Tennessee Williams Baptism Collection

Playwright Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. After spending his later childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, Williams eventually moved to New Orleans, a city that would inspire much of his writing. Williams wrote notable plays as The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he earned the Pulitzer Prize, and is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the Twentieth Century. In 1941, Williams moved to Key West, Florida. After decades of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as struggling with mental illness, William’s brother Dakin came to visit in 1969. Having recently been converted to Catholicism himself, Dakin convinced Williams to meet with a Catholic priest, Father Joseph L. LeRoy, S.J. of St. Mary of the Sea church. Five days later Williams was baptized into the Catholic church, even though he had previously been baptized and raised as an Episcopalian. According to Father LeRoy, Williams said he believed he had always been a Catholic, in spirit. Williams claimed later to have never taken his conversion seriously. In the aftermath and publicity, it was determined that since Williams was likely already baptized as an Episcopalian, Father LeRoy had violated guidelines set forth by the Vatican in 1947 which stated, “indiscriminate conditional Baptism . . . cannot be approved” unless “reasonable doubt persists” as to the previous baptism of the person. Father LeRoy was unaware of these guidelines at the time of the baptism and was thus called forth to explain his actions to Church leaders. Tennessee Williams died on February 24, 1983, in New York City, apparently from an accident resulting from too much drug and alcohol use. Father Joseph L. LeRoy, S.J. was a member of the New England Province, had been a missionary to Jamaica and was the Reverend at St. Mary, Star of the Sea church in Key West, Florida.

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