Cardinal's Recollections

For three days in Boston last week, stocky dimple-chinned William Henry Cardinal O'Connell was a figure for pious adulation. His Holiness the Pope sent him a long letter of congratulation. At Holy Cross Cathedral the Cardinal celebrated high mass, faltered and wept as he addressed 3,000 people. Eulogies of him were delivered in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Syro-Maronite and Gaelic. Next day 20.000 children attended mass for him at Boston College. Then 30.000 people gathered in Fenway Park for mass and speeches by Senator David Ignatius Walsh, Governor Joseph Buell Ely and Mayor Frederick W. Mansfield. Half a century ago to the week William O'Connell, 24, was ordained a priest in Rome.

Simultaneously with the celebrations last week was published Cardinal O'Connell's autobiography: Recollections of Seventy Years-- Its 382 pious, rambling pages present an able, successful man, senior among the four U. S. cardinals. He was born and grew up in Lowell, Mass. when Catholic "Paddies" and "Biddies" were scorned and abused. He entered St. Charles's College (Catonsville, Md.) where French Sulpicians recognized his talent for music, but was obliged to leave because of ill health. He completed his course at Boston College and later studied for the priesthood at North American College in Rome. At 34 he was the College's rector. Installed as bishop of Portland, Me. in 1901, he did so well that five years later he was made titular archbishop and bishop coadjutor of Boston. Stepping up after the death in 1907 of benign John Joseph Williams, Archbishop O'Connell raised money ably, consolidated charities, built schools and new parishes. In 1911 he was raised to the purple along with the Archbishops of London, Paris, Vienna and New York.

Rich, imperious and never a man to feign false modesty, Cardinal O'Connell is discreet in print. He tells how. a poor boy of eleven, he worked for one morning in a Lowell cotton mill, but he fails to mention his present opposition to the Child Labor Amendment. Describing the conclaves for elections of Popes in 1914 and 1922, for both of which he arrived in Rome too late to vote, the rugged Cardinal does not set down the peppery remarks he made after the second one to Cardinal Gasparri who was in charge. Nor does Cardinal O'Connell refer to the fact that he, a shrewd organizer whose power is supposed even to have extended to sponsoring Boston's famed theatrical censorship, has sometimes been called "The Pope of New England."

--Houghton Mifflin, $3.50. Then ten days had to elapse between a Pope's death and the opening of the conclave. After Cardinal O'Connell's remonstrances Pope Pius XI decreed that hereafter 18 days of grace shall be allowed so that all Cardinals may arrive in time.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.