Product Code Database
Francis Joseph Spellman (May 4, 1889 – December 2, 1967) was an American Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of New York from 1939 until his death in 1967. From 1932 to 1939, Spellman served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston. He was created a cardinal by Pope Pius XII in 1946.
Spellman attended Whitman High School, a public school, because there was no Catholic school in Whitman. He enjoyed photography and baseball; he played First baseman during his freshman year of high school until suffering a hand injury. Spellman later managed the baseball team. After his high school graduation, Spellman entered Fordham University in New York City in 1907. He graduated in 1911 and decided to study for the priesthood.
Archbishop William O'Connell sent Spellman to study at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He suffered so badly from pneumonia that the college administrators wanted to send him home to recover. He refused to leave and eventually completed his theological studies. During his years in Rome, Spellman befriended future cardinals Gaetano Bisleti, Francesco Borgongini Duca, and Domenico Tardini.
After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Spellman tried to enlist to become a military chaplain in the US Army, but failed to meet the height requirement. Spellman also applied to be a chaplain in the US Navy, but his application was personally rejected twice by Assistant Secretary of the Navy (and future President of the United States) Franklin D. Roosevelt.
O'Connell eventually assigned Spellman to promote subscriptions for the archdiocesan newspaper, The Pilot. The archbishop named him as assistant chancellor in 1918 and archivist of the archdiocese in 1924.
After Spellman translated two books by his friend Borgongini Duca into English, the Vatican appointed Spellman as first American attaché of the Vatican Secretariat of State in Rome in 1925. 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 Monsignor on October 4, 1926.
During a trip to Germany in 1927, Spellman established a lifelong friendship with Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli, who was serving there as apostolic nuncio.Thornton Spellman translated Pius XI's first broadcast over Vatican Radio into English in 1931. Time August 15, 1932
Later in 1931, with the fascist government of Benito Mussolini in power in Italy, Spellman secretly transported a papal encyclical, Non abbiamo bisogno, that condemned fascism, out of Rome to Paris for publication. He also served as secretary to Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri at the 1932 International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, and helped reform the Holy See's press office, introducing mimeograph machines and issuing press releases.
Spellman was the first American to be consecrated a bishop at St. Peter's. Time September 19, 1932 Borgongini-Duca designed a coat of arms for Spellman that incorporated Christopher Columbus's ship the Santa Maria. Pius XI gave him the motto Sequere Deum ("Follow God").
After his return to the United States, Spellman took up residence at St. John's Seminary in Boston. The archdiocese later assigned him as pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Newton Centre; while there, he erased the church's $43,000 debt through fundraising. When Spellman's mother died in 1935, Massachusetts Governor James Curley, Lieutenant Governor Joseph Hurley, and many members of the clergy, with the exception of O'Connell, attended the funeral.Cooney
In the autumn of 1936, Pacelli came to the United States, ostensibly to visit several cities and be the guest of philanthropist Genevieve Brady. The real reason for the trip was to meet with President Roosevelt to discuss American diplomatic recognition of Vatican City. Spellman arranged and attended the meeting with Pacelli and Roosevelt at Springwood, the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park, New York.
Spellman became an early friend of Joseph Kennedy Sr, the US ambassador to the United Kingdom and the head of a rich Catholic family. Over the years, Spellman witnessed the marriages of several Kennedy children, including future Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Jean Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy, and future Senator Edward Kennedy.
On Pacelli's trip to the United States, he, Kennedy, and Spellman attempted to stop the vitriolic radio broadcasts of Reverend Charles Coughlin. The Vatican and the apostolic legation in Washington wanted his broadcasts to end, but Coughlin's superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit, refused to curb him.Boyea, Earl. "The Reverend Charles Coughlin and the Church: the Gallagher Years, 1930–1937". Catholic Historical Review 81 (2) (1995): 211–225 In 1939, Coughlin was forced off the air by the National Association of Broadcasters.
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. Over the years, Spellman celebrated many Christmases with American troops stationed in Japan, South Korea, and Europe.
During his tenure in New York, Spellman's considerable national influence in religious and political matters earned his residence the nickname "the Powerhouse".Quinn 2006 He hosted many prominent clergy, entertainers, and politicians, including the statesman Bernard Baruch, U.S. Senator David I. Walsh, and U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader John William McCormack. In 1945, Spellman instituted the Al Smith Dinner in Manhattan, an annual white tie fundraiser for Catholic Charities that is attended by prominent national figures.
