A Spiritual Home

Joanne Freeman: If you walk down 51st street in New York City on August 15th, 1858, you would not see anything resembling the bustling midtown Manhattan that we all know today with its hotels, and banks, and glitzy shops. At this point, the city is still largely woodsy and unpopulated. And on this August day, the Archbishop of New York, John Hughes, is about to lay the cornerstone for his dream project, the construction of the greatest church in the United States.

John Loughery: So, on this hot Sunday in the summer of 1858, he has a platform erected on the empty lot that is now Saint Patrick’s cathedral.

Joanne Freeman: This is writer John Lowe Curry. He says that an enormous number of people packed into the open space, 40, 60, or maybe even a hundred thousand people.

John Loughery: The on the buses and trains that are heading uptown had been packed for three, four hours before to get everybody from the populated part of the city. Some newspapers said entire neighborhoods downtown are empty that Sunday.

Joanne Freeman: Hughes put together a ceremony worthy of the monumental crowd. Around 200 priests attended and 100 choir boys sang throughout the precession, plus the archbishop adorned the area with flags representing the congregation, banners for France, Spain, Russia, and the Netherlands. But one flag held a place of honor above the rest.

John Loughery: by the spot where the altar of the cathedral would be, he placed in Irish flag, a flag with a harp on it and then he placed across above it. That was a kind of statement saying, “We the Irish are building this cathedral.”

Joanne Freeman: John Hughes became archbishop of the New York diocese in 1850, an era of intense anti Irish and anti Catholic feeling in the United States. In the decades prior, nativist backlash had erupted as waves of Irish immigrants came to the United States. Many Americans saw the Irish as dirty and ignorant. In some cities, rioters had destroyed Catholic churches and convents. Hughes, an Irishman himself wouldn’t take it.

John Loughery: Rather than turn the other cheek, he was not a turn the other cheek sort of person really, he takes on all of these people in a polemical way in his own speeches and writings. He insists that if anything happens to the churches of New York, the Protestants had better look to their own churches. Of course, the Irish Catholics love that. He was constantly trying to explain to the Vatican, this is what Americans respect. They respect confidence, and clarity, and strength.

Joanne Freeman: His position and his rhetoric made Hughes the most famous Catholic in the country. And his militancy earned him a rather unpriestly nickname, Daggered John.

John Loughery: He would put a cross by his name as bishops and archbishops do more nowadays especially. Enemies at the time said that wasn’t the cross, it was a dagger. And I think there were times when he almost took a strange pride in it. Let them be wary of me, yes. Let them not think because I’m a man of the cloth, a man of God, that I’m not also someone to be reckoned with. I think he liked that aspect of his persona.

Joanne Freeman: Other Catholic officials didn’t really appreciate his style.

John Loughery: But there was no doubt that without him there would have been a void. There wouldn’t have been a person saying, “We will feel a bond if we understand we are under attack. And you, the Irish, are not what the Protestant nativists of this country say you are. They say you’re uneducated, they say you’re hopeless, they say you don’t understand American values. They say you’re all vassals of the pope, you’ll never be true American citizens will bring anything to this country.” And he constantly was saying to the Irish, “Don’t believe that. You are a great people in many ways, maybe greater even than you know, and I’m here to tell you that, and I’m here to lead you to a proper place in the society.”

Joanne Freeman: He encouraged his flock to adopt a threefold identity, be loyal Catholics, good Americans, and also be proud of their Irish heritage.

John Loughery: In some ways, he could be seen as one of the originators of the idea of the hyphenated identity. So in that sense, he really is a kind of galvanizing force for an ethnic as well as a religious community.

Joanne Freeman: And Hughes had a vision for the construction of a building, which would symbolize faith, community, and religious devotion. He was inspired by a trip to Europe.

John Loughery: He went to Paris, and Rome, Florence, Vienna soliciting funds and meeting figures of the Vatican. But he also worshiped in those great cathedrals in Paris, and Florence, Venice, and Rome, and came back feeling, “If we are to come together as a Catholic community, we need our own cathedral here.”

Joanne Freeman: Lowe Curry says that the construction of Saint Patrick’s cathedral was the culmination of this goal.

John Loughery: It was going to be more Irish Catholics who contributed the funds. They were going to be Irish Catholic workers who built it. The majority of his parishioners were Irish Catholic. That this was going to make them feel very good about themselves as Catholics and as Irish people, as Irish Americans. He thought the cathedral would be a wonderful symbol reinforcing those different parts of an identity that he was trying to cultivate.

Joanne Freeman: Daggered John Hughes didn’t live to see the completion of the Cathedral. He died in 1864 and Saint Patrick’s wasn’t finished until 1878. But the great church survives as a testament to Hughes vision.

John Loughery: It is an awesome building, still. I mean, when one goes today, it’s full of both worshipers and tourists who are in awe of the beauty and complexity of this building and that would have been deeply satisfying to him, definitely.

Joanne Freeman: John Loughery Curry is the author of Daggered John, Archbishop John Hughes on the making of Irish America.