Benedict Joseph Fenwick

Benedict Joseph Fenwick SJ (September 3, 1782 – August 11, 1846) was an American bishop of the Catholic Church. A Jesuit, he served as Bishop of Boston from 1825 until his death in 1846.

Benedict Fenwick was born in Leonardtown, Maryland, to George and Margaret (née Medley) Fenwick. His ancestors were originally from Northumberland in North East England. Benedict's great-great-great grandfather, Cuthbert Fenwick, emigrated to America in 1633 aboard the Ark and the Dove, and was one of the original Catholic settlers of Maryland.

Fenwick entered Georgetown College in 1793, and graduated with high honors. He afterwards served as a professor at Georgetown before deciding to study for the priesthood, entering St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore in 1805. Following the restoration of the Society of Jesus, he entered its novitiate in 1806.

Fenwick was ordained a priest by his fellow Jesuit, Bishop Leonard Neale on March 12, 1808. He then accompanied Father Anthony Kohlmann to New York City, where he remained for nine years. During that time, he served as pastor of St. Peter's Church (1815–16) and Vicar General of the Diocese of New York (1816–17). He also helped erect the original St. Patrick's Cathedral and served as director of the New York Literary Institution, founded by Kohlmann.

In April 1817, Fenwick was named president of Georgetown College, as well as pastor of Holy Trinity Church. The following year, he was assigned to Charleston, South Carolina, where he successfully repaired divisions within the local Catholic community. In 1822, he returned to Georgetown for another term as president to succeed his brother Enoch, a fellow Jesuit.

On May 10, 1825, Fenwick was appointed the second Bishop of Boston, Massachusetts, by Pope Leo XII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following November 1 from Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal,S.S., with Bishops John England and Henry Conwell serving as co-consecrators, at the Cathedral of Baltimore.

Nativism was rampant in Boston in the late 1820s and 1830s, reflecting widespread anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment. In 1829 Bishop Fenwick founded a Catholic newspaper. Known today as The Pilot, it is the oldest, continuous Catholic publication in the country. He also had to deal with the Ursuline Convent riots of 1834. Many elite Bostonians apologized for the Protestant mob that burned the convent, which housed Ursuline nuns and their predominantly Yankee students.

In 1827 Fenwick opened Boston College in the basement of his cathedral and undertook the personal instruction of the city's youth. His efforts to attract other Jesuits to the faculty were hampered both by Boston's distance from the center of Jesuit activity, at the time in Maryland, and by suspicion on the part of the city's Protestant elite. Relations with Boston's civic leaders worsened to such a degree that, when a Jesuit faculty was finally secured in 1843, Fenwick decided to leave the Boston school and instead opened the College of the Holy Cross 45 miles west of the city in central Massachusetts where he felt the Jesuits could operate with greater autonomy.

He died on August 11, 1846 at the age of 63 and is buried at the College of the Holy Cross.

Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, Massachusetts is named in his honor.

Dispute at St. Mary's

Fr. Patrick O'Beirne served as co-pastor of St. Mary's Church in the North End with Fr. Thomas J. O’Flaherty beginning in 1840. The parish, made up largely of Irish immigrants, soon split into two camps with each supporting one of the two priests. The differences were partly political and partly about church governance. By January 1842 the congregation was so divided that Fenwick was worried that violence may erupt and so visited on January 9, 1842 to try to restore the peace. During mass, he preached an hour long sermon on obedience and warned that those who attended mass meetings of protest could be excommunicated.

Just a few days later, on January 13, 1842, a large group of O'Flaherty supporters gathered. When a member of the O'Beirne camp disrupted the meeting's opening address, a "mob situation" arose. Police had to be called in to restore order. In response, Fenwick wrote to parishioners and invited them to attend another meeting on January 16, 1842. Parishioners from other parishes attended the meeting, disrupting it, and cutting it short lest another mob break out. Fenwick then ordered the two priests to publicly reconcile on January 23, 1842.

Not long after, O'Beirne requested a transfer to a different parish and was sent to Providence, Rhode Island, which was then part of the Boston Diocese. His supporters at St. Mary's were not happy, however, and 400 of them signed a petition calling for his return. When Fenwick refused, a riot broke out on February 20, 1842 during a vespers service O'Flaherty was presiding over.

Parishioners were arrested, and Fenwick placed the parish under an interdict that shuttered it for two weeks. In Providence, O'Beirne's new parishioners were not happy with him and told Fenwick so in terms the bishop would call "insolent" and "anti-Catholic." Still seeking a solution, Fenwick reassigned all the priests in the troubled parishes in March. O'Fleherty's old parishioners were then upset by their loss and collected 3,300 signatures demanding his return. When Fenwick did not accede to their demands, special train rides were organized up to Salem, Massachusetts to see O'Flaherty at his new parish.

• Patkus, Ronald D. "Conflict in the Church and the City: The Problem of Catholic Parish Government in Boston" (PDF). Historical Journal of Massachusetts. Institute for Massachusetts Studies and Westfield State University.