Name Daniel Cronin Posthumous style not applicable | Religious style Archbishop Spoken style Your Excellency | |
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Education Pontifical Gregorian University | ||
Reference style The Most Reverend | ||
Daniel Anthony Cronin (born November 14, 1927) is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Fall River from 1970 to 1992, and Archbishop of Hartford from 1992 to 2003.
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Early life and priesthood
Daniel Cronin was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and attended St. Peter School in Cambridge and graduated from Boston College High School in 1945. He studied at St. John's Seminary in Brighton from 1945 to 1949, and then furthered his studied at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where Cronin was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Luigi Traglia on December 20, 1952. He then earned a Licentiate of Sacred Theology (1953) and Doctorate of Sacred Theology (1956) from the Pontifical Gregorian University.
Cronin did pastoral work in Salisbury, Lynn, and Waltham before becoming an attaché of the Apostolic Internunciature to Ethiopia in 1957. He was made an attaché of the Vatican Secretariat of State in 1961, and a Papal Chamberlain in 1962.
Episcopal career
On June 10, 1968, Cronin was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Boston and Titular Bishop of Egnatia by Pope Paul VI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following September 12 from Richard Cardinal Cushing, with Bishops Jeremiah Minihan and Thomas Riley serving as co-consecrators, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. He selected as his episcopal motto: "Ad Oboediendum Fidei", meaning, "For Obedience of Faith" (Romans 1:5). As an auxiliary bishop, he served as pastor of St. Raphael Church in Medford.
Cronin was later named the fifth Bishop of Fall River on October 30, 1970. He succeeded James Louis Connolly, and was installed at St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral on December 16, 1970. In 1975 he denounced U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) when Kennedy declared that he would not vote to outlaw abortion although he did not personally support it.
On December 10, 1991, Cronin was appointed the third Archbishop of Hartford, Connecticut, by Pope John Paul II. He succeeded the late John Francis Whealon, and was installed at the Cathedral of St. Joseph on January 28, 1992. He received the pallium, a vestment worn by metropolitan bishops, from John Paul II at St. Peter's Basilica on the following June 29. Upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75, he retired as Archbishop on October 20, 2003. He now resides at St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, CT.
Views
Considered theologically conservative, Cronin is opposed to the ordination of women and homosexuality. He once stated, "The dominion of human life is in the hands of God. The gift of life starts from the time of conception and ends at the time of natural death."