Thomas Francis Hendricken (1827-1886)

 

Pioneering bishop of an American see in the 19th Century

 

Student 1847-53

 

Thomas Francis Hendricken was born on May 5, 1827 at Bleach Road in the northern environs of Kilkenny city, son of Annie (nee Meagher) and John Hendricken.* The family name was of German origin, an ancestor having come to Ireland to fight in the cause of the Catholic King James of England at the end of the seventeenth century.

His father died when he was six and three of his siblings died in childhood, but his mother was determined to give Thomas a good education and so he entered St. Kieran's College, Kilkenny. From there, having discerned a vocation to the priesthood, he went to St. Patrick's College, Maynooth where he completed his Philosophical and Theological studies and was ordained on April 25, 1853 by Bishop Bernard O’Reilly, Bishop of Hartford, Connecticut.

Though originally destined for service in his native diocese, Fr. Hendricken came to America at the request of Bishop O’Reilly for service in that diocese. Bishop O'Reilly was a native of Co. Longford who had emigrated at the age of twenty-three to pursue studies for the priesthood, and along with his brother William, served in the diocese of New York before being appointed Bishop of Hartford in 1850 (Fr. William O'Reilly later followed him to Hartford and acted as Vicar General there). The bishop of Hartford resided at the time and in subsequent years in Providence.

Fr. Hendricken was appointed first to the Cathedral, then to St. Joseph’s in Providence, and later to St. Mary’s in Newport, and to St. Joseph’s Church in Winsted, Connecticut. St. Joseph's was a rural parish covering a fifty-mile area. In those days, there were but few communicants of the Catholic Church in that region, and the revenues were small. Yet, with the money at hand in the space of sixteen months, he cleared the church of a heavy debt and purchased and paid for plots in different villages, on every one of which a church was afterwards erected.

In 1855, he was removed to Waterbury and appointed pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception where he ministered for seventeen years. During his career in Waterbury, he built the Gothic Church of the Immaculate Conception, a school house and pastoral residence; purchased and laid out a beautiful cemetery; and founded a convent, where the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, from Montreal, conducted a flourishing boarding and day school for young ladies. He bound himself up with the cause of education.

In Waterbury, seeing that his parishioners were poor and unable to employ a teacher, he opened a school and added the office of school teacher to his other laborious duties. For many years, he was a member of the Board of Education and served on its most important committees. 

Bishop O'Reilly died in 1856 at the age of fifty-three when the ship on which he had been returning from Europe sank. He was succeeded two years later by thirty-nine-year-old Francis McFarland, the Pennsylvania-born son of Irish immigrant parents from Armagh who had been serving in the archdiocese of New York and, after its creation in 1847, the diocese of Albany. Bishop McFarland pursued an energetic program of church and school building but by the early 1870s was suffering from continuous ill-health and proposed that he resign.

However, his fellow bishops persuaded him to accept a division of the diocese to reduce his workload (at that time, the Diocese of Hartford included the entire states of Connecticut and Rhode Island). In 1872 the diocese was divided with the creation of the diocese of Providence. Bishop McFarland died in Hartford in 1874 and was succeeded by Thomas Galberry, a native of Co. Kildare, and, following his death four years later, by the Irish-Canadian Lawrence McMahon and then in 1893 by Michael Tierney, who had emigrated as a child from Ballylooby, on the Waterford-Tipperary border.

When the Diocese of Providence was erected it encompassed all of Rhode Island and what is today the Diocese of Fall River in Massachussetts. The approximately 125,000 Catholics in the new diocese was served by some 53 priests. The first published report of the new diocese listed 43 churches with 5 under construction, 5 female academies and 1 for boys, 9 parish schools with 4,225 students and 1 orphan asylum with 200 children.

Fr. Hendricken was ordained the first Bishop of Providence on April 28, 1872 in SS. Peter and Paul in Providence. He returned to Kilkenny in 1873 where he celebrated the 7.00 a.m. Mass and presided at the noon Mass in St. Mary’s Cathedral. He was a generous benefactor to many worthy causes, donating £200 to the flood relief scheme in the Black Abbey, other sums to the industrial schools on the Kells Road and Waterford Road, and £100 to the building of a new chapel in Maynooth College.

On leaving Kilkenny he travelled to Rome to meet the Pope and went on to the Holy Land. He returned to Kilkenny where he celebrated early Mass in the Friary and presided at the mid-day Mass. After saying goodbye to his mother for the last time (she died the following year, over forty years after the death of her husband) returned to Providence after a three-month absence.

During his episcopate the number of priests and parishes in the diocese more than doubled. Churches and chapels were added and schools opened; the Jesuit Fathers instituted in Providence; the religious sisters of the Precious Blood and the Sacred Heart were introduced, as well as the French Nuns of Jesus and Mary in Fall River; and the educational establishments of Bay View and Elmhurst were formed. He also brought the Ursuline Nuns to teach the parish schools and Academy at St. Mary’s, Broadway.

Throughout his priestly service, Bishop Hendricken had displayed untiring zeal and indomitable energy in promoting the spiritual and temporal concerns of the different churches over which he has presided. During the twenty-four years of his ministry, he purchased and paid for estates valued at upwards of $1,000,000. When he came to Providence as Bishop, a considerable debt was hanging upon the Cathedral parish. He liquidated this within a few months.

There was also a need for a suitable residence for the Bishop and clergy and a building for that purpose was built at a cost of $40,000. Then a Cathedral, worthy of his religion, the diocese, the city and the growing population, became a necessity and the Bishop undertook the erection of such an edifice, planning the work as the crowning effort of his holy priesthood. The lot upon which the old church stood not being large enough for the new building, the additional lot was purchased for $36,000. The Pro-Cathedral was built for a temporary place of worship, costing $30,000.

The new cathedral was commenced as soon as the Pro-Cathedral could be occupied. On Thanksgiving Day, 1878, the cornerstone of Sts. Peter and Paul’s Cathedral on High Street was laid - it was a large block of Kilkenny marble, which he brought back as a souvenir of his native county.

Time made the construction of this grand building increasingly the earnest Bishop’s hope and love. The project approached $500,000 in value and yet there did not rest one dollar on indebtedness upon the Cathedral corporation at its completion.

A lifelong sufferer from asthma, he died at the early age of 59 on the 11th June 1886. His remains were entombed in the crypt of the unfinished Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul. In his will he donated his ring and pectoral cross to the Diocese of Ossory.

He was succeeded as Bishop of Providence by Matthew Harkins, a Boston priest who was the son of Irish immigrants from Donegal and Limerick respectively.

On December 8th 2006 Bishop Hendricken's  remains were reinterred in a custom-built Brazilian sarcophagus facing the high altar of the great Cathedral, he had helped to build.

 

 

*A monument at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Trinity at Dunmore in St. John's Parish, Kilkenny, is inscribed: John Hendricken of the Triangle, died in 1833. His beloved wife Annie Meagher died in 1874. The remains of their 3 children died young Mary, John and Tom. This monument is erected to their memory by an affectionate son and brother. Thomas F. Hendricken, Bishop of Providence, U.S.A.