William Henry O'Connell (December 8, 1859 – April 22, 1944) was an American cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Boston from 1907 until his death in 1944, and was made a cardinal in 1911.
William O'Connell was born on December 8, 1859, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to John and Bridget (née Farrelly) O'Connell, who were Irishimmigrants. The youngest of eleven children, he had six brothers and four sisters. His father worked at a textile mill and died when William was four years old.[1] During his high school career, he excelled at music, particularly the piano and organ.[1]
O'Connell was named Coadjutor Archbishop of Boston with right of succession and Titular ArchbishopofConstantina on February 21, 1906. As coadjutor, he served as the designated successor of Archbishop John Williams, who was then in declining health. He later succeeded Williams as the second Archbishop of Boston upon the latter's death on August 30, 1907.
On November 27, 1911, O'Connell became Boston's first Archbishop to become Cardinal, and was given the title of Cardinal-Priest of S. Clemente.[3] He arrived late to two papal conclaves in a row, in 1914 and 1922, due to having to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the slower transportation of the day. He made a protest to Pope Pius XI, who in response lengthened the time between the death of the Pope and the start of the conclave. O'Connell was finally able to participate in the subsequent 1939 conclave, although by that time air travel was available.
O'Connell favored a highly centralized diocesan organization, encompassing schools, hospitals, and asylums in addition to parishes. He wielded immense political and social power in Massachusetts, earning him the nickname "Number One".[2] For instance, he was responsible for defeating a bill to establish a state lottery in 1935, and for defeating a referendum liberalizing state birth control laws in 1942.[2] The only politician who had anywhere near O'Connell's political clout was Governor (and future U.S. President) Calvin Coolidge, but even Coolidge picked his battles carefully, preferring to ignore the Archbishop whenever possible. In the years leading up to the Second World War O'Connell became a powerful force for the neutralists in trying to keep the United States out of World War II in the pre-Pearl Harbor era.
He opposed euthanasia, calling suffering "the discipline of humanity".
He told his priests that they might refuse communion to women wearing lipstick.[6]
He also condemned crooning: "No true American man would practice this base art. Of course, they aren't men. ... If you will listen closely [to crooners' songs] you will discern the basest appeal to sex emotion in the young."[7]
He was very influential with the growth of the Catholic Church. He was called by politicians "Number One" and enjoyed them frequently requesting his approval on issues. He was called a "battleship in full array".
O'Connell was the first American to be given honorary life membership in the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus.[10]
O'Connell's nephew James P. O'Connell, who served as chancellor of the archdiocese, had secretly married in 1913. Some of O'Connell's clerical enemies discovered this and reported it to Vatican authorities. The younger O'Connell was removed from office and from his priestly duties in 1920. His marriage lasted until his death in 1948. Little else is known of the relationship between uncle and nephew.[11][12]
In 1915, O'Connell published a collection of letters which, the publication claimed, he wrote between 1876 and 1901.[13] In 1987, James M. O'Toole discovered that O'Connell had written the letters expressly for the 1915 publication.[14] Other scholars who discussed the subject of the letters in 1975 had found the dates on the letters "suspect".
In the early 1940s when Frances Sweeney, editor of the Boston City Reporter, criticized O'Connell for his passivity in the face of rampant antisemitism in Boston, O'Connell summoned Sweeney to his office and threatened her with excommunication.[15][16][17]
William O'Connell died from pneumonia in Brighton, aged 84. He was buried in the crypt of a small chapel (Immaculate Conception) he had built on the grounds of St. John's Seminary. In 2004 the Archdiocese sold the property to Boston College and in 2007 announced plans to relocate his remains to Saint Sebastian's School, which O'Connell founded in 1941.[18] After a protracted lawsuit, O'Connell's relatives, who had opposed any disinterment, agreed that his remains would be removed to a courtyard of the Seminary. The reinterment took place on July 20, 2011.[19]
His 36-year-long tenure was the longest in the history of the Archdiocese of Boston. He was the second-to-last surviving cardinal created by Pope Pius X behind Gennaro Granito Pignatelli di Belmonte and is the third-longest serving American cardinal behind James Gibbons and William Wakefield Baum.[citation needed] During O'Connell's tenure as Archbishop of Boston, the number of women in religious life increased from 1567 to 5459; the number of parishes increased from 194 to 322; the number of churches increased from 248 to 375; the number of diocesan priests increased from 488 to 947; the archdiocese was operating 3 Catholic hospitals. According to one historian, "It was under O'Connell's influence too, that the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Boston assumed a conceptual solidarity and impressive visibility that it had never seen before and would never see again."[20]
InHenry Morton Robinson's best-selling 1950 historical novel, The Cardinal, the Archbishop of Boston in the exact time frame as O'Connell's term in office is named "Lawrence Cardinal Glennon". Robinson's physical descriptions of Glennon, his massive building program, his arriving late for two papal conclaves and arriving in time for a third, his popular description as "Number One" and many other details of the Glennon character correspond with O'Connell's career and personality. The "Cardinal" of the title, however, is a young priest who serves as Glennon's secretary and himself becomes a cardinal in the course of the novel.[citation needed]
In addition to his published volumes of letters, sermons and addresses, O'Connell's legacy includes a collection of hymns under the title Holy Cross Hymnal published by McLaughlin and Reilly, Boston, in 1915.[1], including:
^ abcO'Toole, James M. (2003). "Number One". Boston College Magazine.
^"To Name Three New Cardinals For America. Red Hat for Archbishops Farley and O'Connell and Papal Delegate Falconio". The New York Times. October 29, 1911. Retrieved December 23, 2008. The Pope will create a large number of Cardinals at the consistory to be held on Nov. 27. The Most Rev. John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York, and the Most Rev. William H. O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston, are among those who will receive the Red Hat. Mgr. Diomede Falconio, Apostolic Delegate at Washington, will also be elevated, according to the announcement made to-day.
^Lapomarda, S.J., Vincent A. (1992). The Knights of Columbus in Massachusetts (second ed.). Norwood, Massachusetts: Knights of Columbus Massachusetts State Council. p. 46.
^O'Connell, William (1915). The Letters of His Eminence William Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston: vol. 1. From college days 1876 to Bishop of Portland 1901. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press.
^James M. O'Toole, Militant and triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and Boston Catholicism, 1859-1944, doctoral dissertation, Boston College, 1987
O'LEARY, ROBERT AIDAN. "WILLIAM HENRY CARDINAL O'CONNELL: A SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY" (PhD dissertation, Tufts University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1980. 8016627).
O'Toole, James M. Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
Peters, Walter H. The Life of Benedict XV. 1959. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company. Peters writes of the Vatican meeting of Pope Benedict XV and Cardinal O'Connell, over the scandal of his nephew's marriage.
Slawson, Douglas J. Ambition and Arrogance: Cardinal William O'Connell of Boston and the American Catholic Church. 2007. San Diego: Cobalt Productions.
