In 1811, a "chapel of ease" was built in Bladensburg for St. Matthew's Episcopal Church (Hyattsville); in 1856 it was established as the parish of St. Luke's.































The mid-19th century St. Luke's building 

For many years, St. Luke's existed as a strongly "Anglo-Catholic" parish of the Episcopal Church, with a devotion to Our Lady and the Eucharist. 



The 20th century church in Bladensburg, Maryland

As the decades passed, discernment grew. In 2011, the pastor and people of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Bladensburg voted to enter as a group into the Roman Catholic Church, and were received on the feast of Blessed John Henry Newman by Donald Cardinal Wuerl.


Reception of St. Luke’s Parish, October 9, 2011
Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

When the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter was established in 2012, St. Luke's immediately became a member, joining with the St. Thomas of Canterbury Society of Washington DC and the St. John Fisher Community of Northern Virginia to form a single parish centered in the Nation’s capital.

In 2014, the parish had to relinquish its church building back to the Episcopal Diocese, and the Archdiocese of Washington found a temporary home for St. Luke's at Immaculate Conception Church, until a more permanent home could be found.


Immaculate Conception Church
8th & N Streets NW

In July 2019, our then-pastor, Fr. John Vidal, was appointed as administrator to historic St. Ignatius Church in Oxon Hill/Fort Washington Maryland, just over the District boundary.  The two parishes, St. Ignatius Oxon Hill [ADW] and St. Luke's [OCSP], now share facilities and pastor.

This beautiful 1890's church is well-configured to the traditional liturgies of the Ordinariate, and the parish is a warm and closeknit community, with a similar founding date as St. Luke's [as an Episcopal parish].




What is Our Mission?

Foremost and always, our mission is the salvation of souls through the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ. That is the mission of the Church and all her members.

But, as members of the Ordinariate, we are called to a particular path.

Our founding Ordinary Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson said it best, in a homily at the ordination of one of our
Ordinariate priests:

“…The life we left, while holy and good and praiseworthy and honourable, was incomplete and we needed fullness.….the Catholic Church asks us…to be the first fruits of the harvest of Christian unity….If the Ordinariate is to be anything worthy and worth keeping for the long term, it must be an instrument of Christian unity.”  

It is that simple. We are called to the work of Christian unity. Our Lord Jesus, on his last night, prayed for us, that the unity of Christians may be the image of his unity with the Father:

“Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.”

As we work for the reconciliation of separated brethren, we ask you to join with us in praying for the visible unity of the Body of Christ.