Coughlin, Charles E

Coughlin, Charles E(dward)

 or Father Coughlin

(born Oct. 25, 1891, Hamilton, Ont., Can.—died Oct. 27, 1979, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., U.S.) Canadian-born U.S. clergyman. Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1923, he became pastor of a Michigan church. In 1930 he began radio broadcasts of his sermons, into which he gradually injected reactionary political statements and anti-Semitic rhetoric. His sermons attracted one of the first deeply loyal mass audiences in broadcast history. He attacked Herbert Hoover and later turned on Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. His magazine, Social Justice, targeted Wall Street, communism, and Jews. It was banned from the mails and ceased publication in 1942, the same year the Catholic hierarchy ordered Coughlin to stop broadcasting.