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atholic priests have served the American Armed Forces with distinction since Revolutionary War times. In 1888, the Apostolic See granted exclusive competency to the Archbishop of New York to designate Navy chaplains. After the Spanish American War, a commission of the U.S. bishops, under James Cardinal Gibbons, was established to recruit priests for the military chaplaincy. At the outbreak of World War I, there were sixteen priests in the Army, eight in the Navy and ten in the National Guard. The need for priests was CARDINAL JAMES GIBBONS urgent, that the bishops of America, with significant support from the Knights of Columbus, formed a National Catholic War Council. By Armistice Day, 1919, a total of 1,026 priests were serving with the U.S. Armed Forces. Most were commissioned officers, but some 165 of those served as civilians paid from funds donated by the Knights of Columbus.
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n the United States, as in other countries, the military constituted a vast diocese with no regularly constituted head until Pope Benedict XV authorized each country to have an episcopus castrensis, or a bishop for the military. On November 24, 1917, he appointed Patrick Hayes, an auxiliary bishop of New York, to be “Ordinary of all Catholics who fight in the Army and Navy during the present war.” Bishop Hayes organized the new jurisdiction, with headquarters at St. Stephen’s Church, CARDINAL PATRICK HAYES New York City, and five regional vicariates. The organization came to be known as the Military Vicariate and its offices as the Military Ordinariate. Special faculties for general absolution, the Eucharist, and marriage were among many privileges granted only to military chaplains by the Military Ordinariate.
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CARDINAL FRANCIS SPELLMAN
ar was threatening again when Cardinal Hayes died in September of 1938. On November 25, 1939, Pope Pius XII designated Archbishop Francis Spellman, the new ordinary of New York, to be military vicar of the United States of America and the episcopal administrator for chaplain affairs. He was assisted by the first Military Delegate of the Armed Forces, Father John O'Hara, CSC, president of the University of Notre Dame. Bishop O’Hara was later named bishop of Buffalo and afterward Cardinal Archbishop o Philadelphia.
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hen peacetime conscription was instituted in 1940, Archbishop Spellman and Bishop O’Hara appealed to the American bishops for clergy. By December 8, 1941 there were 500 priests on active duty. During World War II, 2,453 priests served as Army chaplains and 817 as Navy chaplains, of whom 676 died in service. After World (continued on next page)
25th Anniversary Issue| 2 0 1 0 |
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AMS PAST — Celebrating 25 Years of Faithful Service
Development of the Military Vicariate.