Background
Edward Fitzgerald was born in Limerick, Ireland, of an able family of Celtic and German Palatinate descent.
Edward Fitzgerald was born in Limerick, Ireland, of an able family of Celtic and German Palatinate descent.
He accompanied his parents to America in 1849 and soon after entered the Lazarist Seminary at the Barrens, Missouri, from which he transferred to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Cincinnati.
On the completion of his theological studies at Mount St. Mary’s, Emmitsburg, Maryland, he was ordained by Archbishop Purcell, August 22, 1857, and assigned to St. Patrick’s Church, Columbus, which was then under interdict for the insubordination of the trustees. During his pastorate of nine years, he organized a model parish.
On June 22, 1866, he was preconized as bishop of Little Rock, Ark. Following his consecration by Archbishop Purcell on February 3, 1867, he set forth for his war-torn, bankrupt diocese which had only five priests, 1, 600 scattered communicants, and three charitable institutions under the Sisters of Mercy.
In this assembly, on July 13, 1870, in the preliminary ballot on the doctrine of infallibility, Fitzgerald voted negatively.
Unlike fifty-five of his brother bishops in the same group who took occasion to retire from Rome, Fitzgerald remained for the final ballot a few days later when only he and Aloisio Ricci of Cajazzo, Italy, voted non placet. However, when the dogma was pronounced, he “testified his acceptance of the decree on the papal primacy and infallibility to the Holy Father himself” (F. J. Zwierlein, The Life and Letters of Bishop McQuaid, II, 1926, 60).
This determined attitude did not appear to injure Fitzgerald’s position, though a leading Catholic editor, James McMaster of the Freeman’s Journal, never grew tired of repeating that “the Bishop of Little Rock had in vain butted his head against the Big Rock” (United States Catholic Historical Society, Historical Records and Studies, March 1921, p. 15).
Fitzgerald remained in his obscure diocese, though his name was third on the list of nominees for Purcell’s coadjutor, until his resignation and retirement to St. Joseph’s Infirmary at Hot Springs about a year before his death. As ruler of the diocese, Fitzgerald was unusually active and capable. Unable to obtain a sufficient number of secular priests for an impoverished people, he called upon the Benedictines at St. Meinrad, Indiana, who established an abbey at Spielerville or Subiaco in Logan County (1876) and founded Subiaco College (1887), and upon the Fathers of the Holy Ghost from Marienstatt, who settled near Morrillton (1879).
Around these foundations, thriving German communities developed. The bishop also took great interest in a Polish settlement at Marche, and the Italian communities at Sunnyside, Barton, New Gascony, and Tontitown.
In 1883, he represented the province of New Orleans at the conference of American bishops in Rome in preparation for the meeting of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884).
He lived the life of an itinerant missionary and was preaching the Gospel on the frontier when he was called to the Vatican Council in Rome.