Cardinal Gibbons’ death moved many

The opening paragraph in the lead story in a special supplement to the March 26, 1921, issue of The Baltimore Catholic Review brought the appropriate gravitas to the passing of the ninth Archbishop of Baltimore, arguably the most famous Catholic in the United States at that time.

“Cardinal Gibbons died Thursday at 11:33 a.m. at his residence, 408 North Charles street. His Eminence was sleeping peacefully when the end came. Rt. Rev. O.B. Corrigan, his auxiliary; Dr. Charles O’Donovan, his physician; Bon Secours sisters, who nursed him; and priests and sisters of the household, knelt in prayer at the bedside as the noted prelate breathed his last.”

Cardinal James Gibbons was 86 when he died March 24, 1921. A native son of the city, he was the second American to be elevated to the College of Cardinals, a hero to the labor movement, a champion of ecumenism and an advisor to presidents.

The mourning that followed his passing reflected the esteem in which he was held.

A sub-headline in the April 2, 1921, issue of the Review “Estimated that more than 150,000 persons viewed the body of his eminence as he lay in state at the cathedral,” America’s oldest, now the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

They included more than 1,000 men from the Knights of Columbus and other fraternal organizations who took turns standing vigil starting March 28, when the cardinal’s body was carried from his residence to the old cathedral for viewing.

Children from the Cathedral School were the first to pay their respects.

“These mourners were of all classes of life,” the Review reported. “State and city officials, the rich and the poor, the banker and the laborer, Catholic, non-Catholic and Jew. Japanese and Chinese were seen in line, the aged and the young. Grandfathers walked around the bier, holding tightly to the hands of grandchildren who could scarcely walk. Many mothers bearing children in arms were seen.”

On March 29, a Tuesday, “the crowd began to assume great proportions. Between 11 o’clock that morning and 11 o’clock that night, it is estimated that nearly 50,000 persons viewed the body. … Thousands of members of the Holy Name Society from all sections of the city marched silently to the Cathedral.”

The next day, the line of mourners grew to an estimated 75,000. There were delegations not just from across the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which then encompassed the entire state, but from Richmond, Va., where the cardinal had previously ministered. 

In attendance for the March 31 funeral Mass were Maryland Gov. Albert C. Ritchie and “Two Cardinals (Begin of Quebec and O’Connell of Boston) of the Church, more than fifty Archbishops and Bishops, Monsignori, Abbots, the heads of religious orders and hundreds of priests.”

“The newspapers of the country sent their best writers … but it was impossible for them to translate into words the spirit of loneliness and deep grief which held that congregation.”

St. Louis Archbishop John James Glennon offered the homily. The body of Cardinal Gibbons was interred in the crypt beneath the sanctuary, opposite Archbishop John Carroll, America’s first bishop. “His body was carried to its last resting place by the five priests of his household and by the venerable priest who was for so many years his confessor (Sulpician Father Arsenius Boyer).”

The April 2 issue of the Review included notice of a proposal for a bronze statue of Cardinal Gibbons to be erected “on the southwest corner of the Cathedral grounds, at Cathedral and Mulberry streets.” 

One stands near there today.

Email Paul McMullen at pmcmullen@CatholicReview.org.

Also see:

Cardinal Gibbons, who died 100 years ago, was committed to Ireland

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