Edward Joseph Hanna

Background

Edward Joseph Hanna was born on July 21, 1860 in Rochester, New York, of Irish parents. His mother, Anne Clark, was a native of County Cavan. His father, Edward Hanna, emigrated to the United States in 1837 from Newcastle, County Down, and settled in Rochester, where he soon prospered as a manufacturer of flour barrels. Edward was the first of their six children.

Education

Hanna was educated in public and parochial schools and at the Rochester Free Academy, where he competed for honors with Walter Rauschenbusch, the future Baptist theologian and proponent of the social gospel.

Upon his graduation in 1879, having announced his intention to become a priest, Hanna was sent by Bishop Bernard McQuaid to Rome for his training. There he lived at the North American College and took courses at the Urban College of the Congregation of Propaganda. He was ordained in 1885, a year ahead of his class, and in 1886 received the Doctor of Divinity degree.

Career

Fluent in both Italian and Latin, Hanna stayed on in Rome for a year as a resident tutor at the North American College and a part-time faculty member at the Urban College before being recalled in 1887 by McQuaid. Back in Rochester, he was asked to minister to the new Italian immigrants working in the clothing industry; from this experience stemmed his later concern with social problems. He was also assigned to the preparatory seminary in Rochester as a teacher of classics.

When St. Bernard's Seminary opened six years later, Hanna became its first professor of dogmatic theology, a position he occupied for the next nineteen years.

Archbishop Patrick Riordan of San Francisco nominated Hanna as his coadjutor and successor. Vigorously endorsed by McQuaid, the appointment was about to receive the Vatican's approval when one of Hanna's colleagues at St. Bernard's Seminary sent a ringing protest to Rome challenging his orthodoxy. In spite of numerous testimonials in his favor, including Riordan's personal intervention, the Vatican declined to grant the promotion. The Modernist controversy soon faded, and in 1912 the Vatican acceded to Riordan's request, though with the provision that Hanna be made auxiliary bishop, not coadjutor with right of succession.

Upon Riordan's death in 1915, Hanna was nonetheless appointed archbishop of San Francisco, a post he held for twenty years. Under his administration, the Far West's largest Catholic archdiocese continued to grow. Forty-four parishes were added, thirty-four parochial schools, and eight high schools, and Hanna established two preparatory seminaries: St. Joseph's College to serve several Western and Pacific dioceses, and Maryknoll to train foreign missionaries.

Archbishop Hanna was one of the organizers of the National Catholic Welfare Council (later Conference), formed in 1919 by the American hierarchy to coordinate nationwide activities of the Church in the fields of education and social welfare, and to voice the stand of the Church on legislative questions. As chairman of its administrative committee until his retirement in 1935, Hanna was the executive head of the Conference, directing the work of John J. Burke as general secretary. Within California, Hanna took an active civic role.

In 1913 he became a member, and in 1920, chairman, of the State Immigration and Housing Commission. As a member of the wage adjustment board of the building trades industry in San Francisco and chairman of the impartial wage board of San Francisco, he distinguished himself as a labor mediator, particularly by settling a building trades strike in 1921. During the depression he was a member of the National Citizens' Committee on Welfare and Relief Mobilization and chairman of the California State Committee on the Unemployed and of the State Emergency Committee. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed the archbishop chairman of the National Longshoremen's Arbitration Board in 1934.

In 1935, his health having begun to fail, he resigned his see. He retired to Rome, where he resided for the next nine years at the Villa San Francesco. Hanna died in Rome shortly before his eighty-fourth birthday; his remains were subsequently returned to San Francisco for interment in Holy Cross Cemetery.

Achievements

• Edward Joseph Hanna went down in history as a prominent clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church. He was also key to the founding of St. Joseph's Seminary in Mountain View, California, and it was considered "the jewel of his accomplishments. " Among many honors, he had received in 1935 the American Hebrew Medal, presented annually to the person most eminent in promoting better understanding between Christians and Jews. Archbishop Hanna High School was named in his honor. In 1934 he received an honorary Doctor of Law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Works

More photos

• book

  • An address

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • IN HARVEST FIELDS BY SUNSET SHORES: The Work of the Sisters of Notre Dame on the Pacific Coast, 1851 - 1926.

    (No Dust Jacket. Blue cloth boards edge worn. Corners bump...)

  • book

  • book

  • Remarks of His Grace Most Rev. Edward J. Hanna D.D., Archbishop of San Francisco, on the occasion of the laying of the cornerstones of Montgomery ... Clara, Santa Clara, Calif., March 19, 1924

Religion

A progressive theologian who sought to relate Catholic doctrine to contemporary historical and critical thought, Hanna became embroiled in a painful controversy. In several articles published during the years 1905-1907 he discussed such disputed points of doctrine as the completeness of Christ's human knowledge and the procedure for absolution of sins, examining them in the light of both tradition and historical development, and surveying heterodox arguments. In one of his essays he suggested that Catholic dogma had developed in stages, and that man's understanding of dogma was relative. Hanna did not, however, accept the position of the loosely organized Modernist movement within the Church, which held that the truth of dogma itself was relative. A Papal encyclical of 1907 condemned Modernism.

Personality

Hanna's personality was exceptionally attractive. Students and colleagues found him unfailingly companionable, kindly, and considerate.

Connections

Hanna never married.

Father:

Edward Hanna

Mother:

Anne (Clark) Hanna

References

• The History of the Mexican-American People: Revised Edition (From the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and)