Join us for Mass at Noon on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, November 28) at St. Elizabeth Church. 

On September 8, 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded the city of St. Augustine, Florida. As soon as they were ashore, the landing party celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving. Afterward, Menéndez laid out a meal to which he invited as guests the native Seloy tribe who occupied the site. This was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanent European settlement in North America — 56 years before the Puritan Pilgrim thanksgiving at Plymouth.