Francis Spellman
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.
For high schools of the same name, see Cardinal Spellman High School (disambiguation). For the weightlifter, see Frank Spellman.
Francis Spellman
April 15, 1939
May 23, 1939
December 2, 1967
- Cardinal-Priest of Ss. Giovanni e Paolo (1946–1967)
- Ordinary/Apostolic Vicar for the United States Armed Forces (1939–1967)
May 14, 1916
by Giuseppe Ceppetelli
September 8, 1932
by Eugenio Pacelli
February 18, 1946
by Pius XII
December 2, 1967 (aged 78)
Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
- Auxiliary Bishop of Boston (1932–1939)
Sequere Deum
(Follow God)
September 8, 1932
January 15, 1940
January 15, 1940
January 8, 1941
January 25, 1943
March 19, 1945
October 11, 1945
September 15, 1947
January 14, 1948
December 16, 1948
January 18, 1950
March 24, 1950
June 8, 1950
January 8, 1953
May 5, 1953
May 5, 1954
January 25, 1956
February 27, 1957
March 25, 1957
December 10, 1957
April 9, 1959
June 29, 1959
July 14, 1959
October 12, 1960
October 28, 1960
June 29, 1962
April 9, 1964
July 31, 1964
November 30, 1964
December 21, 1964
December 13, 1965
December 13, 1965
March 25, 1966
March 8, 1967
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.
Priesthood[edit]
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.[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 appointed Spellman as first American attaché of the Vatican Secretariat of State in 1925.[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 translated Pius XI's first broadcast over Vatican Radio in 1931.[11] Later that year, Spellman transported 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]
Episcopal career[edit]
Auxiliary Bishop of Boston[edit]
On July 30, 1932, Spellman was appointed auxiliary bishop of Boston and titular bishop of Sila by Pope Pius XI.[3][4] The pope had originally considered appointing Spellman as bishop of Dioceses of Portland in Maine and Manchester in New Hampshire.[13] Spellman received his consecration on September 8, 1932, from Pacelli at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Archbishops Giuseppe Pizzardo and Francesco Borgongini Duca acted as co-consecrators.[2] Spellman was the first American to be consecrated a bishop at St. Peter's.[14] Borgongini-Duca designed a coat of arms for Spellmans that incorporated the explorer Christopher Columbus' ship, the Santa Maria. Pius XI gave him the motto Sequere Deum ("Follow God").[15]
After his return to the United States, Spellman took up residence at St. John's Seminary in Boston. He was later made pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Newton Centre; 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.[16]
In the autumn of 1936, Pacelli came to the United States, ostensibly to visit several cities and be the guest of philanthropist Genevieve Brady. However, the real reason for the trip was to meet with President Roosevelt to discuss American diplomatic recognition of Vatican City.[1] Spellman arranged and attended the meeting at the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park, New York.[17]
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 married several Kennedy children, including future Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Jean Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy, and future Senator Edward Kennedy.[13]
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 him silenced, but Coughlin's superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit, refused to curb him.[18][19] In 1939, Coughlin was forced off the air by the National Association of Broadcasters.
Viewpoints[edit]
Racism[edit]
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[35] 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]
Communism[edit]
Spellman once said that "a true American can neither be a Communist nor a Communist condoner"[35] and that "the first loyalty of every American is vigilantly to weed out and counteract Communism and convert American Communists to Americanism".[35]
Spellman defended Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1953 investigations of Communist subversives in the federal government, stating 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".[36]
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 the French defeat by the Viet Minh at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Spellman started urging the Eisenhower Administration to intervene in the conflict.[37][13]
When the United States entered into the Vietnam War in 1965, he became a staunch supporter of the intervention.
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, he quoted Commodore Stephen Decatur in declaring, "My country, may it always be right, but right or wrong, my country."[6] Spellman also described the Vietnam War as a "war for civilization" and "Christ's war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam."[13]
Some critics referred to the Vietnam War as "Spelly's War" and Spellman as the "Bob Hope of the clergy”. One priest accused Spellman of "[blessing] the guns which the pope is begging us to put down".[35] In January 1967, antiwar protestors disrupted a mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.[6] Spellman's support for the Vietnam War, along with his opposition to church reform, greatly undermined his 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 a bayonet. However, the poster was never distributed because Spellman died right after its printing.[38]
Politics[edit]
Spellman denounced the efforts of US Representative Graham Barden to provide federal funding only to public schools as "a craven crusade of religious prejudice against Catholic children"[39] and even called Barden himself an "apostle of bigotry."[40]
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.[40] In response, Spellman accused her of anti-Catholicism and called her column a "[document] of discrimination unworthy of an American mother".[40] Spellman eventually met with Roosevelt at her Hyde Park home to settle the dispute.
When Senator John F. Kennedy ran for president in the 1960 presidential election, Spellman supported his opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, a non-Catholic. This was because 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, 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.[25]
During 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.[12]
Legacy[edit]
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]