Our goal for the cover of this special supplement honoring the 150th anniversary of the Albany Diocese was to represent the span of years that Catholics have been active in upstate New York -- and to do so in a place that itself is of historical note.
The location was St. Mary's Church in downtown Albany, which is marking an anniversary of its own this year: its bicentennial. Fifty years older than the Diocese, St. Mary's was the first parish in what would become the Diocese of Albany and the second in the state after St. Peter's in New York City.
Arrayed in the church are seven people representing different eras of Catholicism in the Diocese. They are, left to right:
* A 17th-century Dutch landowner, enacted by Rev. John Close, who works for diocesan Computer Services as a consultant to parishes and is an historical reenactor;
* A 19th-century Daughter of Charity, played by Sister Elaine Wheeler, archivist for the order at DePaul Provincial House in Menands;
* A 17th-century Jesuit missionary, portrayed by Jesuit Brother Paul Acer, assistant to the director of the Apostolate of Prayer at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville;
* A 20th-century, Depression-era schoolboy, played by Christopher Cameron, a student at Blessed Sacrament School in Albany;
* A Victorian-era woman, enacted by Rie M. Lee, special permits coordinator for the State of New York and a parishioner of St. Mary's Church in Nassau;
* A Civil War infantryman from the 1860s, portrayed by Bryan H. Gosling, first vice president of the New York State Military Heritage Institute; and
* An 18th-century Revolutionary War soldier, played by Michael P. Farrell, whose photography appears occasionally in The Evangelist.
Behind the camera for this once-in-a-lifetime souvenir photo that spans four centuries was Dave Oxford, the award-winning photographer whose work appears weekly in The Evangelist.