Francis Joseph Spellman (May 4, 1889 – December 2, 1967) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. From 1939 to his death, he served as the sixth archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York.
Francis Joseph Spellman | |
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Cardinal, Archbishop of New York | |
Church | |
Archdiocese | New York |
Appointed | April 15, 1939 |
Installed | May 23, 1939 |
Term ended | December 2, 1967 |
Predecessor | Patrick Joseph Hayes |
Successor | Terence Cooke |
Other post(s) |
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Orders | |
Ordination | May 14, 1916 by Giuseppe Ceppetelli |
Consecration | September 8, 1932 by Eugenio Pacelli |
Created cardinal | February 18, 1946 by Pius XII |
Rank | Cardinal Priest |
Personal details | |
Born | Francis Joseph Spellman May 4, 1889 Whitman, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Died | December 2, 1967 Manhattan, New York City, U.S. | (aged 78)
Buried | St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York |
Previous post(s) |
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Education | |
Motto | Sequere Deum (Follow God) |
Spellman previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston in Massachusetts from 1932 to 1939. He was created a cardinal in 1946.
Francis Spellman was born in Whitman, Massachusetts, to William Spellman and Ellen (née Conway) Spellman. William Spellman was a grocer whose own parents had emigrated to the United States from Clonmel and Leighlinbridge, Ireland.[1] The eldest of five children, Spellman had two brothers, Martin and John, and two sisters, Marian and Helene.
Spellman attended Whitman High School because there was no Catholic school in Whitman. He enjoyed photography and baseball; he played first base during his freshman year of high school until suffering a hand injury. Spellman later managed the team. After his high school graduation, Spellman in 1907 entered Fordham University in New York City . He graduated in 1911 and decided to study for the priesthood. He was then sent by Archbishop William O'Connell to study at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.[2]
Spellman suffered so badly from pneumonia that the college administrators wanted to send him home to recover. He nevertheless remained at the college and managed to complete his theological studies.During his years in Rome, Spellman befriended future Cardinals Gaetano Bisleti, Francesco Borgongini Duca, and Domenico Tardini.[2]
Spellman was ordained a priest at the Sant’Apollinare Basilica in Rome by Patriarch Giuseppe Ceppetelli on May 14, 1916. [3]Upon his return to the United States, the archdiocese assigned Spellman to pastoral positions at parishes.[4] Cardinal William O'Connell, who had earlier sent Spellman to Rome, described him as a "little popinjay." He later said, "Francis epitomizes what happens to a bookkeeper when you teach him how to read."[5] Spellman served a series of relatively insignificant assignments.[vague][6]
After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Spellman applied to become a military chaplain in the US Army, but did not meet the height requirement. Spellman also applied to be a chaplain in the US Navy, but his application was personally rejected, twice, by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
O'Connell eventually assigned Spellman to promote subscriptions for the archdiocesan newspaper, The Pilot.[7] The archbishop named him as assistant chancellor in 1918 and archivist of the archdiocese in 1924.[8]
After Spellman translated two books written by his friend Borgongini Duca into English, the Vatican in 1925 appointed Spellman as first American attaché of the Vatican Secretariat of State in 1925 in Rome.[9] While serving in the Secretariat, he also worked with the Knights of Columbus in running children's playgrounds in Rome. Pope Pius XI raised O'Connor to the rank of privy chamberlain on October 4, 1926 .[9]
During a trip to Germany in 1927, Spellman established a lifelong friendship with Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli, who was serving there as apostolic nuncio.[10] Spellman nntranslated Pius XI's first broadcast over Vatican Radio in 1931.[11] Later that year, Spellman a papal encyclical, Non abbiamo bisogno, that condemned fascism, out of Rome to Paris for publication.[2][11][12]He also served as secretary to Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri at the 1932 International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, and helped reform the Vatican's press office, introducing mimeograph machines and issuing press releases.[13]
On July 30, 1932, Spellman was appointed auxiliary bishop of Boston and titular bishop of Sila by Pope Pius XI.[4] [3]Spellman had originally been considered for the Dioceses of Portland in Maine and Manchester in New Hampshire.[13] He received his consecration on the following September 8 from Pacelli (wearing the vestments Pacelli wore when he was consecrated by Benedict XV). Archbishops Giuseppe Pizzardo and Francesco Borgongini Duca acted as co-consecrators, at St. Peter's Basilica.[2] His was the first consecration of an American bishop ever held at St. Peter's.[14] Borgongini-Duca designed for him a coat of arms incorporating the explorer Christopher Columbus' ship, the Santa Maria. Pope Pius XI gave him the motto Sequere Deum ("follow God").[15]
After his return to the United States, Spellman resided at St. John's Seminary in Boston. He was later made pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Newton Centre; there he erased the church's $43,000 debt through different fundraising activities. When his mother died in 1935, her funeral was attended by Massachusetts Governor James Curley, Lieutenant Governor Joseph Hurley, and many members of the clergy, with the exception of O'Connell.[16]
In the autumn of 1936, Pacelli came to the United States and visited New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Saint Paul, and Chicago.[17] The ostensible purpose of the trip was personal; he was to be the guest of Genevieve Brady, the wealthy widow of Nicholas Brady. However, during the trip Pacelli met with Roosevelt to discuss diplomatic recognition of the sovereignty of Vatican City.[1] Spellman was present at the meeting, which he arranged to take place at the president's boyhood home at Hyde Park, New York, on November 5, 1936, two days after his reelection to a second term.
