Francis Spellman


Francis Joseph Spellman 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.

Early life and education

Francis Spellman was born on May 4, 1889, in Whitman, Massachusetts, to William Spellman and Ellen Spellman. William Spellman was a grocer whose own parents had immigrated to the United States from Clonmel and Leighlinbridge, Ireland. Spellman had two younger brothers, Martin and John, and two younger sisters, Marian and Helene.
Spellman attended Whitman High School, a public 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 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.

Priesthood

Spellman was ordained a priest at the Sant'Apollinare Basilica in Rome by Patriarch Giuseppe Ceppetelli on May 14, 1916. Upon his return to the United States, the archdiocese assigned Spellman to pastoral positions at its parishes. 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." Spellman served a series of relatively insignificant assignments.
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 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 privy chamberlain 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. Spellman translated Pius XI's first broadcast over Vatican Radio into English in 1931.
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 Vatican's press office, introducing mimeograph machines and issuing press releases.

Episcopal career

Auxiliary Bishop of Boston

On July 30, 1932, Spellman was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of Boston and titular bishop of Sila by Pope Pius XI. The pope had originally considered appointing Spellman as bishop of the Dioceses of Portland in Maine or Manchester in New Hampshire. Spellman received his consecration on September 8, 1932, from Cardinal Pacelli at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Archbishops Giuseppe Pizzardo and Francesco Borgongini Duca acted as co-consecrators.
Spellman was the first American to be consecrated a bishop at St. Peter's. 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.
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.
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. In 1939, Coughlin was forced off the air by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Archbishop of New York

After Pius XI's death, Pacelli was elected as Pope Pius XII. One of his first acts was to appoint Spellman as the sixth archbishop of New York on April 15, 1939. He was installed as archbishop on May 23, 1939. He was painted twice in 1940 and again in 1941 by the artist Adolfo Müller-Ury. Spellman inaugurated the first regularly scheduled Spanish-language masses in the archdiocese at St. Cecilia's Parish in East Harlem.
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". 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. 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.

Cardinal

Pius XII created Spellman as cardinal-priest of Santi Giovanni e Paolo Church in Rome during the consistory of February 18, 1946. According to the historian William V. Shannon, Spellman was "deeply reactionary in his theology and secular politics."
In 1949, when gravediggers at Calvary Cemetery in Queens went on strike for a pay raise, Spellman accused them of being Communists and recruited seminarians of the Archdiocese from St. Joseph's Seminary as strikebreakers. 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 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. 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.