After his appointment as archbishop, Spellman also became a close confidant of President Roosevelt. During World War II, Roosevelt asked Spellman to visit Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in 1943, 16 countries in four months. Time June 7, 1943 As archbishop and a military vicar, he would have "greater freedom than official diplomats". During the Allied campaign in Italy, Spellman acted as a liaison between Pius XII and Roosevelt in efforts to declare Rome an open city to save it from bombing and street fighting.
In 1949, when at Calvary Cemetery in Queens went on strike for a pay raise, Spellman accused them of being Communists and recruited of the Archdiocese from St. Joseph's Seminary as . Time March 14, 1949 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." The strike was supported by the Catholic activist Dorothy Day and the author Ernest Hemingway, who wrote a scathing letter about it to Spellman.
Spellman was instrumental in persuading President Eisenhower to nominate William J. Brennan Jr. to the Supreme Court in 1956, but later regretted it. 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." Spellman participated in the 1958 papal conclave in Rome that elected Pope John XXIII. He was allegedly dismissive of John XXIII, reportedly saying, "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 future dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle.
According to the Catholic journalist Raymond Arroyo's foreword to 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 canceled Sheen's annual Good Friday sermons at St. Patrick's Cathedral and discouraged clergy from befriending the Bishop."
The historian Pat McNamara views Spellman's outreach to the city's growing Puerto Ricans 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. In his years as a cardinal, Spellman built 15 churches, 94 schools, 22 rectories, 60 convents, and 34 other institutions. 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.
In April 1963, Spellman brought the Reverend John Murray as a peritus (expert) to the Second Vatican Council. This was despite the well-known animosity of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the secretary of the Holy Office, toward Murray. The apostolic delegate to the U.S., Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, attempted to silence Murray, but Spellman and Murray's Jesuit superiors shielded him from most attempts at curial interference. Murray's work helped shape the council's declaration on religious freedom. According to McNamara, Spellman's support of Murray contributed to his significant influence on the drafting of Dignitatis humanae, the Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom.
After Pope John XXIII's death, Spellman participated in the conclave of 1963 that resulted in the election of Pope Paul VI. Spellman later agreed to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's requests to send priests to the Dominican Republic to defuse anti-American sentiment after the U.S. invasion.
Spellman led his archdiocese through an extensive period of building Catholic infrastructure, particularly churches, schools, and hospitals. He consolidated all parish building programs into his own hands and thereby received better interest rates from bankers. Spellman 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".
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, US Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg, and Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos.
In 2002, journalist Michelangelo Signorile called Spellman "one of the most notorious, powerful and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church's history." John Cooney published a biography of Spellman, The American Pope (1984). 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 and the novelist Gore Vidal. 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. The published book contained these two sentences:
Writer and journalist Lucian K. Truscott IV has written that, when Truscott was a junior at West Point in 1967, he went to St. Patrick's Cathedral to interview Spellman for the cadet magazine The Pointer: "Before I could even ask my first question, Spellman put his hand on my thigh and started moving it toward my crotch." A monsignor who was the cardinal's personal assistant stopped Spellman, who then gave Truscott a gold-plated trinket. "He did it over and over again, and I just kept asking questions and recording his answers like nothing happened. I left the cardinal's residence that day carrying a couple of tie clasps, three key chains, and a couple of gold-plated tie tacks." Truscott also wrote, "I heard from several priests I befriended ... that his nickname for decades had been 'Mary.'"
Spellman defended Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1953 investigations of alleged Communist subversives in the federal government. He said in 1954 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". NYT November 8, 1954
As early as 1954, Spellman was warning the Eisenhower Administration about the advance of communism in French Indochina. He had met the future South Vietnamese president, Ngô Đình Diệm, in 1950, and was favorably impressed by his strongly Catholic and anti-Communist views. After France was defeated by the Viet Minh at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew from Vietnam, Spellman started urging President Eisenhower to intervene in the conflict.
When the U.S. entered the Vietnam War in 1965, Spellman staunchly supported the intervention. A group of college students protested outside his residence in December 1965 for suppressing antiwar priests. Spellman spent Christmas 1965 with troops in South Vietnam. While there, he quoted Commodore Stephen Decatur, declaring, "My country, may it always be right, but right or wrong, my country." Spellman also called the war a "war for civilization" and "Christ's war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam."
