Patrick Feehan

Patrick Augustine Feehan (August 28, 1829 – July 12, 1902), was an Irish-born American Catholic prelate who served as the first archbishop of Chicago in Illinois from 1880¹ until his death in 1902. He previously served as bishop of Nashville in Tennessee from 1865 to 1880.

Patrick Augustine Feehan (August 28, 1829 – July 12, 1902), was an Irish-born American Catholic prelate who served as the first archbishop of Chicago in Illinois from 1880 until his death in 1902. He previously served as bishop of Nashville in Tennessee from 1865 to 1880.

Biography

Bishop of Nashville

Feehan was appointed bishop of Nashville by Pope Pius IX on June 7, 1865. Feehan at first declined the appointment, wanting to tend to his elderly mother, but accepted it after she died. He was consecrated bishop at the Cathedral of Saint Louis in St. Louis, Missouri, by Kenrick on November 12, 1865. At that time, the Diocese of Nashville included the entire State of Tennessee. The civil war had ended only a couple of weeks before Feehan's consecration and Tennessee was still under occupation by the Union Army. The cathedral and the bishop's residence were in bad shape, having been used for billeting soldiers during the war. The diocese had only three priests. Feehan rehabilitated St. Cecilia's Convent, the home of the Dominican Sisters in Nashville. In 1866, he brought the Sisters of Charity to the city, where they opened St. Bernard's Academy for girls in the mansion of the former governor. During the summer and fall of 1866, he worked to relieve the suffering of victims of a cholera outbreak in Nashville. In October 1866, Feehan traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, to participate in the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, a meeting of bishops in the American church to discuss rules and policies. The diocese was hard hit by bank closures and the depression of 1873. During a sermon in 1877, Feehan warned Catholic men against joined secular fraternal orders. His speech encouraged a group of Catholic men to create the Catholic Knights of America, which would eventually provide affordable life insurance to poor working men across the country. In 1877 and 1878, the diocese suffered yellow fever outbreaks, resulting in the deaths of 13 religious sisters and nine priests, including the vicar general.

Archbishop of Chicago

On September 10, 1880, Feehan was appointed as the first archbishop of the new Archdiocese of Chicago by Pope Leo XIII. He was greeted by several thousand people when he arrived in the city in November 1880. From 1880 to 1902, the Catholic population of Chicago nearly quadrupled, to 800,000, largely due to the arrival of immigrants. In adding to the Irish and German communities already established, Polish, Bohemian, French, Lithuanian, Italian, Croatian, Slovak and Dutch Catholics brought their own languages and cultural traditions. Feehan preferred to keep a low profile; relatively few speeches and sermons exist from his 22-year tenure. Chicago was still feeling the effects of the Great Fire of 1871, which destroyed many of the schools and churches. Feehan accommodated these diverse needs by creating national parishes to serve ethnic communities and recruited religious orders from their home countries to staff them. Of the 140 parishes he founded, 52 percent were national parishes. According to Reverend Martin Zielinski, an associate professor of Catholic history at Mundelein Seminary, the parishes provided a place where immigrants could find familiar fraternal organizations, music, and language. They served as a haven from xenophobia and hostility directed toward immigrants and Catholics. Epidemics of cholera and yellow fever in Chicago left dozens of orphans. In 1881, Feehan established the St. Vincent Orphan Asylum, and in 1883 St. Mary's Training School for Boys, a trade school for homeless boys, now known as Maryville Academy. This was followed in 1887 with St. Paul's Home for Working Boys, now known as Mercy Home. Feehan was a strong supporter of Catholic education, and promoted it at the exhibition at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago "Archbishop Feehan believed a strong system of Catholic education would solve the problem of inconsistent religious instruction at home, and unify a rapidly diversifying Catholic America." He also dedicated St. Vincent's Church in 1897 to begin St. Vincent's College by 1898, which is today DePaul University.

Notes

External links

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1359536185 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.