John Hennessy (archbishop) - Bishop and Archbishop of Dubuque

Bishop and Archbishop of Dubuque

On April 24, 1866 Pope Pius IX appointed Hennessy as the third bishop of Dubuque. He was consecrated and installed bishop in St. Raphael's Cathedral on September 30, 1866 by Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick of Saint Louis. The principal co-consecrators were Bishops John Martin Henni of Milwaukee and James Duggan of Chicago.

Bishop Hennessy attended the First Vatican Council in Rome from 1869–70. He also took a prominent role in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884.

When Hennessy became bishop, the territory of the diocese encompassed the entire state of Iowa. He became convinced, as had Bishop Smyth before him, that the diocese should be divided in two. Archbishop Kenrick and the other bishops of the province advocated spliting Iowa into two with a diocese in the east (Dubuque) and one in the west (Council Bluffs). Others, including the Revs. J.A.M. Pelamourgues and Andrew Trevis, envisioned a new See with Davenport as its headquarters. On May 8, 1881 Pope Leo XIII established the new Diocese of Davenport. Davenport was chosen because of the income the new bishop would receive from the commercial properties owned by the church on Church Square (St. Anthony's Church) in Davenport. The Dubuque Diocese now covered roughly the northern half of Iowa.

An advocate of Catholic education, Hennessy had schools and convents established in all of the large cities in Iowa. He founded St. Joseph's College (now Loras College) in Dubuque on September 8, 1873. Some Catholics in the diocese opposed the expansion of Catholic schools for economic reasons, and because they felt it was an attack on public school education.

During his tenure as bishop and archbishop, Hennessy oversaw the expansion of the diocese even though this was a period of anti-Catholic sentiments in Dubuque and across the United States. When he arrived in Dubuque, there were 27 priests, 30 churches, two schools and seven sisters. By 1891 there were 203 priests, 319 churches, 615 sisters, and over 135 parochial schools with 16,257 students. This was after the diocese had lost almost half of its territory ten years before.

On June 15, 1893, Pope Leo XIII elevated the Diocese of Dubuque to the status of an archdiocese, and Bishop Hennessy became the first Archbishop of Dubuque. The Ecclesial Province of Dubuque included the dioceses of Davenport, Omaha, Wichita and Sioux Falls.

Archbishop Hennessy died in Dubuque on March 4, 1900. He was a man of some means for his time as he left an estate of $700,000. It was divided among several Catholic charities.

In the last years of his life, Hennessy requested that a mortuary chapel be built in St. Raphael's Cathedral. This new chapel was built in the basement of the cathedral and completed two years after his death. The remains of Bishop's Mathias Loras, Clement Smyth, and Hennessy were brought to the cathedral and buried in this new chapel.