In 1936 the Dominican Fr. Thomas Weiland founded a shrine to St. Martin de Porres in Columbia, South Carolina, and built a church and a school beside it. For some sixty years the donations it drew went to Columbia's African-American Catholics. In 1996 the shrine left South Carolina for New Orleans, the seat of the Dominican Southern Province, on the understanding that New Orleans was a way-station. The permanent home turned out to be Memphis.
It is a chapel, not a building of its own. Bishop J. Terry Steib dedicated it in 2001 inside St. Peter Catholic Church, on the corner of Adams Avenue and B.B. King Boulevard, directly across the street from the Shelby County Courthouse. The name grew at the same time, from Shrine to Shrine and Institute, to carry the teaching and cultural work that came with the move. In 2015 it was designated a national shrine.
Martin de Porres was born in Lima in 1579 to a Spanish nobleman and a freed woman of African descent. The Dominicans took him in at fifteen as a servant; their racial bar on admission kept him from the habit of a full brother until 1603. A shrine founded to serve Black Catholics in the segregated South carries the name of a man his own order had refused.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
St. Peter's is the older half of the story. The parish was established in 1840 — the first Roman Catholic parish in West Tennessee — and passed to the Dominican Order in 1846. The present church went up in the 1850s to a design by Patrick C. Keely, the Irish-born architect who built Catholic churches across the eastern United States by the hundred: a Gothic Revival brick church with vaulted ceilings, pointed arches and stained glass of the life of Christ and the saints. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. During the yellow fever epidemics that emptied Memphis in the 1870s, eight priests and eleven sisters of the parish died nursing the sick.
The shrine arrived a century and a half later, and it arrived by stages. Fr. Thomas Weiland, O.P., founded it in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1936, when devotion to Martin de Porres in the United States was carried largely by Black Catholic communities and the Dominicans who worked among them — Martin had been beatified in 1837 but would not be canonized for another twenty-six years. The 1996 move to New Orleans put the shrine at the seat of the Dominican Province of St. Martin de Porres, the order's southern province, which covers eleven states from Texas to North Carolina. Memphis, in 2001, gave it a permanent chapel.
The Institute half of the name is the shrine's educational and cultural work, and it has run a named annual social-justice lecture in Memphis, bringing in speakers from outside the diocese — Ralph McCloud of the U.S. bishops' Catholic Campaign for Human Development gave the second of them. Dominican friars staff the shrine on behalf of the southern province, and St. Peter's is a Dominican parish around it.
Martin de Porres died in Lima on 3 November 1639. Pope Gregory XVI beatified him in 1837, and Pope John XXIII canonized him on 6 May 1962, months before the opening of the Second Vatican Council. He is the patron of people of mixed race and of racial harmony, and also of barbers, innkeepers and public health workers — the trades of his own working life. His tomb and principal shrine are at the Basilica and Convent of Santo Domingo in Lima; Memphis holds no relic of him, and the devotion here rests on the dedication rather than on his remains.
That dedication reaches into the American calendar. The National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus designated November as Black Catholic History Month in 1990, taking the November 3 feast of Martin de Porres as its point of origin, and the Diocese of Memphis keeps the shrine as the city's focus for the observance.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Memphis
National Shrine of St. Martin de Porres and Institute
The shrine is a dedicated chapel within St. Peter Catholic Church, and the church is the thing a pilgrim sees first: a Gothic Revival brick pile on a downtown corner, its pointed arches and stained glass at odds with the courthouse across Adams Avenue. Devotion to Martin de Porres concentrates in the shrine chapel, which is distinct from the main sanctuary where the parish keeps its Sunday liturgy. The chapel is the working end of the shrine — daily Mass, confession, the November feast with the Dominican propers — and the Institute's lectures and gatherings happen in the parish buildings around it.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of St. Martin de Porres — November 3
The patronal feast, and a fixed date. The Dominican Order keeps it as a solemnity with its own proper readings, and the shrine chapel celebrates it as the high point of its year. November is also Black Catholic History Month in the United States, a designation the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus took from this feast, so the day carries a double weight in Memphis.
St. Martin de Porres Triduum — around the November 3 feast
The shrine's principal gathering, and in the diocese's words its most celebrated annual project: three days of preaching, prayer and public witness kept on a Friday-to-Sunday weekend at the turn of the month, led by the shrine rector with an invited preacher who develops a single theme across the three days. A Walk for Justice goes through downtown on the Saturday. The triduum closes on Sunday with the St. Peter Gala, at which the St. Martin de Porres Award is given to a parishioner and to a figure from the wider community; an auction follows, and its proceeds go toward the training of Dominican friars. The Sunday session is streamed. Check the shrine's own site for the weekend it falls on in a given year.
🛏️ Where to Stay
The shrine keeps no guesthouse — it is a chapel in a parish church in the middle of a city, and pilgrims stay in downtown Memphis hotels. Three of the four below are within a ten-minute walk.
