Benedict Joseph Fenwick
Benedict Joseph Fenwick was an American Catholic prelate, Jesuit, and educator who served as the bishop of Boston from 1825 until his death in 1846. In 1843, he founded the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Prior to that, he was twice the president of Georgetown College in Washington D.C. and established several educational institutions in New York City and Boston.
Born in Maryland, Fenwick entered the Society of Jesus and began his ministry in New York City in 1809 as the co-pastor of St. Peter's Church. He then became pastor of the original St. Patrick's Cathedral and later the vicar general and diocesan administrator of the Diocese of New York. In 1817, Fenwick became the president of Georgetown College, remaining just several months before he was tasked with resolving a longstanding schism at St. Mary's Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He remained in the city as vicar general for the Archdiocese of Baltimore until 1822, when he returned to Georgetown as acting president.
Fenwick became the bishop of Boston in 1825, during a period of rapid growth of the city's Catholic population due to massive Irish immigration. At the same time, Catholics faced intense nativism and anti-Catholicism, culminating in the burning of the Ursuline Convent in 1834, threats against Fenwick's life, and the formation of the Montgomery Guards. Fenwick also addressed parochial conflict, ultimately placing a Boston church under interdict. He established churches, schools, charitable institutions, and newspapers throughout the diocese, which encompassed all of New England. Among these were The Pilot newspaper and the College of the Holy Cross.
Early life
Benedict Joseph Fenwick was born on September 3, 1782, at Beaverdam Manor in Leonardtown, Maryland, to George Fenwick II, a planter and surveyor, and Margaret Fenwick, née Medley. His paternal ancestors immigrated to the American colonies from Northumberland in North East England. Benedict's great-great-great-grandfather, Cuthbert Fenwick, emigrated to America in the 1633 expedition of the Ark and the Dove, and was one of the original Catholic settlers of the British Province of Maryland. Benedict's elder brother was Enoch Fenwick, who would also become a prominent Jesuit, and his cousin was Edward Fenwick, who would become a Dominican and bishop of Cincinnati.When Fenwick's family moved from Leonardtown to Georgetown, Fenwick was enrolled at Georgetown College in 1793. Intending to enter the priesthood, he began his study of theology in 1801, and proved to be a good student, earning highest academic honors. After completing his studies at Georgetown, the college named him as a professor
In 1805, Fenwick left Georgetown to enter St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore. However, after the restoration of the Society of Jesus by the Vatican, he left St. Mary's in 1806 He and his brother were among the first six seminarians to enter the newly restored Jesuit novitiate in Baltimore on October 10, 1806.
Ministry in New York
On March 12, 1808, Fenwick was ordained a priest at Georgetown College by Leonard Neale, the coadjutor bishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.In November 1808, after the Vatican erected the Diocese of New York, Fenwick was sent with Reverend Anthony Kohlmann to minister to the Catholics of New York City. They were placed in charge of St. Peter's Parish, the only Catholic parish in the city. Fenwick assisted in establishing the New York Literary Institution, the second Jesuit school in New York City. As an offshoot of Georgetown College, the institution was staffed by four Jesuit scholastics from Georgetown, with Fenwick as president. The school was opened in 1808, in a house on Mulberry Street, across the street from the future site of the original St. Patrick's Cathedral. It remained there only briefly, before relocating to Broadway in September 1809; it moved again in March 1810 to a plot of land "far out in the country," north of the New York City limits. This new site would eventually become the location of the new St. Patrick's Cathedral, in Midtown Manhattan.
The New York Literary Institution grew quickly, enrolling the sons of several prominent Catholic and Protestant families. Its curriculum emphasized the study of Latin, Ancient Greek, and French. However, the Jesuit superior in the United States, Giovanni Antonio Grassi, determined that there were not enough Jesuits in the United States to sustain both Georgetown and the New York Literary Institution. Despite Kohlmann desiring to close Georgetown, Grassi sided with the bulk of Jesuits who were native to Maryland and ordered the closure of the New York Literary Institution in 1813, with it officially disbanding in April 1814. Responsibility for the facility was transferred to the Trappist order.
While in New York, Fenwick and Kohlmann were called for by the dying Thomas Paine, to his house in Greenwich Village. Having been unsuccessfully treated by several physicians, Paine sought priests to heal him. Fenwick and Kohlmann attempted to convince him to renounce a lifetime of writings denouncing Christianity; in response, Paine angrily threw them out of his house.
Fenwick served alongside Kohlmann as pastor of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral from 1809 to 1815. When Kohlmann was recalled to Maryland in 1815, Fenwick replaced him as pastor of St. Peter's Parish and as the diocesan administrator of the Diocese of New York. Fenwick was successful in prompting hundreds of conversions to Catholicism throughout the diocese during his tenure. He was present at the formal dedication of Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1816. He also drew up designs for the new St. Patrick's Cathedral, which would be completed after he left New York. The Dominican priest, Charles French, succeeded Fenwick as pastor of St. Peter's, and John Power would eventually become the next pastor of Old St. Patrick's in 1825. Fenwick became vicar general of the diocese for Bishop John Connelly in 1816, replacing Kohlmann, and remained at the post until April 1817.
