Bishop Walsh of Maryknoll

Today in 1936 marks the death of Bishop James A. Walsh, co-founder and first superior general of the Maryknoll Fathers. Born in Cambridge in 1867, he studied at Boston College and Harvard before being ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston. Long interested in the missions, in 1903 Father Walsh was appointed Boston director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, a fundraising organization for the missions. In 1910 he and Father Thomas Price of North Carolina decided to start an American foreign mission society based on those already existing in Europe. In addition to money, they wanted to send Ameeircan missionaries overseas. In 1911 they founded the Catholic Foreign Society of America. The following year they founded their permanent headquarters in Ossining, New York, on a hilltop dedicated to the Virgin Mary (hence the name Maryknoll). In 1918, the Maryknollers began their first mission in Yeungkong, China. Other missions followed in Korea, Japan and the Philippines. For Walsh, a hallmark of Maryknoll had to be a respect for non-Christian cultures the missionaries encountered: “No single influence has injured the cause of worldwide evangelization so much as the attempts to force the habits of the West upon the peoples of the East.” He also supported a native clergy. In 1933 he was named titular bishop of Siene. (In this photo taken around the year 1914, he is seen in the center, back row. In the first row, second from left, is the future Bishop Francis X. Ford.) Note: there was also a Bishop James E. Walsh of Maryknoll who was imprisoned by the Chinese government for several years.