American Cardinals and the Papacy: Historical Vignettes

Lesser-known stories of American cardinals at papal conclaves — before electing one of them Pope was imaginable

By Donald McClarey*

With the election of the first American-born cardinal, Robert Prevost, as Pope Leo XIV, the Church enters a new era. Yet American cardinals have been part of the papal conclaves since the dawn of the 20th century…

The Conclave of 1903: James Cardinal Gibbons and Pope Pius X

James Cardinal Gibbons of the Archdiocese of Baltimore was the second American made cardinal and an enormously important figure in the history of both the American Church and the country. His championing of the rights of labor in the nineteenth century helped direct America on a more peaceful path in the relationship between labor and capital than existed in many other nations. He was the first American cardinal to participate in a papal conclave.

When Pope Leo XIII died in 1903, Cardinal Gibbons happened to be in Rome. Without that fortuitous circumstance he would most likely have not been able to participate in the subsequent conclave. (In 1914 with the death of Pope Pius X, Cardinal Gibbons boarded a rapid steamer to cross the Atlantic but arrived too late to participate in that conclave.)

The first conclave to occur under the glare of modern media, the proceedings leaked like a sieve to eager waiting journalists, so much so that after this conclave Pope Pius decreed that participants were to take an oath of silence as to the proceedings of all future conclaves.

The front runner was Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, Leo XIII’s Secretary of State. He would almost certainly have been chosen Pope by the conclave but for the exercise of the Austrian veto by a Polish Cardinal at the behest of Austrian Emperor Franz Josef. (Three Catholic powers had traditionally claimed a right of veto in conclaves: the King of France, the King of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor.)

Why the veto was used remains a mystery, but it was met with outrage among the cardinals. After the election of Pope Pius, he banned the use of vetoes in any future conclaves.

After five days and seven ballots, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, a man of humble birth who had risen to be Patriarch of Venice, was chosen Pope, and decided to reign as Pius X. He would prove to be a masterful Pope, immensely popular with the average Catholic. Fond of children, he had a wry sense of humor.

When Roman aristocrats complained that he had not made his sisters Papal countesses he responded that he had made them the sisters of a Pope and he didn’t see how he could improve on that! His piety, his wisdom and his leadership assured that he would become the first pope canonized since the seventeenth century, almost by popular acclaim, modernists, of course, excepted. Cardinal Gibbons and the other participants in the Conclave could be proud of their work.

The Conclave of 1914: John Cardinal Farley and Pope Benedict XV

John Cardinal Farley of the Archdiocese of New York, was the only American cardinal to arrive in Rome in time to participate in the conclave of 1914, making him the second American to participate in a conclave. Farley was already in Europe at the time of the death of the Pope Pius X and was the only American cardinal to participate in the conclave.

During World War I he annoyed many of the Irish in New York for his pro-Allied stance, his contempt for Prussian militarism overcoming his ancestral antipathy for the English. Like most Irish emigrants to America he wore his patriotism on his sleeve and helped rally Catholics to support the war effort after the US entered the War in 1917.

The conclave assembled on August 31, 1914 in the Sistine Chapel. World War I had just commenced, although Italy was still neutral, and it was obvious to all that this war would probably be one of the major challenges confronting the new Pope.

There were three recognized front runners for the papal throne: Domenico Serafini, Assessor of the Holy Office, Pietro Maffi, Archbishop of Milan and Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa, Archbishop of Bologna. As conclaves go, it was fairly contentious, lasting four days and taking ten ballots before the election of the Archbishop of Bologna who assumed the name of Benedict XV. He was elected on the last ballot by a single vote.

Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, the brilliant half English and half Spanish Secretary of State under Pius, demanded that the ballots be scrutinized to make certain that Benedict had not voted for himself, which would have been a violation of conclave rules.

He had not. In a story that I very much hope is true, Benedict murmured, when Merry del Val came before him to pay his respects, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” a quotation from Psalm 117 and a reference to the unfriendliness that Merry del Val had long shown to him.

The quick-witted Merry del Val supposedly immediately responded with the next verse from the Psalm: “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.”

Pope Benedict viewed World War I as the suicide of Europe. He proclaimed the neutrality of the Vatican, called for a Christmas truce in 1914, and was ceaseless in working for a negotiated peace throughout the war.

He nearly bankrupted the Vatican due to its humanitarian relief efforts during the war which saved millions of lives, especially those of children, who were of special concern to him. He hammered out agreements between the warring powers allowing for exchanges of prisoners of war, better treatment for prisoners of war, and the evacuation of some civilians living in occupied territories.

On August 1, 1917, he proposed a seven-point peace plan. Great Britain responded favorably; imperial Germany rejected it out of hand. President Wilson also rejected it, but Wilson’s later 14-point proposal to end the war, made in 1918, takes much from the Pope’s proposal.

