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William Henry Cardinal O'Connell (December 8, 1859—April 22, 1944) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was the second Archbishop of Boston (1907-1944) and the first cardinal of Boston (1911-1944). In the context of Roman Catholic Church history, he was a hardline ultramontanist in an era when ultramontanism was in the ascendancy.[1] (The doctrine of papal infallibility had been imposed at the First Vatican Council of 1870.) At least in part because of his adherence to this ideology, he lobbied the Vatican to order the disbanding of the newly (1919) founded American bishops' organization, the National Catholic Welfare Council (a forerunner of today's United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), and in 1922, upon the death of Pope Benedict XV, he nearly succeeded. In Massachusetts politics of the early 20th century, Cardinal O'Connell was treated as a man with great secular political power. "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'."[2] However, behind the scenes he engaged in grave and prolonged misconduct, including embezzlement, for which he eventually was partially held to account. Three attempts to oust him were organized in 1914, 1921, and 1922, the first involving his bishops, the latter two involving his fellow American archbishops. In 1921, he came close to being ousted and he was rebuked by Pope Benedict XV. These scandals were successfully kept secret from the public, but for the remaining two decades of his life, while continuing to have great secular influence, he was a mere figurehead in church politics.[3][4] Cardinal O'Connell is a great-uncle of Paul G. Kirk, Jr., a U.S. Senator representing Massachusetts since 2009.[5]
[edit] Early lifeWilliam Henry 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.[6] In high school, he excelled at music, particularly the piano and organ.[6] 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. [edit] PriesthoodO'Connell was ordained to the priesthood by Lucido Cardinal Parocchi on June 8, 1884. 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.[6] 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.[6] 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. [edit] Episcopal career[edit] Bishop of Portland in MaineOn 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.[6] He was presented with a reliquary of the True Cross by Pope Pius X after the latter's election in 1903.[6] 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.[7] [edit] Archbishop of BostonO'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. [edit] Cardinal of BostonOn November 27, 1911, O'Connell became Boston's first Archbishop to become Cardinal, and was given the title of Cardinal-Priest of S. Clemente.[8] O'Connell and his fellow American cardinals arrived too 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; in 1922, they missed the conclusion of the conclave by just half an hour. O'Connell 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.[9] 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."[7] 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.[7] 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. [edit] Fabricated autobiographical materialIn 1915, Cardinal O'Connell published fabricated autobiographical material, an act which went undetected until 1987, when it was discovered by James M. O'Toole, a historian of Roman Catholicism in America. O'Connell's volume of published letters,[10] which he claimed to have written in the period 1876-1901, were in fact written over a short period and expressly for the purpose of publication.[11] [edit] Scandals[edit] Married priest nephewHis tenure as archbishop was marred by a scandal involving his nephew, Monsignor James O'Connell. This nephew, a priest, was made chancellor of the Archdiocese at a young age, but it was later discovered that both James and another priest in O'Connell's inner circle, his chaplain, were secretly married and were embezzling money from the Archdiocese to support their wives.[12] Cardinal O' Connell denied the existence of his nephew's marriage even 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." [edit] DeathO'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 tenure as archbishop is the longest of any archbishop of Boston and the third longest of any American archbishop behind James Gibbons and William Wakefield Baum. [edit] Views[edit] Relationship with Cardinal SpellmanHe 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 bookkeeper when you teach him how to read."[13] [edit] EcumenismHe was also decidedly nonecumenical. "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."[14] [edit] Miscellaneous pronouncements
[edit] In popular cultureIn Henry Morton Robinson's best-selling 1950 historical fiction novel The Cardinal, the Archbishop of Boston in office in the exact time frame as O'Connell's term in office is named "Lawrence Cardinal Glennon". Robinson's physical descriptions of Glennon, Glennon's massive diocesan building program, his arriving too 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 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, eventually to rise to the rank of cardinal himself; he is held to have been modeled on Cardinal Francis Spellman.
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Categories: 1859 births | 1944 deaths | 20th-century Roman Catholic archbishops | American cardinals | American Roman Catholic bishops | American Roman Catholics | Irish-American religious figures | Irish Americans | People from Boston, Massachusetts | People from Lowell, Massachusetts | People from Portland, Maine | St. Charles College alumni | Boston College alumni | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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