Georgetown College and South Carolina
Fenwick was named the president of Georgetown College and the pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Washington on June 28, 1817, succeeding Grassi at the former, and Francis Neale at the latter. The college's first degrees were conferred during his brief term. Later that year, Ambrose Maréchal, the Archbishop of Baltimore, sent Fenwick to Charleston, South Carolina, where there was a long-standing schism at a local Catholic church. Fenwick was replaced at Georgetown by Anthony Kohlmann, and at Holy Trinity by Theodore M. DeTheux.Fenwick arrived in Charleston in the fall of 1818 as vicar general of the Archdiocese of Baltimore for the city. Archbishop Leonard Neale had appointed a French priest to serve as pastor at St. Mary's Parish, a predominantly Irish congregation. St. Mary's was the first Catholic parish in the state and was a prominent parish. Neale had sent the favored candidate of the congregation, an Irish priest, to a different parish. The lay trustees at St. Mary's refused to accept Neale's appointee. With tensions long-standing, the French- and English-speaking parishioners refused to attend services said in the others' language. Fenwick resolved the dispute by preaching the sermons himself, in which he would alternate between French and English. As vicar, he traveled throughout the Carolinas to minister. Fenwick remained in Charleston one year beyond the erection of the new Diocese of Charleston and the appointment of John England as the first bishop in 1820.
In May 1822, Fenwick returned to Washington, D.C. as the minister of Georgetown College and the procurator of the Jesuits in the United States. On September 15, 1825, the Jesuit mission superior, Francis Dzierozynski, again made Fenwick acting president of the college and vice rector, as the incumbent president—his brother, Enoch—refused to return to the college after leaving for St. Thomas Manor. His term as acting president lasted for just several months before he was replaced by Stephen Lariguadelle Dubuisson. Fenwick then briefly became the spiritual director of the Mount Carmel Monastery in Port Tobacco, Maryland.
Bishop of Boston
Fenwick was appointed the second Bishop of Boston by Pope Leo XII on May 10, 1825, succeeding Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus. The papal bull notifying him of his appointment arrived in July 1825, and he embarked on an eight-day spiritual retreat. Upon its completion, Fenwick was consecrated a bishop in the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore on November 1. Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal served as principal consecrator, while Bishops John England and Henry Conwell were co-consecrators. Fenwick arrived in Boston on December 3, and formally took canonical possession of the Diocese of Boston at the original Cathedral of the Holy Cross, on December 21, 1825.Though the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese encompassed all of New England, Bishop Fenwick had only two priests under his charge, who served three Catholic churches, besides the cathedral, in all of New England: Saint Augustine's Chapel in Boston, St. Patrick's Church in Newcastle, Maine, and a small church in Claremont, New Hampshire. Throughout New England, there were approximately 10,000 Catholics. Due to significant Irish immigration, the Catholic population in the diocese grew to at least 30,000 by 1833. Fenwick traveled throughout the large territory to manage the diocese and administer the sacrament of confirmation. This included visiting Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes in Maine, who were largely Catholic, and were the subject of intensive proselytism by Protestant evangelists. Fenwick ordered the construction of St. Anne's Church in Old Town, Maine, for them in 1828, and sought to improve their schools.
Fenwick attended the First Provincial Council of Baltimore convened in 1829. He addressed a shortage of priests in his diocese by sending prospective seminarians to Maryland and Canada to be educated, and by incardinating several priests from other dioceses. He also trained several students in a makeshift seminary at his episcopal residence. As a result, the number of priests in the diocese had increased to 24 by 1833. At the same time, many new parishes were founded throughout New England. As in South Carolina, Fenwick was an ardent opponent of lay trusteeism in the Diocese of Boston. With a rapidly expanding Catholic population in the diocese, a portion of the territory was removed to form the Diocese of Hartford in 1843. That year, John Bernard Fitzpatrick was appointed as Fenwick's coadjutor bishop, and would later succeed him as Bishop of Boston.
By the end of Fenwick's episcopate, the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Boston had increased to 70,000, in addition to 37 priests, and 44 churches. In December 1845, Fenwick's health began to decline, due to an ailment of the heart. Eight months later, he died on August 11, 1846, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. After the funeral, his body was carried from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross to the train station, from where it was taken to the College of the Holy Cross and buried in the school's cemetery. Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, Massachusetts, which opened in 1959, was named in his honor. The historic Benedict Fenwick School was a public school in Boston that operated from 1912 to 1981.