Pope Benedict died on January 22, 1922, his papacy always to be identified with the war he so much deplored.

The Conclave of 1922: William Cardinal O’Connell and Pope Pius XI

The Conclave of 1922 lasted for five days and took 14 ballots before a Pope — Pius XI — was elected.

The Archbishop of Boston, William Cardinal O’Connell, had made strenuous efforts to get to the conclaves of 1914 and 1922, though arriving late on each occasion.

In 1922 he became the first Cardinal to fly, traveling by air from Boston to New York after having an ocean liner held for his boarding. When he arrived late to the Vatican, he told the newly elected Pius XI that more time was needed between the death of a Pope and the conclave to give time for cardinals outside of Europe to get to Rome.

The Pope agreed and the time was henceforth lengthened. (Cardinal O’Connell participated in the conclave in 1939.)

Italian Cardinal Achille Ratti was an unusual combination of scholar and athlete: both a papal librarian and a mountaineer.

Born in 1857, he was ordained in 1879.  A scholar, he earned three doctorates. In 1911 he was made Vice-Prefect of the Vatican Library and in 1914 he was made Prefect.

Chosen as Pope by the conclave of 1922, he chose to reign as Pius XI.  His reign would be dominated by his battles against Communism, Fascism and the anti-clerical regime in Mexico. This paragraph from Mit Brennender Sorge, the Papal encyclical that condemned the Nazi regime, summed up the core of Pius’ papacy:

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

The Conclave of 1939: George Cardinal Mundelein and Pope Pius XII

Thanks to the protest of Cardinal O’Connell to Pius XI after the Conclave of 1922, and the development of transoceanic air travel, all Cardinals not prevented by illness or extreme old age were able to participate in the conclave of 1939, beginning on March 1, 1939 on the eve of World War II.  One of the American cardinals participating was George Cardinal Mundelein of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Born in 1872 on the lower east side in Manhattan, Mundelein broke the mold for most American Cardinals of his era in not being of Irish extraction, He was only half-Irish on his mother’s side!  His father’s family was of German origin.

His introduction to Chicago was turbulent in that an anarchist dosed the chicken with arsenic at a banquet held in his honor. An emergency emetic prepared by a doctor in attendance prevented any fatalities.

The Archbishop was made a cardinal in 1924 by Pius XI.

In his day, Mundelein was viewed as a liberal, and he certainly was in his politics.

His views on other matters reveal the limitations of political classifications when applied to churchmen. He was an uncompromising foe of contraception and easy divorce, and campaigned against sexual suggestiveness in films.

The 1939 conclave was the shortest in the twentieth century, lasting only two days and electing Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican Secretary of State and fierce foe of Naziism, on the third ballot.

Perhaps betraying a certain reluctance to assume the papal office, Pacelli insisted upon a final ballot to make certain that he was elected Pope.

When his housekeepers saw him arrayed as Pope, he told them with tears in his eyes, “Look what they have done to me!”

With Europe engulfed by Fascism and Communism and the world on the brink of another Great War after only a two-decade respite, it is easy to understand Pacelli’s reluctance to step into the shoes of the Fisherman. However, reigning as Pius XII, he proved equal to all the many daunting challenges he confronted.

He proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, he kept alive the Catholic faith behind the Iron Curtain, he prevented Italy from going Communist in 1948, he reformed the liturgy and he gave an impetus to Bible Studies.

His heroic efforts to protect as many people — Jews, Christians and the rest of humanity — as he could from the Nazi terror are crystal clear, and always have been.

The Conclave of 1958: Edward Cardinal Mooney and Pope John XXIII

One of the cardinals attending the conclave in 1958 was the American Archbishop of Detroit, Edward Cardinal Mooney. At the conclave he had a massive heart attack in Rome and died at age 70, just three hours before the conclave began. (The more deranged sedevacantists claim that Mooney was murdered to help deny Cardinal Siri the papal throne.)

If Cardinal Mooney had not died before the conclave, the conclave might have killed him. It lasted four days and 11 ballots before Angelo Roncalli, Patriarch of Venice, was elected as a compromise candidate. No one was more surprised than the 77-year-old Roncalli at his election. He had purchased a round-trip ticket and hoped that the conclave would be a short one so that he could get home quickly.

He decided to reign as Pope John XXIII.

Roncalli was born in 1881 to a family of peasants, the fourth child and first son, in a family that would grow to 13 children.

He was ordained a priest in 1904. In 1905 he became secretary to the Bishop of Bergamo, working in that capacity until 1915 while lecturing at the local seminary.  He served in the Italian Army during World War I as a sergeant, assigned as a stretcher bearer and a chaplain.

Of his experiences during the War he wrote: “I thank God that I served as a sergeant and army chaplain in the First World War. How much I learned about the human heart during this time, how much experience I gained, what grace I received.”

