Archbishop Joseph P. Hurley (1894-1967)

Born in Cleveland, Joseph Patrick Hurley was ordained a priest in 1919. After a few years of parish work, he was named secretary to Bishop Edward Mooney, apostolic delegate to India. (Mooney had Cleveland connections.) From 1934 to 1940, he worked in Rome as an attaché in the Papal Secretariat of State. In 1940, he was named Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida. During his 27 years as bishop, he presided over an enormous increase in Florida’s Catholic population. He was famous for his real estate savvy. He used to fly over undeveloped land in an airplane, pointing out where he wanted new parishes. A wealthy real estate broker once was asked how he had become so successful. “Simple,” he said. “I used to follow Archbishop Hurley around. Wherever he bought property, I bought it next door.” Hurley built over a hundred parishes, most of them with a school. In Florida, he is remembered as a “tireless visionary who built the Florida church.” Bishop Hurley was famous for his anti-Nazi stance and his interventionist stance in the years before America entered World War II. After the war, he was named a papal nuncio to Yugoslavia and was named an honorary Archbishop in 1949.