Boston's Bishop

It may be that Boston's stocky, round-faced, 72-year-old William Henry Cardinal O'Connell feels his work is done, now that he has reorganized his province, built up his cherished Boston College, erected many & many a Roman Catholic church, school, charitable institution. Hale & hearty as he is, he perhaps tires of Boston, of his lavish three-story Italianate house which, built on a rock ledge, is jarred by passing trolleys and trucks. Perhaps Cardinal O'Connell would prefer to spend his remaining days in tranquil Rome, where stands his titular church, ancient San Clemente, which he has beautified at a reputed cost of $100,000, with a marble bust of himself outside.

Bostonians have hoped that, if these things are so and should Cardinal O'Connell return to Rome, his place will be taken by an able, active young priest who was once of nearby Whitman, Mass. Last week this hope was partly realized. Ap pointed to be titular Bishop of Sila and Auxiliary Bishop of Boston was Monsignor Francis Joseph Spellman, for the past seven years the foremost U. S. prelate at the Vatican. Born 43 years ago the son of a Whitman grocer, "Frank" Spellman is recalled by at least one person -- a Whitman taxicab driver -- as an able baseball player. He went to Whitman High School, was graduated from Fordham University in 1911. The next five years he spent in the North American College in Rome, to which he was appointed by Cardinal O'Connell. Ordained in Rome, he returned to the Boston archdiocese, in which he became successively director of Catholic literature, editor of the (Catholic) Boston Pilot, assistant chancellor of the archdiocese. In 1925 Father Spellman was called to Rome to be an assistant to the Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli. As such he soon became U. S. contact man with the Holy See, in charge of arranging audiences and the like, was made a Monsignor. When Edward L. Hearn, onetime Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, wished to build 27 K. of C. playgrounds in Rome in honor of Pope Benedict XV, it was Monsignor Spellman who smoothed the way. When Pope Pius XI made his first international radio broadcast last year (TIME, Feb. 23, 1931), it was Monsignor Spellman who translated the Holy Father's words into English, taking pains to speak them in the manner of U. S. announcers. When the Pope's encyclical on "Catholic Action" was to be released simultaneously in Paris and Vatican City, in case the Italian State should attempt to suppress it, it was Monsignor Spellman who forestalled any muzzling by flying with the document to Le Bourget (TIME, July 13, 1931). At the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin last June, Monsignor Spellman assisted the Papal Legate, Lorenzo Cardinal Lauri, made himself helpful to U. S. newshawks, read into a microphone the English version of the Pope's blessing to the Congress.

Bishop-elect Spellman will be consecrated in St. Peter's Sept. 8 by Cardinal Pacelli--first U. S. prelate so to be honored. He succeeds to the post of Auxiliary Bishop John Bertram Peterson, who last month became Bishop of Manchester, N. H. He is not entitled to automatic succession to the archbishopric of Boston. For that, his appointment as Bishop Coadjutor would be necessary.* Boston was pleased last week to get Monsignor Spellman, rating him a balanced blend of spirituality and practicality, resembling more Boston's late benign Archbishop John Joseph Williams, loved by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, than the present rich, intellectual but imperious Cardinal, who in the past nine months has been in headlines, flaying "crooning" (TIME, Jan. 18), "the big moneyed interests," and a radio priest (presumably Detroit's Father Charles E. Coughlin--TIME, April 25).

* There is no hard & fast rule of succession to the Cardinalate. Theoretically, but improbably, a layman might become a Cardinal.

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