Pacelli also looked into the "Radio Priest", Father Charles Coughlin of Detroit. Though an early supporter of Roosevelt, Coughlin became increasingly disenchanted with him and made increasingly sharp national radio attacks on Roosevelt and the New Deal. He also expressed sympathy for the governments of Hitler and Mussolini as opponents of communism. The Catholic hierarchy, for its part, did not like Coughlin. The Vatican and the Apostolic Legation in Washington wanted him silenced.[18] Spellman worked with Joseph P. Kennedy and Pacelli to stop Coughlin. However, only Coughlin's superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit, had the canonical authority to curb him, and Gallagher supported Coughlin. Coughlin was in Boston at the same time as Pacelli, but they did not meet.[19] In 1939, Coughlin was finally forced off the air under rules adopted by the Code Committee of the National Association of Broadcasters.
After the death of Pope Pius XI, Pacelli was elected as Pope Pius XII. One of the new pope's first acts was to appoint Spellman the sixth archbishop of New York on April 15, 1939. He was installed as archbishop on May 23, 1939.[3] He was painted twice in 1940 and again in 1941 by the artist Adolfo Müller-Ury. The first regularly-scheduled masses in Spanish in New York began when Spellman gave authorization to the Redemptorists at St. Cecilia's Parish in East Harlem.[20]
In addition to his duties as diocesan bishop, Pius XII named Spellman as apostolic vicar for the U.S. Armed Forces on December 11, 1939. He spent many Christmases with American troops in Japan, Korea, and Europe in that capacity.[21]
During his tenure in New York, Spellman's considerable national influence[22][23] in religious and political matters, earned his residence the nickname of "the Powerhouse."[24] He hosted many prominent clergy, entertainers and politicians, inclduing Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the statesman Bernard Baruch, Senator David I. Walsh, and US House of Representative Majority Leader. John William McCormack, and numerous other politicians, entertainers, and clergymen.[13] In 1945, O'Connor instituted the Al Smith Dinner in Manhattan an annual white tie fundraiser for Catholic Charities that is attended by prominent national figures.
After his promotion to New York, Spellman also became a close confidant of Roosevelt.[21][25] During World War II, he was chosen by Roosevelt to act as the latter's agent and visited Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in 1943 for a total of 16 countries in four months.[26] As archbishop and a military vicar, he would have greater freedom than official diplomats."[13] Spellman also acted as a liaison between Pope Pius XII and Roosevelt in the Pope's attempts to have Rome declared an open city to save it from the relentless bombing that other European capitals had suffered and from potentially destroying Rome's historical sites and ruins, including Vatican City.[27] .
Styles of Francis Spellman | |
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Reference style | His Eminence |
Spoken style | Your Eminence |
Informal style | Cardinal |
See | New York |
Pope Pius XII created Spellman Cardinal-Priest of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in the consistory of February 18, 1946. Spellman's titular church was the same one that had been held by Pius before his election to the papacy.
