Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore where he remained until 1870 when he resigned because of dissatisfaction with the Episcopalian creed.
Going to England, he became interested in the Romeward movement and entered the Catholic Church (1872) under the guidance of Cardinal Newman.
Returning to America, he was ordained by Archbishop Bayley. Father Curtis was happy as an assistant at the Baltimore cathedral, as secretary to the archbishop, and later as acting chancellor of the diocese.
Named bishop of Wilmington, Delaware, he was consecrated by Archbishop Gibbons on November 14, 1886, and commenced the trying work of church building in a small diocese heavily burdened with debt.
As a bishop, he was not happy and it was with relief that he resigned in 1896 and became the titular bishop of Echinus. Called back to Baltimore, he acted as Cardinal Gibbons’s vicar-general from 1898 until his death.
He gradually became more Catholic in his beliefs and practices, to the dismay of Bishop William Rollinson Whittingham.
He was quiet, studious, dreading publicity. A retiring, silent man, he attracted little attention in the world and was known only to his intimates as a saintly, conscientious priest.