After his election as Pope, John XXIII charmed the world with his pronounced sense of humor, warmth and his obvious love for all of humanity.

His five-year papacy, of course, was dominated by his calling of the Second Vatican Council. Pope John was a man of traditional Catholic spirituality. I can’t help but think he would have been appalled at much of the implementation of Vatican II.

The Conclave of 1963: James Cardinal McIntyre and Pope Paul VI

James Cardinal McIntyre, Archbishop Los Angeles, was very unhappy with Vatican II and spoke out about it, one of the few Cardinals who did.  McIntyre was a man who never minded swimming against the stream.

Born on June 25, 1886 in New York City, his father was a member of the mounted police and his mother an immigrant from Ireland.

To support himself and his crippled father after the death of his mother, James became a runner on the New York Stock Exchange. He was offered a junior partnership in 1914, but declined it to pursue his dream of becoming a priest.

After becoming the second Archbishop of Los Angeles in 1946, McIntyre led the successful campaign to overturn a California state law which taxed Catholic schools.  He was made a cardinal in 1953 by Pius XII.

McIntyre was orthodox in his religion and hard right in his politics, which put him at odds with most of the other high clergy in the Church of his day.

Vatican II met with his disfavor. In a speech to the Council Fathers on October 23, 1962 he uttered words which proved prophetic in regard to proposed changes in the liturgy: “The schema on the Liturgy proposes confusion and complication. If it is adopted, it would be an immediate scandal for our people. The continuity of the Mass must be kept.”

He voted in the conclave of 1963. He was no happier with Vatican II after the conclave than before. Until he retired in 1970, McIntyre continually butted heads with radical priests and nuns.

The conclave of 1963 opened on June 21 and lasted until June 24. Six ballots were taken. The two main candidates were Cardinal Siri of Genoa, who was known to be displeased with much that had gone on at Vatican II, and Cardinal Montini of Milan, who was supportive of Vatican II.

By the fourth ballot it was clear that Montini would likely be the eventual choice, which he was, on the sixth ballot. He chose to reign under the name of Paul VI.

In Milan, Montini acquired a reputation as a progressive, eager for ecumenicalism and reform. He was extremely supportive of Vatican II, although he eventually understood what a hornet’s nest was being stirred up. On June 29, 1972 he referred to the “smoke of Satan” having entered the Church.

Perhaps the finest moment of his Papacy was when he issued Humanae Vitae, restating the Church’s traditional teaching against artificial contraception.

The First Conclave of 1978: John Cardinal Carberry and Pope John Paul I

John Cardinal Carberry, Archbishop of St. Louis, was one of the men who had the unique experience of attending two Papal conclaves within little more than a month of each other in 1978. He attended all the sessions of Vatican II and was an active participant.

In 1965 he was named seventh Bishop of Columbus, Ohio. At Columbus he gave active support both to the civil rights movement and ecumenicalism.

In 1968 he was appointed the fifth Archbishop of Saint Louis. By this time the chaos within the Church that followed in the aftermath of Vatican II was well underway and Carberry did his best to oppose it.

He celebrated Humanae Vitae, established the Archdiocesan Pro-Life Commission and opposed Communion in the hand until 1977, fearing that it was irreverent and would lead to hosts being stolen for use in Black Masses.

He spoke out loudly against the sitcom “Maude,” one of Norman Lear’s television vehicles which celebrated contraception and abortion.

The first conclave of 1978 was quick, two days, August 25-26, with only four ballots.  Albino Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, was chosen as a compromise candidate, and not a very willing one.

When elected his first response was, “May God forgive you for what you have done.” He chose to reign as John Paul, honoring John XXIII and Pope Paul VI.

Reigning only thirty-three days, his was one of the briefest pontificates. Publicly he was noted as the Pope of Smiles, as that expression rarely left his face in public. However, he was also seen weeping in the Papal gardens.

He was a charming writer, as I can attest from having read his Illustrissimi, fictional letters to historical characters in which he deftly expressed Catholic teaching.

The Second Conclave of 1978: John Cardinal Cody and Pope John Paul II

Born in 1907 in Saint Louis, from his earliest years John Cardinal Cody, Archbishop of Chicago, was destined for a career in the Church. After a meteoric rise through the ranks of the Church, in 1965 he was made Archbishop of Chicago, where he would spend the remainder of his career. He was raised to the cardinalate two years later.

These were turbulent times, and Cody’s tenure was marked with strife, including the accusation of massive financial “irregularities” by Cody, and his relationship with a divorcee who followed him for 25 years from assignment to assignment, whom he claimed at one time was his cousin. She was not.

By this time he was considered a Church “conservative” and he often butted heads with radical priests. He attended both conclaves in 1978, dying in 1982.

Two conclaves in 1978 was an odd event in the life of the Church. Perhaps that helps explain why the conclave turned to a man from a far country.