Some critics called the Vietnam War "Spelly's War" and Spellman the "Bob Hope of the clergy". One priest accused him of blessing "the guns which the pope is begging us to put down". In January 1967, antiwar protestors disrupted a mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Spellman's support for the war and his opposition to church reform greatly undermined his clout within the church and country. The illustrator Edward Sorel designed a poster in 1967, Pass the Lord and Praise the Ammunition, showing Spellman carrying a rifle with a bayonet. The poster was never distributed because Spellman died right after its printing.
Spellman engaged in a heated public dispute in 1949 with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt when she expressed her opposition to federal funding to parochial schools in her column My Day. In response, Spellman accused her of anti-Catholicism and called her column a document "of discrimination unworthy of an American mother". Spellman eventually met with Roosevelt at Hyde Park to settle their dispute.
When Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy ran for president in the 1960 presidential election, Spellman endorsed his Republican opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, a Quaker. This was because Kennedy opposed federal aid for parochial schools and the appointment of a U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Kennedy aide David Powers recalled that in 1960, 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 long relationship with the Kennedy family.
In the 1964 presidential election, Spellman supported President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose Higher Education Facilities Act and Economic Opportunity Act had greatly benefited the Catholic Church.
Cardinal
Pius XII created Spellman as cardinal-priest of Santi Giovanni e Paolo Church in Rome during the Papal consistory of February 18, 1946. According to the historian William V. Shannon, Spellman was "deeply reactionary in his theology and secular politics."
Second Vatican Council
Spellman attended the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and sat on its board of presidency. He believed that the Vatican was appointing predominantly liberal clergymen to the council's commissions. He opposed the Council reform that introduced Vernacular into the mass, 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." A theological conservative, Spellman supported ecumenism on pragmatic grounds.
Later life and death
In 1966, Spellman offered his resignation to Pope Paul VI after the latter instituted a policy requiring bishops to retire at age 75, but Paul asked him to remain in his post.
Homosexuality
Curt Gentry, a 1991 biographer of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, said that Hoover's secret files contained "numerous allegations that Spellman was a very active homosexual."
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.
Both Signorile and John Loughery cite a story suggesting that Spellman was sexually active. They also relate that Spellman had a personal relationship with a male member of the chorus in the 1943 Broadway theatre revue One Touch of Venus. In a New York Times article on the Cooney book, Monsignor V. Clark of Annunciation Church in Crestwood, New York, who was Spellman's private secretary and knew him for more than 15 years, denied the homosexuality allegations.
Viewpoints
Racism
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 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Spellman funded the trip by a group of New York priests and Religious Sister to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. Spellman opposed racial discrimination in public housingO'Donnell 2009 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.
Communism
Spellman once said "a true American can neither be a Communist nor a Communist condoner" and "the first loyalty of every American is vigilantly to weed out and counteract Communism and convert American Communists to Americanism".
Politics
Spellman denounced the efforts of U.S. Representative Graham Arthur Barden to provide federal funding only to public schools as "a craven crusade of religious prejudice against Catholic children".Truman Library He called Barden an "apostle of bigotry".
Films and plays
Awards
Legacy
Author Russell Shaw in 2014 wrote that Spellman embodied the fusion of Americanism and Catholicism in the mid-20th century. Spellman's enduring accomplishments were his personal acts of kindness toward individuals and the religious and charitable institutions he founded or strengthened.
Henry Morton Robinson's novel The Cardinal (1950) was based partly on Spellman. The book was adapted into the 1963 film The Cardinal, with Tom Tryon playing the eventual cardinal.
See also
Citations
Works cited
External links
Categories: 1889 Births, 1967 Deaths, Antisemitism In The United States, People From Whitman, Massachusetts, Catholics From Massachusetts, Whitman-hanson Regional High School Alumni, Fordham University Alumni, Pontifical North American College Alumni, American Roman Catholic Clergy Of Irish Descent, Bishops Appointed By Pope Pius Xi, Bishops Appointed By Pope Pius Xii, Roman Catholic Archbishops Of New York, Cardinals Created By Pope Pius Xii, 20th-century American Cardinals, Pope Pius Xii Advisers, Officials Of The Roman Curia, Participants In The Second Vatican Council, American Anti-communists, American Critics Of Atheism, American Military Chaplains, Catholic Military Chaplains, American Philatelic Society, American Philatelists, New York Republicans, Anti-lgbtq And Catholicism, Knights Of Malta, Burials At St. Patrick's Cathedral, Critics Of Freemasonry
|
|
