An Irish Whirlwind in San Francisco

Today in 1925 marks the death of Father Peter Yorke, social activist and newspaper editor. Born in Galway in 1864, he was ordained in America and adopted by the Archdiocese of San Francisco. In those days Ireland had a surplus of priests, and it wasn’t unusual for a newly ordained Irish priest to be sent to another country that needed priests. In 1894, Yorke was appointed chancellor for the Archdiocese of San Francisco and named secretary to the archbishop. If that wasn’t enough, he was also editor of The Monitor, the archdiocesan newspaper. During the 1890’s he fought anti-Catholicism in San Francisco through public debates and newspaper exposés. During the city’s great Teamsters strike of 1901, he emerged as chief publicist for the unions. In doing so he put the San Francisco Church squarely on the side of labor. His Irish-oriented newspaper The Leader focused on politics, while his Textbooks of Religion applied the Baltimore Catechism to the local scene. Yorke was also superintendent of schools and helped organize the National Catholic Educational Association in 1904. A leader in the city’s Irish community, he support a free Irish state. As pastor of St. Peter’s parish, he introduced liturgical reforms that included congregational singing (something unusual at the time) and a children’s Mass. Much like the archbishop in Willa Cather’s novel, he died of having lived.