Born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland, Karol Wojtyla was the youngest of three children. At age 8, he lost his mother; at 11, his brother; and at 20, his father, noting, “At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved.”

This sad experience of tragedy turned his thoughts to the priesthood. He enrolled in the clandestine seminary operated by the Archbishop of Cracow, Adam Stefan Sapieha, a titan of the Church in Poland as his country was occupied by the Third Reich.

Ordained on All Saints Day in 1946, he was sent to the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He earned a Doctorate in Philosophy, in addition to being a poet, a playwright and an athlete.

In 1958 Pope Pius XII appointed him auxiliary Bishop of Cracow. At 38 he was the youngest bishop in Poland and one of the youngest in the world.

In 1959 he began to say Midnight Mass on Christmas in the fields at Nowa Huta, a city near Cracow, which the Communist government planned as a model workers’ community devoid of all churches. The huge crowds that attended the Midnight masses demonstrated the futility of this attempt to separate the workers from their Church.

In 1967 he was made a cardinal. The Communist regime ruling Poland began to fear that he posed a long-term threat to their power.

Cardinal Wojtyla participated in both of the conclaves in 1978.

Initially the two strongest candidates at the second Conclave of 1978 were Cardinal Siri and Cardinal Benelli, the former being regarded as a conservative and the latter a liberal. The initial votes determined that neither of these men had sufficient support to be elected.

Wojtyla’s name emerged as a compromise candidate and on the eighth ballot he was elected by a coalition of Siri supporters and cardinals considered moderate.

Honoring his predecessor, he took the name John Paul II.

The Pope was a man’s man of unusual moral and physical courage. Nothing fazed him: Nazis, Communists of all stripes, an almost successful assassination attempt, Parkinson’s, etc.

This is certainly not the most important feature of the Pope, but I personally found it one of the most inspiring aspects of this great man.

The Conclave of 2005: Francis Cardinal George and Pope Benedict XVI

Archbishop of Chicago Francis Cardinal George was born in Chicago in 1937.  At the age of 13 he contracted polio which left him with a permanent limp. The limp caused him to be rejected by the Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago.

Instead, he attended the Saint Henry Preparatory Seminary in Belleville, Illinois run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

After being named Bishop of Yakima, Washington and Archbishop of Portland, Oregon, George returned home to the Windy City when he was made Archbishop of Chicago in 1997, then cardinal the next year.

He participated in both the 2005 and 2013 conclaves.

For a man of mild temperament, George often found himself at odds with the left-leaning government of Illinois and left-leaning clergy in Chicago.

His most famous remark was given to a group of priests worried about the secularization of the culture in 2010:  “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

The Conclave of 2005 presented a challenge to the new Pope in that John Paul II was a very hard act to follow.

There was not much drama at the conclave. There were four ballots with the right hand man of John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, leading on each ballot, and the future Pope Francis in second place.

Ratzinger chose the name of Benedict XVI, and the choice of the Conclave pleased almost all the admirers of Pope John Paul II, who looked forward to a pontificate of continuity.

Joseph Ratzinger was born in 1927 on Holy Saturday in Marktl, Bavaria, Germany. At the age of 5, after seeing a cardinal of the Church, he announced his ambition to one day be a cardinal.

After a brief conscription into the German army, he deserted in 1945 and resumed his interrupted seminary studies. He and his brother, Georg, were both ordained in 1951 by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the same cardinal Joseph had encountered when he was 5.

He was appointed to the chair of dogmatic theology at the University of Tubingen, where one of his colleagues was Hans Kung.

Professor Ratzinger was shocked by the excesses of Leftist students and gradually perceived that movement away from traditional Catholicism was one of the sources of the chaos around him.

In 1977 Ratzinger was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising, and raised to the cardinalate later that year.

In 1981 he was appointed by Pope John Paul II as head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office. He became known as an enforcer of orthodoxy and a champion of traditional Catholicism.

(A debate between young and old Ratzinger would have been edifying and perhaps, in parts, amusing.)

After his election as Pope, in his Urbi et Orbi blessing, Pope Benedict uttered words that somewhat foreshadowed his pontificate:

“Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord.”

High points were the Pope’s establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate, which welcomed thousands of converts from Anglicanism into the Catholic Church — perhaps the most daring move made by a Pope in regard to Protestants since the Reformation. He also oversaw the steady increase since 2005 in ordinations worldwide; the growth of the Church in Africa and Asia; and his  “reform of the reform,” aimed at correcting misuses of Vatican II.

Then came his resignation on February 11, 2013.

He claimed this resignation, unprecedented for many centuries, was due to ill health and the waning of his strength with advanced old age; we may never have the full story.

*Donald McClarey is a Catholic attorney and blogger at The-American-Catholic.com.