John Hughes (archbishop of New York) - Episcopacy

Episcopacy

He was consecrated bishop on January 7, 1838 with the titular see of Basileopolis. He succeeded to the bishopric of the diocese of New York on December 20, 1842 and became an archbishop on July 19, 1850, when the diocese was elevated to the status of archdiocese.

Hughes, influenced by the reactionary stance of Pope Pius IX, was a staunch opponent of Abolitionism and the Free Soil movement. In 1850 he delivered an address entitled "The Decline of Protestantism and Its Causes," in which he announced as the ambition of Roman Catholicism "to convert all Pagan nations, and all Protestant nations . . . Our mission to convert the world—including the inhabitants of the United States—the people of the cities, and the people of the country . . . the Legislatures, the Senate, the Cabinet, the President, and all!"

He also campaigned actively on behalf of Irish immigrants, and attempted to secure state support for religious schools. He protested against the United States Government for using the King James Bible in public schools, claiming that it was an attack on Catholic constitutional rights of double taxation, because Catholics would need to pay taxes for public school and also pay for the private school to send their children, to avoid the Protestant translation of the Bible. When he failed to secure state support, he founded an independent Catholic school system which was taken into the Catholic Church's core at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884, which mandated that all Parishes have a parochial school and that all Catholic children be sent to those schools.

He founded Manhattan College, St. John's College (now Fordham University), Fordham Prep, the Academy of Mount St. Vincent (now College of Mount Saint Vincent) and Marymount College. and began construction of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He served until his death. He was originally buried in old St. Patrick's Cathedral and was exhumed and reinterred in the crypt under the altar of the new cathedral. Hughes founded the Ultramontane newspaper the New York Freeman.