Background
Samuel was born on August 17, 1887 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. He was the son of Garrett Stritch and Catherine Malley. His father had emigrated from Ireland in the 1870's and was office manager of Sycamore Mills in Nashville.
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(A 1943 Novena (nine days of prayer) to the Infant Jesus o...)
A 1943 Novena (nine days of prayer) to the Infant Jesus of Prague, with the Imprimatur (Roman Catholic Church approval) of the then Archbishop of Chicago (elevated to the cardinalate by Pope Pius XII in 1946), Samuel Alphonsius Stritch (1887 - 1958). The Infant Jesus of Prague is a sixteenth century Roman Catholic wax-coated wooden statue of child Jesus holding a globus cruciger, located in the Carmelite Church of Our Lady Victorious in Mala Strana, Prague, Czech Republic. Pious legends state that the statue once belonged to Saint Teresa of Avila. In addition, the statue has also merited Papal recognition through Pope Leo XIII, who instituted the Sodality to the Infant Jesus of Prague in 1896. On 30 March 1913, Pope Saint Pius X further organized the Confraternity of the Infant Jesus of Prague. Pope Pius XI granted its first Canonical Coronation in September 1924 while Pope Benedict XVI granted its second coronation to the image as well as a spare ermine fur cape during his Apostolic visit to the Czech Republic in September 2009. A novena (from Latin: novem, meaning nine) is an act of religious pious devotion originating in ancient Christianity, often consisting of private or public prayers repeated for nine successive days in belief of obtaining special intercessory graces. Novenas are most often practiced in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as by communicants of the Anglican Church, Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church.
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Samuel was born on August 17, 1887 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. He was the son of Garrett Stritch and Catherine Malley. His father had emigrated from Ireland in the 1870's and was office manager of Sycamore Mills in Nashville.
Stritch was a precocious student, completing primary grades in his parish school at the age of ten and high school at fourteen. He received the B. A. from St. Gregory's Preparatory Seminary, Cincinnati, in 1904, then continued his preparation for the priesthood in Rome, residing at the North American College and taking classes at the College of Propaganda Fide. He received doctorates in both philosophy (1906) and theology (1910).
On May 21, 1910, with a special dispensation from Pope Pius X, Stritch was ordained a priest three months before his twenty-third birthday. He returned to Nashville that same year, served for a brief period as assistant in his home parish, and was then transferred to St. Patrick's Church in Memphis, where within a year he was named pastor. He was recalled to Nashville and appointed secretary to Bishop Thomas Byrne in 1916. The following year he was named chancellor of the diocese and supervisor of diocesan schools.
In November 1921, at the age of thirty-four, he was consecrated bishop of Toledo, the youngest bishop in the American hierarchy. Stritch remained in Toledo for nine years.
During his ten-year tenure he had three new high schools built, established four new colleges, encouraged the expansion of Catholic Youth Organization activities, and urged increased participation of the laity in the work of the Church through Catholic Action. He focused major attention during the 1930's on the needs of the poor, sharing his resources with less fortunate dioceses throughout the country, rescuing several of his parishes from financial failure, and undertaking annual fundraising campaigns for local charity.
"As long as two pennies are ours, " he often remarked, "one of them belongs to the poor. " Transferred to Chicago after the death of George Cardinal Mundelein and formally installed in March 1940, Stritch continued the same kinds of works he had emphasized in Toledo and Milwaukee.
In the field of Catholic Action, membership in the archdiocesan Holy Name Society quadrupled; the Cana Conference, a program of spiritual renewal for married and engaged couples, was established in 1944; and the Christian Family Movement, founded in Chicago that same year, soon expanded into more than ninety dioceses. The Young Christian Students, the Young Christian Workers, the Catholic Guild for the Blind, the Catholic Council on Working Life, and the Bishop's Resettlement Committee (to assist war refugees) were all established at Stritch's inspiration.
The number of persons assisted through Catholic Charities during his tenure increased from 34, 000 to more than 400, 000 annually. Concerned for minorities, Stritch encouraged the establishment of the Cardinal's Committee for the Spanish-Speaking, the St. Therese Chinese Catholic Mission, and the Catholic Interracial Council. Stritch twice served as chairman of the Administrative Board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, was vice-chancellor and chancellor of the Catholic Church Extension Society, and was chairman of the bishops' committee on Pope Pius XII's Peace Plan in 1941.
On February 18, 1946, he was elevated to the Sacred College of Cardinals by Pope Pius XII. After eighteen years as archbishop of Chicago, Stritch was called to Rome in early 1958 and appointed pro-prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the first American ever named to head a department of the Roman Curia. During the voyage to Rome, he suffered an occlusion of the major artery of his right arm and under went surgery for the removal of the arm shortly after his arrival.
He then suffered a stroke and died in Rome.
(A 1943 Novena (nine days of prayer) to the Infant Jesus o...)
(6" x 9.25". Proceedings of the annual conference. Texts o...)
Stritch spoke out against both Nazi and Communist tyranny, and championed the United Nations and American foreign aid through the Marshall Plan.
He was also an excellent financier and able administrator of the most populous Catholic diocese in the world. Traditional and even conservative in his theological views, he was permissive of innovations by others and was a defender of the rights of workers and minorities. Stritch spoke out against both Nazi and Communist tyranny, and championed the United Nations and American foreign aid through the Marshall Plan. In a city famed for its politicians, he remained nonpolitical. A man of sincere but unobtrusive piety, Stritch had a deep concern for the less fortunate, and was called by many the Cardinal of the Poor.
He had a gentle, kindly personality and a sincere interest in others. Stritch was short and, in his later years, slightly overweight.
He was never married.