NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
For 30 years, Archbishop Francis Cardinal Spellman was the most powerful churchman in America. Some loved him. Some despised him. But no one doubted his influence.
Born in 1889 and raised in Massachusetts, the future cardinal attended Fordham University before heading to Rome to study for the priesthood. There, he proved good at his studies but even better at making friends. In later years, as those friends became bishops, that skill served him well, ensuring that the instant dislike his own bishop (Boston’s William Cardinal Henry O’Connell) felt for him didn’t affect his rise through the clerical ranks.
Ordained in 1916, Spellman began his priesthood as a lowly proofreader for Boston’s archdiocesan newspaper, but by 1925 he had become the first American attaché for the Vatican Secretariat of State. Seven years later, on July 30, 1932, Pope Pius XI appointed him auxiliary bishop of Boston. By 1939, he was archbishop of New York.
More than just the influence of Spellman’s friends, however, accounted for that meteoric rise. He was also a gifted administrator and fund-raiser. Spellman demonstrated those skills soon after his arrival in New York. He quickly erased the archdiocesan debt, launched a massive building campaign, and made strides in improving Catholic health care. Not content to confine himself to Church affairs, Spellman also waded into political waters.
He used his influence to silence Catholic critics of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 (thereby ensuring the president’s reelection); worked closely with Joseph Kennedy to further Catholic interests in Washington, D.C., throughout the ’40s and ’50s; and championed the Vietnam War during the 1960s. Spellman likewise garnered attention for his vociferous criticism of lax morality in Hollywood films.
A theological and liturgical conservative, Spellman participated in the Second Vatican Council but viewed those who championed radical change with suspicion. As the cardinal left for the council, he reportedly promised, “No change will get past the Statue of Liberty.” Spellman didn’t live long enough to keep that promise. He died two years after the council’s close, in December 1967.
