According to historical accounts, George Washington converted to Catholicism before his death.
The newspaper, Denver Register, published on 24 February 1957 a brief account detailing that possibility.
It said, there was a traditional belief among the Maryland Province Jesuit Fathers and local slaves that the first President died a Catholic.
This belief stemmed from the account that Jesuit priest Father Leonard Neale, S.J., was summoned to Mount Vernon from St. Mary’s Mission across the Piscataway River, on the night Washington passed away.
Prior to the Denver Register report similar details appeared in The American Catholic Historical Researches (1900) by Martin Griffin. Accordingly, the night before Washington died, his servant sought out a Catholic priest amid a raging storm. Thereafter, a Jesuit priest was ferried to Mount Vernon. He spent three hours with Washington before departing, reportedly satisfied that Washington’s soul was secure. The Jesuit was said to have documented the event and left an account of it in a sealed envelope for future disclosure, though it has yet to be revealed.
There were skeptics to these claims, though. Questioning the fact that Washington’s personal secretary, Tobias Lear, made no mention of a visiting priest in his official account of Washington’s final moments. Yet Lear also failed to record Washington’s last conversation with his wife, Martha, suggesting that not all details have been documented. Given the strong anti-Catholic sentiment of the time, there is great possibility that any conversion might have been intentionally kept secret to avoid scandal among the Protestant elite.
Interestingly, Washington’s own slaves believed that he died a Catholic. They reportedly mourned his passing with the belief that he had been “snared by the Scarlet Woman of Rome,” a reference to Catholicism, which they had been taught to fear.
