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John Joseph Keane was born on September 12, 1839 in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, the son of Hugh and Fannie Keane. There were two other sons and two daughters in the family, but the four died at an early age. At the time of the famine in Ireland in 1846 Keane was brought to Baltimore by his parents.
Keane's early education was obtained at the schools of the Christian Brothers. At seventeen, against the advice of his parents, who desired that he enter college, he became a clerk in a drygoods store where he remained for three years. During that period he spent much of his leisure time studying Latin, Greek, and history. At twenty he entered St. Charles' College, Ellicott City, Maryland, where he completed the six years' course in half time; in 1862 he entered St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1866.
In 1866 Keane was appointed curate at St. Patrick's Church in Washington, where he served until 1878 when he was appointed bishop of Richmond, Virginia. At one time he thought of entering the community of Paulist Fathers, but was dissuaded by Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore. An active figure at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 he did much there to promote the project of a Catholic University and was made a member of the board charged with preliminary steps to that end. When the University was founded at Washington in 1889, he was named its first rector, for an indefinite term, and was made titular bishop of Jasso.
In 1896, when the policy of limiting the term of the rectorship was introduced, Pope Leo XIII offered him appointment to an archbishopric in the United States or to two powerful Congregations in Rome, those of Propaganda and of Studies. He went to Rome in 1897 and was made Archbishop of Damascus, Canon of St. John Lateran, and was placed on the two Congregations named. He remained in Rome for two years, during which time he declined to consider appointment as archbishop of Portland, Oregon. At the invitation of the trustees of the Catholic University he returned to the United States in 1899 to work for its endowment. He was appointed archbishop of Dubuque in July 1900, and remained in active service there until 1911 when he resigned his See on account of failing health, although he served as vicar general under his successor. Throughout his entire active career he was intimately associated with Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland.
He was an active figure in the Parliament of Religions at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, in 1893. Distinguished appearance, simplicity of style, directness, lucid exposition, fluency, and imagination gave him extraordinary power as an orator. He was as effective in French as in English. An address in French at the International Scientific Congress of Catholics in Brussels in 1894 was noted widely in the European press as an example of finished oratory. Few of his addresses were put into permanent form. He contributed articles to the American Catholic Quarterly Review (April 1888, April, July 1890, July 1891) and to the Catholic University Bulletin (July 1896). Maurice Francis Egan compiled a volume of extracts from his sermons and addresses under the title Onward and Upward (1902). Keane published one volume of spiritual reflections, Emmanuel (1915), but it was written when his powers were failing and is not in his best style. His papers, The Providential Mission of Pius IX (1878), and The Providential Mission of Leo XIII (1888), are more nearly representative of his style and scholarship.
During his tenure in Archdiocese of Dubuque, Keane took a prominent part in the Catholic Young Men's National Union and in the Total Abstinence Union of North America. He was also instrumental in encouraging postgraduate courses and ongoing education for priests, and doubled the faculty and buildings of St. Joseph's (now Loras) College.
As a young man Keane was far from robust. In spite of very poor vision which made sustained reading a severe effort, he was a man of varied and superior erudition. His alert mind, constant industry, remarkable powers of assimilation, philosophic temper, and broad sympathies gave him singular competence and distinction, while his charm of personality, spirit of self-effacement, practical charity, and spiritual concept of personal and social life gave him universal appeal. His interests ranged from the scholarly interpretation of the Catholic Church to the American mind--as illustrated by his lectures at Yale and Harvard--to education, civic welfare, the suppression of the saloon, and the enlightenment of the Negro.
