Pioneer Bishops of Rhode Island

This blog will discuss bishops that served in Rhode Island up to 1900.  For more information about Rhode Island, see my blog of November 25, 2016.

Roger Williams was a Massachusetts Puritan who firmly believed in the separation of church and state.  This led to his banishment from Massachusetts in 1635.  The next year he founded the city of Providence and the colony of Rhode Island.  In 1638, Williams founded the First Baptist Church in Providence—the first Baptist church in the United States.

Charles II, King of England, granted Rhode Island a colonial charter in 1663 that granted, among other things, freedom of religion and prohibited state support of any religion—a rare concept at the time.  (It should be noted that Rhode Island is the home of the oldest synagogue in the United States—Touro Synagogue in Newport—founded in 1763.)  However, Catholics were an exception to this freedom—they were denied the right to vote or hold public office—until the law was changed in 1783.  Few Catholics were impacted by this legislation.  The first public mass in Rhode Island was said in 1780 for French soldiers and sailors, who were, ironically, in Rhode Island helping the American colonies win their independence from Great Britain.

But there were few American Catholics in Rhode Island—by 1828 the number of Catholics in Rhode Island was estimated to be less than one thousand, mostly of Irish or French heritage.  In that year, Bishop Benedict Fenwick of Boston sent Father Robert Woodley to minister to Catholics in Rhode Island and in portions of eastern Massachusetts.  By 1837, there were Catholic churches in Newport (St. Mary in 1828), Pawtucket (St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in 1829), and Providence (SS. Peter and Paul in 1837). 

Irish Catholic immigrants started coming to Rhode Island in great numbers in the 1840s due to the potato famine in Ireland.  They were followed by French Canadians who came to work in the cotton mills, and by later in the 19th Century, by Italians.  This growth led to the creation in 1872 of the Diocese of Providence.  At the time, the diocese consisted of Rhode Island and portions of eastern Massachusetts.  With the creation, in 1904, of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, the boundaries of the Diocese of Rhode Island were the same as the State of Rhode Island.

Rhode Island became part of the new Diocese of Hartford in 1843 and the first three Bishops of Hartford chose to live in Providence, rather than Hartford, due to the fact that Providence had a larger population of Catholics and of total residents.  The administrations of Hartford Bishops William Tyler, Bernard O’Reilly, and Francis MacFarland are discussed in the Pioneer Bishops of Connecticut blog.

Thomas F. Hendricken was born in Ireland in 1827.  He attended seminary in Ireland and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1851.  On the voyage to the United States, Hendricken gave last rites to a dying woman and the ship’s captain, who feared the spread of disease and was also a member of an anti-Catholic group, beat Hendricken almost to death.  He was saved by German Protestants who protected him the rest of the voyage.  He served in parishes in Rhode Island (then part of the Hartford diocese) and Connecticut.  While in Waterbury, Connecticut, he dedicated a new church to the Immaculate Conception, the first in the United States.  He also accompanied a young Michael McGivney to seminary in Canada—McGivney went on to establish the Knights of Columbus and is now Blessed Michael McGivney.  Hendricken became a U.S. citizen in 1870 and was appointed the first Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, in 1872.

Hendricken began construction of the current Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in 1878 and brought in religious orders to operate schools and a home for the elderly.  He also faced a crisis when a French-Canadian parish objected to his choice of pastor saying that a bishop was obligated to appoint a pastor of the same ethnic background as the congregation.  (The Vatican initially agreed with the laity but reversed its decision in the wake of objections from American bishops.)  Bishop Hendricken also won the right for priests to minister to Catholic inmates in state prisons.  He also established a diocesan newspaper in 1875 and established more than a dozen parishes to keep up with population growth, especially by Irish and French-Canadian immigrants.  The Catholic population of the Diocese, which at that time consisted of Rhode Island and part of Massachusetts, increased from 125,000 to 195,000 during Hendricken’s tenure as Bishop.  He died in 1886.

Matthew Harkins was born in Boston in 1845 to Irish immigrant parents.  He completed his seminary training in France and was ordained in Paris as a priest for the Diocese of Boston in 1869.  He served at several parishes in the Boston area and as a theologian to Archbishop John Williams until his appointment in 1887 as the second Bishop of Providence.

Bishop Harkins established new parishes and schools to meet the needs of the large numbers of Catholic immigrants that came to Rhode Island at the turn of the 20th Century—including 12 parishes for French Canadians, seven for Italians, six for the Poles, and two for the Portuguese.  He more than tripled the number of diocesan priests and built institutions, often staffed by religious orders, to serve the neediest among his flock—the poor, the sick, the elderly, and orphans.  He helped win repeal of a law passed by anti-Catholic legislators that removed the tax exemption from private and parochial schools.  He also helped establish Providence College in 1919 and sent his priests to universities to raise their educational levels.  At the time of his death in 1921, there were over 275,000 Catholics in the Diocese in 101 parishes served by 270 diocesan priests, despite the loss of the Massachusetts portion of the Diocese in 1904.