According to the historian William V. Shannon, "Spellman was deeply reactionary in his theology and secular politics."[21] Vehemently anti-Communist, Spellman once said that "a true American can neither be a Communist nor a Communist condoner"[28] and that "the first loyalty of every American is vigilantly to weed out and counteract Communism and convert American Communists to Americanism".[28] Spellman defended Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1953 investigations of Communist subversives in the federal government, stating at an April 1954 breakfast attended by the Senator that McCarthy had "told us about the Communists and about Communist methods" and that he was "not only against communism—but ... against the methods of the Communists".[29] In 1949, when gravediggers at Calvary Cemetery in Queens went on strike for a pay raise, the Cardinal accused them of being Communists and recruited seminarians of the Archdiocese from St. Joseph's Seminary as strikebreakers.[30] He described the actions of the gravediggers, who belonged to the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers Union of America, as "an unjustified and immoral strike against the innocent dead and their bereaved families, against their religion and human decency."[30] The strike was supported by such figures as the religious activist (now Servant of God) Dorothy Day and Ernest Hemingway, who wrote a scathing letter to Spellman.[13]
Spellman denounced the efforts of US Representative Graham Arthur Barden to provide federal funding only to public schools as "a craven crusade of religious prejudice against Catholic children"[31] and even called Barden himself an "apostle of bigotry."[32] The cardinal engaged later in a heated public dispute with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1949 when she expressed her opposition to providing federal funding to parochial schools in her column, My Day.[32] In response, Spellman accused her of anti-Catholicism and called her column a "[document] of discrimination unworthy of an American mother".[32] He eventually met with her at her Hyde Park home to quell the dispute.
Spellman was instrumental in getting William Brennan appointed to the Supreme Court in 1956 but would later regret the decision. Justice William O. Douglas once said, "I came to know several Americans who I felt had greatly dishonored our American ideal. One was Cardinal Spellman."[13]
Spellman participated in the 1958 papal conclave, which elected Pope John XXIII. Spellman was allegedly dismissive of John XXIII and reportedly remarked, "He's no Pope. He should be selling bananas." In 1959, Spellman served as papal delegate to the eucharistic congress in Guatemala; during his journey, he stopped in Nicaragua and, contrary to the Pope's orders, publicly appeared with Anastasio Somoza Debayle, head of the National Guard and later the country's dictatorial president.[13]
According to the Catholic journalist Raymond Arroyo's foreword written for a 2008 edition of Fulton Sheen's autobiography, Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen, "It is widely believed that Cardinal Spellman drove Sheen off the air." Besides being pressured to leave television, Sheen also "found himself unwelcome in the churches of New York City. Spellman cancelled Sheen's annual Good Friday sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral and discouraged clergy from befriending the Bishop."
Spellman had a long relationship with Joseph P. Kennedy Sr, the former American ambassador to the United Kingdom and the head of an influential Catholic family. Spellman married several Kennedy children, including future Senator Robert F.Kennedy, Jean Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy, and future Senator Edward Kennedy.[13]
When Joseph Kennedy's son, Senator John F. Kennedy, ran for president in the 1960 presidential election, Spellman supported Vice President Richard Nixon, a non-Catholic. This was because John Kennedy opposed federal aid for parochial schools and the appointment of a U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.[13] Kennedy aide David Powers recalled that in 1960, John Kennedy asked him, "Why is Spellman against me?" Powers replied, "Spellman is the most powerful Catholic in the country. When you become president, you will be." Spellman's endorsement of Nixon ended his relationship with the Kennedy family.[25]
The historian Pat McNamara views Spellman's outreach to the city's growing Puerto Rican community as years ahead of its time. He sent priests overseas to study Spanish, and by 1960, a quarter of the archdiocese's parishes had an outreach to Spanish-speaking Catholics.[6] In his years as a cardinal Spellman built 15 churches, 94 schools, 22 rectories, 60 convents, and 34 other institutions.[21] He also visited Ecuador, where he founded three schools: Cardinal Spellman High School and Cardinal Spellman Girls' School, both in Quito; and Cardinal Spellman High School in Guayaquil.
Spellman attended the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and sat on its board of presidency.[9] He believed that the Vatican was appointing predominantly liberal clergymen to the council's commissions. He opposed the introduction of vernacular into the mass by saying, "The Latin language, which is truly the Catholic language, is unchangeable, is not vulgar, and has for many centuries been the guardian of the unity of the Western Church."[13] A theological conservative, Spellman supported ecumenism on pragmatic grounds.[27]
In April 1963, Spellman brought Reverend John Murray as a peritus (expert) to the to the Second Vatican Council. This was despite the well-known animosity toward Murray by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the secretary of the Holy Office. With Apostolic Delegate to the U.S. Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi attempting to silence Murray, Spellman, along with Murray's Jesuit superiors, continued to shield him from most attempts at curial interference. Murray's work helped shape the council's declaration on religious freedom.[6]
Spellman, after the death of John XXIII, participated in the conclave of 1963, which resulted in the election of Pope Paul VI.
