Gibbons, James

Gibbons, James

(1834–1921) Catholic prelate; born in Baltimore, Md. Gibbons was a pastor and Civil War chaplain before becoming secretary to the archbishop of Baltimore (1865), bishop and apostolic vicar of North Carolina (1868), and bishop of Richmond (1872); in 1877 he was named archbishop of Baltimore, becoming a cardinal in 1886. For several crucial decades he was the preeminent leader of American Catholicism. He presided over a national church council that established Catholic University (1884), and he became the university's first chancellor. A prudent leader as archbishop, he discouraged ethnically separate parishes, circumvented church condemnation of the Knights of Labor, and acted as an interpreter between the Vatican and American Catholicism. In 1911 two U.S. presidents joined in observing the 50th anniversary of his ordination. His writings included The Faith of Our Fathers (1876), a simple exposition of beliefs, which became a Catholic best-seller.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.