Background
Michael O'Connor was born on Semptember 27, 1810, near Cork, Ireland.
Michael O'Connor was born on Semptember 27, 1810, near Cork, Ireland.
MIchael O'Connor received his preliminary schooling in Cobh, County Cork, Ireland. At the age of fourteen years, he was sent to college in France and then to the Propaganda, Rome, where he was a fellow student of the later Cardinal Cullen of Dublin, F. P. Kenrick, and M. J. Spalding, and gained distinction in theology, languages, and mathematics. Ordained June 1, 1833, he was awarded a doctorate in divinity the following year.
After receiving a doctorate in divinity in 1834, Michael O'Connor then taught in the Propaganda and in the Irish College. Employed as a linguist, he became intimately acquainted with Gregory XVI. Returning to Ireland, he was a curate in Fermoy and chaplain of the Presentation Convent at Doneraile. About 1839 he accepted Bishop Kenrick's offer of the rectorship of the Seminary of St. Charles Borromeo, Philadelphia.
In addition to teaching, he found time to serve stations at Norristown and Westchester and to build St. Francis Xavier's Church in Fairmont.
Transferred to Pittsburgh as vicar-general and rector of St. Paul's Church, which had 4, 000 communicants (1841), he built a school and founded a Catholic literary institute (1843).
While he was in Rome petitioning that he be allowed to join the Society of Jesus, he was named first bishop of Pittsburgh at the request of the American bishops, and was consecrated in the Irish College by Cardinal Franzoni on Aug. 15, 1843.
Obtaining financial aid from the Leopold Verein, seminarians from Maynooth, and a colony of sisters of Our Lady of Mercy from Carlow, Bishop O'Connor returned to Pittsburgh in 1844 and inaugurated a period of diocesan development in keeping with the rapid growth of western Pennsylvania. Within a decade, when the diocese of Erie was carved from that of Pittsburgh, churches and chapels had increased from thirty-three to eighty-two, priests from sixteen to sixty-four, and communicants from 25, 000 to 50, 000, of whom one-third were Germans; Boniface Wimmer had established the foundation of his Abbey of St. Vincent's at Beatty; a chapel had been erected for colored people (1844); and The Catholic had been established (1844) as a diocesan organ. In addition many educational and philanthropic activities had been put into operation. A cathedral was completed in 1855, for which the bishop procured Pietro Gagliardi's "Crucifixion" when in Rome the previous year.
O'Connor brought the Passionist Order to the United States, with its establishment in Pittsburgh. During the Know-Nothing excitement, Bishop O'Connor courageously went his way, though he advised his priests to lay aside their clerical garb in order to avoid annoyances. On the division of the diocese, O'Connor, with characteristic self-effacement, accepted the poorer see of Erie (1853), and Rev. Joshua A. Young was named to Pittsburgh. As a result of popular demand, however, Bishop O'Connor returned to Pittsburgh and Young took Erie.
Worn out by his labors, O'Connor sought rest in a tour of Europe and Palestine (1856), and returned more determined than ever to change the mitre for the garb of the religious. Leaving his brother, Father James O'Connor, as administrator, he went to Rome with his petition in 1859, and the following year his resignation was accepted. He thereupon entered the Jesuit novitiate at Gorheim, Sigmaringen, in Germany, and two years later, December 23, 1862, made his solemn profession in Boston. After teaching for a year in Boston College, he was named socius to the provincial of Maryland, with residence at Loyola College, Baltimore.
Always interested in the negroes, he founded St. Francis Xavier Church in Baltimore, and even asked to be sent as a missionary among the slaves of Cuba. This request was denied. In 1871 he returned from a visit to England, with a group of Josephites who were dedicating themselves to the colored missions. Finally, after ten years as a Jesuit missionary during which he traveled from Maine to Louisiana, and into Cuba and Canada, he retired to Woodstock, Maryland, where on his death he was buried in the Community cemetery.
Michael O'Connor founded St. Francis Xavier Church in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia. In 1843, Michael O'Connor founded a diocese in Pittsburgh, comprising 33 churches, 14 priests, and about 25, 000 Catholics; a girls' academy, an orphan asylum, a chapel for African Americans, and the Pittsburgh Catholic and St. Michael's Seminary.
