Richard Gilmour was a Scottish-born prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Served as Bishop of Cleveland in 1872 - 1891. Gilmour’s era saw an increase in churches and in priests as well as a relative increase in the number of charitable institutions.
Background
Richard Gilmour was born on September 28, 1824, in Glasgow, Scotland, of covenanting parents, John and Marian (Callender) Gilmour, who emigrated to Pictou, Nova Scotia, in 1829 but soon settled as farmers near Cumbola, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
Education
While attending the village school, Richard, influenced by Irish associates, turned toward Catholicism. About 1840, he was studying Latin and Greek under Father Patrick Rafferty of Fairmount and two years later he entered the Cathq|lic Church with the approval of his mother, who afterward followed in his foot-steps as finally did also his father.
In 1843, Gilmour entered the seminary at Pittsburgh from which in 1846, he transferred to Mount St. Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, Maryland. Here in 1848, he received the master’s degree.
Career
On completion of his theological studies was ordained August 30, 1852, by Bishop Purcell, who assigned him to a church at Portsmouth, Ohio, from which he attended a number of missions. In 1857, he was promoted to the rectorship of St. Patrick’s Church, Cincinnati, where he built a school and became aggressively interested in parochial education.
Called to a professorship in Mount St. Mary’s of the West, Cincinnati (1868), he had taught for only a year when he was assigned to St. Joseph’s Church, Dayton. Hereby prudent management he quelled racial disorders and blotted out a deficit.
This facility for compromising differences between Irish, German, and French peoples and their pastors led the bishops of the Cincinnati province to nominate him to the See of Cleveland where racial strife had tormented Amadeus Rappe into resignation.
Gilmour was named bishop by Rome, February 15, 1872, and was consecrated by Archbishop Purcell on April 14.
The Bishop answered attacks in kind in the Cleveland Press or in his own organ, the Catholic Universe, founded in 1874, which under the editorship of Manly Tello developed into a leading Catholic weekly paper.
With the aid of the Catholic Central Association (1875 - 93), Gilmour won religious freedom for prisoners in penal institutions, 1875, and, by appealing a case through various courts until the state supreme court reaffirmed a previous satisfactory decision, the exemption of Catholic school properties from local taxation.
His interest in Catholic education was evidenced by the compilation of a Bible History (1869), and a series of readers, a primer, and a spelling-book (187489), which went through a number of editions.
A prominent figure in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, Gilmour insisted on being accredited as a representative of the hierarchy as a check upon Bishops Moore and Dwenger, whom he suspected of being too weak to obtain papal approval of the Council’s Acta et Decreta.
When Rome did approve of this legislation, Gilmour claimed considerable credit for defending the independence of the American hierarchy. Never strong of body, he succumbed in St. Augustine, Florida, while on a health-seeking visit, and was buried in Cleveland with a eulogy by Bishop McQuaid, with whose views he had been in harmony.
Religion
Somewhat suspicious of the religious, Gilpin insisted that the property of charitable institutions supported by the diocese be held in episcopal hands, which insistence resulted in appeals by the religious to Rome.
Views
While his attitude as expressed in an address on “The Irish Question” satisfied conservatives, Gilpin was unnecessarily bitter in condemnation of the local units of the Irish Land League and unduly suspicious of harmless Irish societies and their organ, the Celtic Index. In his hostility to the Catholic Knight, organ of the Knights of St. John, he actually made mere subscription a reserved offense, and thus finally forced Joseph J. Greeves to sell this paper as well as his Catholic Standard of Toledo (1893).
Personality
An aggressive man with the zeal of a convert, an able apologist, a virile writer, and a zealous upholder of episcopal prerogatives, Gilmour ruled his diocese with a strong hand and aroused some sectarian hostility in a locality which was still Puritan in tone.
His pastorals urging united Catholic action, construction of schools, and compulsory parochial school attendance embittered Edwin Cowles of the Cleveland Leader, whose prejudice was more highly colored by the conversion of his daughter.
A rigid disciplinarian, he had some trouble with pastors who were compelled to build schools; and, at least in the case of the removal of P. F. Quigley of Toledo, he found himself reversed by Rome.