Residence Inn Memphis Downtown (hotel) — The closest option, 550 m from the shrine on Monroe Avenue. Marriott's extended-stay brand: studio suites with kitchens, breakfast buffet, rooftop terrace. The practical choice for a family or a stay of more than a night or two. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
The Peabody Memphis ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — The landmark, 650 m away on Union Avenue: a downtown institution since 1869, Forbes four-star and AAA four-diamond, and the hotel with the ducks in the lobby fountain. The splurge, and a short walk from Beale Street. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
Hilton Garden Inn Memphis Downtown Beale Street ⭐⭐⭐ — A 150-room mid-range hotel on Union Avenue, 660 m from the shrine, with a restaurant, bar and indoor pool. The reliable default. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
The Central Station Memphis, Curio Collection by Hilton ⭐⭐⭐⭐ — A boutique hotel inside the restored 1914 Central Station building in the South Main Arts District, 2 km south of the shrine — walkable, or a short ride on the Main Street trolley. Quieter than the cluster near the courthouse. Website ∙ Reserve this hotel
🚗 Getting There
By Air: Memphis International Airport (MEM) lies roughly 18 km (11 miles) south of downtown, about 15–20 minutes by car. It is the region's main airport, with connections across the United States.
By Train: Amtrak's City of New Orleans — the Chicago-to-New-Orleans line — calls at Memphis Central Station, 545 S. Main Street, about 2 km south of the shrine. It is the only full-service Amtrak station in Tennessee. Southbound trains arrive in the morning, northbound in the late evening.
By Bus: Greyhound serves Memphis Bus Station with connections through the mid-South.
By Car: I-40 (east–west) and I-55 (north–south) both run through Memphis and into downtown. The church stands at the corner of Adams Avenue and B.B. King Boulevard — formerly Third Street — opposite the Shelby County Courthouse, in the middle of the downtown grid.
Local Transport: MATA's Main Street Trolley runs a four-mile route along Main Street and Riverside Drive, linking Central Station in the south to the Pinch District in the north and passing a short walk west of the church. MATA buses cover the wider city.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Giuliana Cavallini. St. Martin de Porres: Apostle of Charity — The standard English-language life of the saint, and the volume most often cited in Dominican hagiography. (TAN Books, Cross and Crown Series of Spirituality)
Maeve McMahon, OP & Vivian Boland, OP. Son of an Unknown Father: A Story about Martin de Porres — A short Dominican-authored account, 120 pages, that takes Martin's experience of racism from childhood onward as its subject — the thematic match for this shrine's founding purpose. (Paulist Press, 2023)
Marion Amberg. Monuments, Marvels, and Miracles: A Traveler's Guide to Catholic America — A state-by-state guide to more than 500 holy sites across the United States, useful for setting Memphis beside the wider network of American shrines.
🎥 Recommended Videos
St Martin DePorres Shrine Tour — A walk-through of the shrine chapel filmed by Fr. Carmen Mele, O.P. (6 min 46 sec).
Saint Martin de Porres, National Shrine and Institute, Memphis, TN, Catholic Shrines — A short exterior-and-interior montage of the shrine (1 min 21 sec).
Catholic Hobo| Pilgrimage, Atlanta, GA, to Memphis, Tenn-- St Martin De Porres Shrine — A pilgrim's walk from Atlanta to Memphis, ending at the shrine (10 min 36 sec).
🔗 Useful Links
St. Martin de Porres National Shrine and Institute — Official shrine website, with the annual triduum schedule and visitor information.
St. Peter Catholic Church — The Dominican parish that houses the shrine.
Diocese of Memphis — Diocesan website, including its coverage of the shrine's triduum and Black Catholic History Month.
Dominican Friars, Province of St. Martin de Porres — The order's southern province, on whose behalf the shrine operates.
National Association of Shrine and Pilgrimage Apostolate — Shrine Directory — NASPA's directory of U.S. shrines, which lists the Memphis shrine under Region 5.
GCatholic — National Shrine of St. Martin de Porres — Jurisdictional and church data for the shrine and St. Peter Church.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Ave Maria Grotto (315 km east-southeast) — Brother Joseph Zoettl's 125 miniature stone replicas of holy sites worldwide, on the grounds of St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Alabama.
Hanceville (331 km east-southeast) — Mother Angelica's Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, where Poor Clares keep perpetual adoration. About 40 km from Ave Maria Grotto, and a separate destination.
Belleville (380 km north) — The National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, one of the largest outdoor shrines in North America, just east of St. Louis.
St. Louis (387 km north) — The Cathedral Basilica and the Shrine of St. Joseph, site of the Midwest's only Vatican-authenticated miracle.
Laurie (422 km north-northwest) — The National Shrine of Mary, Mother of the Church, an open-air amphitheatre terraced into the Ozark hills above Lake of the Ozarks.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"Of mixed race, he was accepted into the Order of the Dominican Fathers only as a tertiary and then as a co-operator brother. He accepted this condition, living an existence of the greatest humility, infused with love."
— Pope Francis, Address to Hairstylists of the Committees of Saint Martin de Porres, 2019
