Name William McCloskey Ordination October 6, 1852 Consecration May 24, 1868 | Education Georgetown University Died September 17, 1909 | |
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Other posts Rector of the American College, Rome (1860–1868) Born November 10, 1823
Brooklyn, New York ( 1823-11-10 ) | ||
William George McCloskey (10 November, 1823 – 17 September, 1909) was an American Catholic priest, who became Bishop of Louisville, Kentucky.
Contents
Life
He was sent to Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland in 1835. In May 1850, he was ordained subdeacon at that seminary by Samuel Eccleston, Archbishop of Baltimore, and on October 6, 1852 was ordained priest by Bishop John Hughes in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. He said his first Mass in the basement of the Church of the Nativity, of which his brother George was then pastor, and remained there ten months as assistant. Then, from a desire to live in the seminary cloister, he returned with the consent of his superiors to Mount St. Mary's, where he taught moral theology, Scripture, and Latin for about six years.
He was appointed, December 1, 1859, the first rector of the American College at Rome, being the unanimous choice of the American bishops. He reached Rome in March 1860. Georgetown University had shortly before conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Dr. McCloskey's administration of the American College included the period of the American Civil War. There were serious divisions in the student body.
He was rector until his promotion to the See of Louisville in May 1868, being consecrated bishop in the chapel of the college on May 24 of that year by Cardinal von Reisach, Archbishop of Munich, Bavaria, assisted by Mons. Xavier de Mérode, minister of Pope Pius IX, and by Mons. Salvatore Vitelleschi, Archbishop of Osimo and Cingoli.
He arrived in Louisville, as its bishop, towards the end of summer 1868. He found sixty-four churches and left in his diocese at his death one hundred and sixty-five.
He introduced many religious orders into the diocese: the Passionists, the Benedictines, the Fathers of the Resurrection, the Sisters of Mercy, the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Franciscan Sisters, and the Brothers of Mary. The growth of the parochial schools was chiefly the product of his zeal. In 1869 he established the diocesan seminary known as Preston Park Seminary.
He was present at the First Vatican Council in 1870. He also attended the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866, and the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, in 1884, strongly advocating in the former the cause of the American College at Rome.
Works
He wrote a life of Mary Magdalen (Louisville, 1900).
Family
He was the youngest of five brothers. Two of his older brothers also became priests: John McCloskey, for years president of Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg; and George, pastor of the Church of the Nativity, New York.