Washington’s First Archbishop

Michael Joseph Curley (October 12 1879 – May 16 1947), was the 10th Archbishop of Baltimore and first Archbishop of Washington in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. Curley was born in Athlone, Co. Westmeath, Ireland, one of eleven children of Michael Curley and Mary Ward. He was educated by the Marist Brothers and, in 1896,he entered the Apostolic School at Mungret College in Limerick. Curley went on to graduate from the Royal University of Dublin before attending the Urban College of the Propaganda Fide in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1903 and moved to Florida in the U.S. in 1904. Father Curley was named the first resident pastor of DeLand, Florida. After only ten years as a parish priest he was consecrated bishop of St. Augustine, Florida in 1914. At age 34, he was the youngest Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. After becoming a bishop, Curley wrote home to Athlone saying, “I leave it to you to bring it home to your people that their place is at home with their shoulders to the wheel to give us a greater and better Ireland. This is the message I want to leave you, not that I love America less, but because I love Ireland more.” In 1921, Curley left St. Augustine to become the 10th Archbishop of Baltimore, following the death of Archbishop James Cardinal Gibbons. His arrival on November 30, 1921 came eight months to the day following the death of Cardinal Gibbons and was described as “one of the greatest welcomes ever tendered a new citizen of Baltimore.” Becoming archbishop of Baltimore was a great honor for Curley and for his family in Ireland. In 1932, he celebrated the High Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park at the close of the Eucharistic Congress. It was at this time that John McCormack, Curley’s fellow parishioner and school friend from Athlone, gave his immortal rendering of Panis Angelicus. In July, 1939, Pope Pius XII separated the City of Washington from the Archdiocese of Baltimore and created the joint Archdiocese of Baltimore-Washington. Curley, still serving as archbishop of Baltimore, concurrently became the first Archbishop of Washington, D.C..Remembered primarily as an educationalist, he founded 66 new schools. After his death in 1947, aged 67, he was buried in the Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore. After his death, separate Archbishops were appointed for Baltimore and Washington.