 During one Mass, financier and philanthropist Thomas Fortune Ryan, a Virginian who converted to Catholicism as a young man and who, with his wife Ida Barry Ryan, supported the construction of churches, schools, and other charitable institutions along the Eastern Seaboard, arrived late and had to stand.He preferred St. Jean to the larger churches closer to his Fifth Avenue mansion, and often attended services there.He heard Father Arthur Letellier, the new pastor, ask the congregation's prayers for a new church, and afterwards asked how much one would cost.