Although he had once expressed his personal opposition to demonstrations during the American Civil Rights Movement, Spellman declined J. Edgar Hoover's requests to condemn Martin Luther King Jr.. He funded the trip by a group of New York priests and religious sisters to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. Spellman opposed racial discrimination in public housing[28] but also the social activism of such priests as Daniel Berrigan and his brother, Philip Berrigan, as well as a young Melkite priest, David Kirk.[13]
During the 1964 presidential election, Spellman supported President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose Higher Education Facilities Act and Economic Opportunity Act had greatly benefited the Church. Spellman later agreed to Johnson's requests to send priests to the Dominican Republic to defuse anti-American sentiments after the American invasion of 1965.[13]
Spellman met the future South Vietnamese president, Ngô Đình Diệm, in 1950 and was favorably impressed by his strongly Catholic and anti-Communist views. Spellman would promote Diệm's career. After the French defeat by the Viet Mihn at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Spellman became fearful of a communist takeover in Vietnam. He started urging the Eisenhower Adminstration to intervene in the conflict.[33][13]
Spellman was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War to the extent that some referred to the conflict as "Spelly's War" and Spellman as the "Bob Hope of the clergy."
When Pope Paul VI visited the United States in October 1965, he indirectly rebuked Spellman's hawkish stance by pleading for peace before the United Nations. A group of college students protested outside Spellman's residence in December 1965 for suppressing antiwar priests. Spellman spent Christmas 1965 with troops in South Vietnam.[13] While there, hequoted Stephen Decatur in declaring, "My country, may it always be right, but right or wrong, my country."[6] He also described the Vietnam War as a "war for civilization" and "Christ's war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam."[13] One priest accused Spellman of "[blessing] the guns which the pope is begging us to put down".[28] In January 1967, antiwar protestors disrupted a mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.[6] His support for the Vietnam War, along with his opposition to church reform, greatly undermined Spellman's clout within the church and country.[13]
The illustrator Edward Sorel designed a poster in 1967, Pass the Lord and Praise the Ammunition, showing Spellman carrying a rifle with bayonet However, the poster was never distributed because Spellman died right after its printing.[34]
In 1966, Spellman offered his resignation to Pope Paul VI after the latter instituted a policy requiring bishops to retire at age 75, but the pope asked him to remain in his post.[35] Spellman led his archdiocese through an extensive period of building the Catholic infrastructure, particularly the construction of numerous churches, schools, and hospitals. He consolidated all parish building programs into his own hands and thereby got better interest rates from bankers, and he convinced Pius XII of the need to internationalize the Vatican's Italy-centered investments after World War II; for his financial skill, he was sometimes called "Cardinal Moneybags."[36]
Spellman died in New York City on December 2, 1967, at age 78. He was interred in the crypt under the main altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral. His funeral mass was attended by President Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy, New York Senator Jacob Javits, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, New York Mayor John Lindsay, Arthur Goldberg, and Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos.[37]
John Cooney published a 1984 biography of Spellman, The American Pope. Before publication, he circulated galley proofs of the book, which included several pages arguing that Spellman had been a homosexual, based on multiple anonymous sources.[21] The draft of the book was covered in the press. However, the final published version removed this material and replaced it with two sentences: "For years rumors abounded about Cardinal Spellman being a homosexual. As a result, many felt – and continue to feel – that Spellman the public moralist may well have been a contradiction of the man of the flesh."[21]
The journalist Michelangelo Signorile describes Spellman as "one of the most notorious, powerful and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church's history."[38] Signorile reported that Cooney's manuscript initially contained interviews with several people with personal knowledge of Spellman's homosexuality, including the researcher C. A. Tripp. According to Signorile, the Catholic Church pressured Cooney's publisher, Times Books, to reduce the four pages discussing Spellman's sexuality to a single paragraph.[38] Both Signorile and John Loughery cite a story suggesting that Spellman was sexually active and carrying on a relationship with a male member of the chorus in the Broadway revue One Touch of Venus.[38][39]
Additionally, Curt Gentry, a biographer of J. Edgar Hoover, says that Hoover's files also had "numerous allegations that Spellman was a very active homosexual."[40]
Russell Shaw states that Spellman "embodied the fusion of Americanism and Catholicism" in the mid-20th century.[27] Spellman's support of John Courtney Murray contributed to Murray's significant influence on the drafting of Dignitatis humanae, the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom.[6] "Spellman's enduring accomplishments were his personal acts of kindness toward individuals and the religious and charitable institutions he founded or strengthened."[21]
Henry Morton Robinson's novel The Cardinal (1950) was based in part on Spellman's career that was made in 1963 into a film of the same name with Tom Tryon as the eventual Cardinal.[27]
In July 1947, a Jesuit residential building opened on the campus of Fordham University, Spellman's alma mater, named in his honor.[48]