He once said: How distressing it is to be unable to send missionaries to Virginia, where there are five hundred thousand Negroes! It is indubitable that had we missionaries and funds to support them, prodigies would be effected in this vast and untilled field. In Maryland blacks are converted every day, and many of them are good Catholics and excellent Christians. At Baltimore many are frequent communicants, and three hundred or four hundred receive the Blessed Sacrament the first Sunday of every month. It is the same throughout Maryland, where there are a great many Catholics among the Negroes. Whitfield, along with his priests and the sisters, was untiring in his devotion to those afflicted during the 1832 cholera outbreak. Two priests and three sisters, including an Oblate Sister of Providence, died while attending to the sick. He built at his own expense St. James the Less Roman Catholic Church in Baltimore His health failing, Whitfield received Samuel Eccleston as his coadjutor in 1834, and died some months afterward, aged 64. See also Catholic Church hierarchy Catholic Church in the United States Historical list of the Catholic bishops of the United States List of Catholic bishops of the United States Lists of patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops References External links Archdiocese of Baltimore Page About James Whitfield Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore 1770 births 1834 deaths Clergy from Liverpool English emigrants to the United States Roman Catholic archbishops of Baltimore English Roman Catholic priests 19th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in the United States Burials at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary