William Henry O'Connell


His Eminence
 William Henry O'Connell
Cardinal Archbishop of Boston
See Boston
Enthroned August 31, 1907
Ended April 22, 1944
Predecessor John Joseph Williams
Successor Richard Cushing
Ordination June 8, 1884
Consecration May 19, 1901
Created Cardinal November 27, 1911
Other Bishop of Portland in Maine
Coadjutor Archbishop of Boston
Personal details
Born December 8, 1859(1859-12-08)
Lowell, Massachusetts
Died April 22, 1944 (aged 84)
Brighton, Massachusetts

William Henry Cardinal O'Connell (December 8, 1859—April 22, 1944) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Boston from 1907 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1911.

Contents

Early life

William O'Connell was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to John and Bridget (née Farrelly) O'Connell, who were Irish immigrants. The youngest of eleven children, he had six brothers and four sisters. His father worked at a textile mill and died when William was four-years-old.[1] During his high school career, he excelled at music, particularly the piano and organ.[1]

O'Connell entered St. Charles College in Ellicott City, Maryland, in 1876. At St. Charles, he was a pupil of the noted poet John Banister Tabb. He returned to Massachusetts two years later and entered Boston College, from where he graduated in 1881 with gold medals in philosophy, physics, and chemistry. He then furthered his studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.

Priesthood

O'Connell was ordained to the priesthood by Lucido Cardinal Parocchi on June 8, 1884. A pneumonia and bronchial congestion cut short his pursuit of a doctorate in divinity at the Pontifical Urban Athenaeum, forcing him to return to the United States in 1885 without his degree.[1]

He then served as pastor of St. Joseph Church in Medford until 1886, whence he became pastor of St. Joseph Church in the West End of Boston.[1] Returning to Rome, O'Connell was named rector of the North American College in 1895. He was raised to the rank of Domestic Prelate of His Holiness in 1897.

Episcopal career

Bishop of Portland in Maine

On February 8, 1901, O'Connell was appointed the third Bishop of Portland, Maine, by Pope Leo XIII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following May 19 from Francesco Cardinal Satolli, with Archbishops Edmund Stonor and Rafael Merry del Val, at the Lateran Basilica. Upon his arrival in Maine, he was given an official reception by Governor John F. Hill.[1] He was presented with a reliquary of the True Cross by Pope Pius X after the latter's election in 1903.[1]

In 1905, in addition to his duties as a diocesan bishop, O'Connell was named papal envoy to Emperor Meiji of Japan; he was also decorated with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. He was made an Assistant at the Pontifical Throne in 1905 as well. He was also viewed has having actively campaigned to become Archbishop of Boston, donating to numerous Vatican causes and publicly expressing his loyalty to the pope.[2]

Archbishop of Boston

O'Connell was named Coadjutor Archbishop of Boston and Titular Archbishop of Constantina on February 21, 1906. As coadjutor, he served as the designated successor of Archbishop John Williams, who was then in declining health. He later succeeded Williams as the second Archbishop of Boston upon the latter's death on August 30, 1907.

On November 27, 1911, O'Connell became Boston's first Archbishop to become Cardinal, and was given the title of Cardinal-Priest of S. Clemente.[3] O'Connell managed to be late to two papal conclaves in a row, in 1914 and 1922, due to having to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the slower transportation of the day. He made a protest to Pope Pius XI, who in response lengthened the time between the death of the Pope and the start of the conclave. O'Connell was able to participate in the subsequent 1939 conclave.

O'Connell favored a highly centralized diocesan organization, encompassing schools, hospitals, and asylums in addition to parishes. O'Connell wielded immense political and social power in Massachusetts, earning him the nickname, "Number One."[2] For instance, he was responsible for defeating a bill to establish a state lottery in 1935, and for defeating a referendum liberalizing state birth control laws in 1942.[2] The only politician who had anywhere near O'Connell's political clout was Governor (and future U.S. President) Calvin Coolidge, but even Coolidge picked his battles carefully, preferring to ignore the Archbishop whenever possible. In the years leading up to the Second World War O'Connell became a powerful force for the neutralists in trying to keep the United States out of World War II, in the pre-Pearl Harbor era.

He presided over the marriage of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald in 1914[4], and later asked actress Gloria Swanson to end her affair with Kennedy.[5] He was opposed to the Child Labor Amendment, and denounced Hollywood as "the scandal of the nation" and Albert Einstein's theories as "authentic atheism, even if camouflaged as cosmic pantheism."[6] He opposed euthanasia, calling suffering "the discipline of humanity," and even told his priests they might refuse Communion to women wearing lipstick.[6] He also condemned crooning, saying, "No true American man would practice this base art. Of course, they aren't men...If you will listen closely [to crooners' songs] you will discern the basest appeal to sex emotion in the young."[7] He did not have an especially warm relationship with Francis Spellman, who served as O'Connell's auxiliary bishop before being promoted to Archbishop of New York; he once said, "Francis epitomizes what happens to a bookeeper when you teach him how to read."[8]

He was also decidedly non-ecumenical. "In 1908 during ceremonies commemorating the 100th anniversary of the establishment of a Roman Catholic diocese in the Puritans' Boston, Archbishop William Henry O'Connell ... set the tone for the fast-growing church's next phase [by stating] "[t]he Puritan has passed. The Catholic remains." ([1]). See the below partial excerpt from Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1895-1944:

From 1907 to 1944, William Henry O'Connell was Archbishop of Boston. This was the period when the American Catholic Church, so to speak, came of age. Churches, schools, convents, and hospitals were being built, quite literally, by the dozen. Thousands of children were enrolled in parochial schools, where they were taught by nuns and brothers. Priests were ordained each year by the dozen, and seminaries were built to accommodate the growing number of vocations. Some have called this the golden age of American Catholicism.
Nowhere was this more seemingly true than in Boston under O'Connell's leadership. Political leaders referred to him as "Number One", and sought his approval before taking action on a particular issue. And O'Connell loved every minute of it. One contemporary described him as a "battleship in full array."

Scandal over nephew

His tenure as archbishop was marred by a scandal involving his nephew, Rev. James O'Connell. His priest-nephew was made chancellor of the Archdiocese at a young age, but it was later discovered that James (as well as another priest in O'Connell's household) was secretly married and embezzling money from the Archdiocese to support his second life with his wife in New York. [9] Cardinal O' Connell denied the marriage as a rumor and even tried to deny it to Pope Benedict XV. When confronted in the Vatican by the pope with the marriage certificate O'Connell fell to the floor and pleaded for himself. The pope reminded the Cardinal, "He (the pope) who gives the red hat can take it away."

Fabricated autobiographical material

In 1915, O'Connell fabricated autobiographical material, an attempt which was successful until 1987. James M. O'Toole discovered that O'Connell's volume of published letters,[10] which O'Connell claimed to have written in the time period indicated by the volume's title, were, in fact, written over a short period and expressly for the purpose of publication.[11]

Death and legacy

O'Connell died from pneumonia in Brighton, aged 84. He was buried in a small chapel he had built on the grounds of St. John's Seminary.

His 36-year-long tenure is the longest in the history of the Archdiocese of Boston. He was the second-last surviving cardinal of Pope St. Pius X behind Gennaro Granito Pignatelli di Belmonte, and is at present the third-longest serving American cardinal behind James Gibbons and William Wakefield Baum.

In popular culture

In Henry Morton Robinson's best-selling 1950 historical fiction novel The Cardinal, the Archbishop of Boston in the exact time frame as O'Connell's term in office is named "Lawrence Cardinal Glennon". Robinson's physical descriptions of Glennon, his massive Diocesan building program, his arriving late for two Papal conclaves in Rome, while eventually making it in time for a third, his popular description as "Number One" and many other details of the Glennon character exactly correspond with O'Connell's career and personality. The "Cardinal" of the title, however, is a young priest who serves as Glennon's secretary, only to eventually rise to the rank of Cardinal himself.

Preceded by
Archbishop John Joseph Williams		 Archbishop of Boston
1907 – 1944		 Succeeded by
Richard James Cardinal Cushing

Links

Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Henry O'Connell

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Thornton, Francis. "William Cardinal O'Connell". Our American Princes. http://www.archive.org/stream/ouramericanprinc017789mbp/ouramericanprinc017789mbp_djvu.txt. 
  2. ^ a b c O'Toole, James M. (2003). ""Number One"". Boston College Magazine. http://bcm.bc.edu/issues/winter_2003/c21_number.html. 
  3. ^ "To Name Three New Cardinals For America. Red Hat for Archbishops Farley and O'Connell and Papal Delegate Falconio.". New York Times. October 29, 1911. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=950CEED61131E233A2575AC2A9669D946096D6CF. Retrieved on 2008-12-23. "The Pope will create a large number of Cardinals at the consistory to be held on Nov. 27. The Most Rev. John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York, and the Most Rev. William H. O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston, are among those who will receive the Red Hat. Mgr. Diomede Falconio, Apostolic Delegate at Washington, will also be elevated, according to the announcement made to-day." 
  4. ^ "London Legman". TIME Magazine. 1939-09-18. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762585-2,00.html. 
  5. ^ Wallis, Claudia (1980-10-27). TIME Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951600,00.html. 
  6. ^ a b "Death of a Cardinal". TIME Magazine. 1944-05-01. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774948,00.html. 
  7. ^ TIME Magazine. 1932-01-18. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742963,00.html. 
  8. ^ "The Master Builder". TIME Magazine. 1967-12-08. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,844255,00.html. 
  9. ^ The Boston Globe in a book review of O'Toole's book page 10A, January 10, 2003 stated that the married nephew, Rev. James O'Connell, may have blackmailed his uncle over the Cardinal's alleged homosexuality.
  10. ^ William O'Connell. The letters of His Eminence William Cardinal O’Connell, Archbishop of Boston: vol. 1. From college days 1876 to Bishop of Portland 1901. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1915.)
  11. ^ James M. O’Toole. Militant and triumphant: William Henry O’Connell and Boston Catholicism, 1859-1944 (Thesis (Ph. D.), Boston College, 1987.)

Further reading

  • O'Connor, Thomas H. (1998). Boston Catholics. Northeastern University Press. (ISBN 1-55553-359-0). 
  • "Catholic Hierarchy". http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/boconw.html. Retrieved on 2005-10-02. 
  • Peters, Walter H. The Life of Benedict XV. 1959. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company. Peters writes of the Vatican meeting of Pope Benedict XV and Cardinal O'Connell, over the scandal of his nephew's marriage.
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