Background
Francis J. Haas was born on March 18, 1889, in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Peter F. and Mary O'Day Haas. His father, the son of German immigrants, operated a small grocery store. Mary Haas died, when Francis Haas was fourteen years old.
https://www.amazon.com/Concept-Ethics-History-Economics/dp/1258291576?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1258291576
https://www.amazon.com/Society-Introduction-Sociology-Ph-D-Francis/dp/B000H28Y8G?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000H28Y8G
https://www.amazon.com/Shop-collective-bargaining-determination-industry/dp/B0030T1H3W?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0030T1H3W
Francis J. Haas was born on March 18, 1889, in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Peter F. and Mary O'Day Haas. His father, the son of German immigrants, operated a small grocery store. Mary Haas died, when Francis Haas was fourteen years old.
Haas was educated in parochial and public grammar schools and in Racine High School and entered Saint Francis Seminary in Milwaukee in 1904.
From 1919 to 1922 he pursued studies for a doctor's degree in sociology at the Catholic University of America, where he was deeply influenced by the social justice teachings of Father John A. Ryan.
Haas was ordained a priest for the archdiocese of Milwaukee on June 11, 1913. He served as an assistant in Holy Rosary parish in Milwaukee until 1915 and was then transferred to the faculty of St. Francis Seminary. He returned to the faculty of St. Francis Seminary in 1922 to teach social sciences and literature and in 1931 was appointed director of the National Catholic School of Social Service in Washington.
Haas began his government work in June 1933, when President Roosevelt appointed him to the Labor Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration.
During the next twenty years, Haas probably held more important government positions than any other priest of his time. He was a member of the National Labor Board in 1933 - 1934, the National Recovery Administration's General Code Authority in 1934 - 1935, the Labor Policies Board of the Works Progress Administration from 1935 to 1938, and the Wisconsin Labor Relations Board from 1937 to 1939 and was special commissioner of conciliation for the Department of Labor from 1935 to 1943. He was chairman of the President's Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1943, served on the President's Committee on Civil Rights in 1947, and was chairman of the Michigan Advisory Committee on Civil Rights in 1949. His most significant government work during this period, however, was in the field of labor mediation. In his twenty years of government service, he assisted in the resolution of more than 1, 500 industrial disputes, including the violent Minneapolis Teamsters' strike of 1934 and the Allis-Chalmers disputes of 1938 and 1941.
Although government assignments absorbed much of his time throughout the 1930's, Haas also continued his priestly and academic work. He was the author of approximately a hundred books, pamphlets, and articles, chiefly on the social teachings of the Catholic Church and in defense of the rights of workers to unrestricted unionization, higher wages, and better conditions of work. He served as director of the National Catholic School of Social Service until the fall of 1935, was rector of Saint Francis Seminary in Milwaukee from 1935 to 1937, and was appointed first dean of the newly established School of Social Science at the Catholic University of America in the fall of 1937.
He was elevated to the rank of domestic prelate with the title of right reverend monsignor in 1937 and was appointed bishop of Grand Rapids by Pope Pius XII in October 1943. The diocese of Grand Rapids at that time included twenty-nine counties of western Michigan, covering 16, 000 square miles and numbering 77, 000 Catholics. In the ten years of his episcopacy, Haas built twenty-four churches and eighteen schools and saw the number of Catholics in his diocese increase to 122, 000.
Haas established the Catholic Service Bureau in 1946 to oversee the social work of the diocese, erected a Catholic Information Center in 1947 to promote a better understanding of the Catholic faith, established the Western Michigan Catholic as the diocesan newspaper in 1948, inaugurated an annual three-day Diocesan Congress in 1948 to provide speakers and educational workshops on topics of current interest to the Catholics of his diocese, and expanded the Central Catholic High School system in Sheboygan, Muskegon, and Grand Rapids. A series of heart attacks caused his death on August 29, 1953, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the age of sixty-four.
Bishop Francis Joseph Haas devoted his life to the Catholic Church and the welfare of workers.
Quotations: "I've been at it so long, that I can sense the trouble in a labor dispute just like an old family doctor who comes into the sick room, sniffs the air, and says "measles". "
Francis J. Haas was president of the Catholic Association for International Peace from 1929 to 1931.
Francis J. Haas was an impressive man physically - six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and with a full head of sandy hair that earned him the nickname "Red" - an epithet later adopted by critics of his "socialistic" views on labor. Haas had a spontaneous warmth and ready smile, a deep and well-disciplined voice, and was in great demand as a speaker before labor and civil rights conventions. After a serious bout with tuberculosis as a teenager, he enjoyed good health throughout his life.
