Fenwick, Benedict Joseph
Fenwick, Benedict Joseph
Second Bishop of Boston, brother of Edward Dominic Fenwork, born Leonardstown, Maryland, 1782; died Boston, Massachusetts, 1846. He studied and taught at Georgetown. In 1805 he entered the Sulpician Seminary, Baltimore, but on the restoration of the Society of Jesus in the United States, 1806, he joined the order. Ordained by Bishop Neale in 1808, he was sent to New York, where he became head of the New York Literary Institution, founded, 1809, as a college, on the present site of the cathedral, and closed in 1814, on the recall of the Jesuits to Maryland. He served for a time as administrator of the New York diocese and under Bishop Connolly as vicar-general. From 1817-1818 he was president of Georgetown. Sent to Charleston, 1818, to arrange difficulties originating in the trustee system, he remained there two years after the arrival of Bishop England, 1820. He was again president of Georgetown, 1824-1825. Named to succeed Bishop Cheverus of Boston, he was consecrated in Baltimore, 1 November 1825. He established a seminary in his own home, and by 1827 had a school in the basement of the cathedral. In 1829 he founded one of the earliest Catholic papers in the United States, “The Jesuit, or the Catholic Sentinel.” His zeal resulted in the building within 20 years of 35 churches, of which eight were in Boston. He removed the Ursulines from an unsuitable location in Boston to Charlestown, early in his episcopacy; in 1834 the convent was destroyed at the hands of a fanatical mob. Their actions were condemned at a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, presided over by the mayor of Boston. In 1843 Bishop Fenwick established the Jesuits in charge of Holy Cross College at Worcester, replacing a former academy founded by Father James Fitton in 1838. At his death the Catholics in Massachusetts numbered 53,000, an increase of 20,000 in 10 years.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Fenwick, Benedict Joseph
a Roman Catholic bishop, was born at Leonardstown, Maryland, September 3, 1782. He was made bishop of Boston, Massachusetts, November 1, 1825, a diocese which then had only three priests. He enlarged his cathedral, established schools, started a theological seminary, introduced the Sisters of Charity through Ann Alexis in 1832, saw the first synod of Boston assembled in 1842, the erection of a new see of Hartford in 1844, founded the College of the Holy Cross at Worcester, through the Jesuits, the great Catholic university of New England, and died in Boston after an energetic episcopate, August 11, 1846, prudent, learned, and charitable. See De Courcey and Shea, Hist. of the Cath. Church in the U.S. page 509.