This card advertises a public novena for poor souls in purgatory at the St. Joseph's Colored Catholic Church.  The church, organized by Bishop John J. Keane, was the first Catholic congregation for African Americans in Virginia.

      John Joseph Keane (1839 –1918) was an Irish-born American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church.  He served as bishop of the Diocese of Richmond in Virginia from 1878 to 1888. Despite opposition, Keane founded schools and churches for Catholic African Americans in the diocese.

              The original congregation began in the basement of the all-white (predominantly Irish American) Saint Peter's Church in 1879.  The 13-member congregation included Emily Mitchell (born into slavery in 1824, brought from Baltimore and later serving Bishop James Gibbons), Julia Grandison (baptized in Georgia and brought to Richmond at age 9), Moses Marx (who began driving Bishop John Keane's buggy at age 12), Liza Marx (who learned to read and reminded the judge reading her mistress' will that he forgot the lines bequeathing money to Elizabeth Thompson and her next child of issue), and Julia Flippen as well as her children. In 1884, when the congregation had increased to about 50 including children, Bishop Keane signed a deed for a property on Shockoe Hill for what became St. Joseph's Church, the first Catholic congregation organized in Virgina for African Americans and invited the Josephites for help in furthering the Black apostolate.

In 1884, Keane attended the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. The Council appointed him in May 1885 to the committee for the founding of a Catholic university in the United States. He was appointed as the first rector of the Catholic University of America in 1886. He continued to serve as bishop of Richmond until August 12, 1888, when he resigned that post.   His democratic and liberal policies made him enemies with conservatives in the hierarchy and at the Vatican. In 1896, Keane was forced to resign as rector of the university.