Priesthood
On May 29, 1919, Hurley was ordained a priest by Bishop John Patrick Farrelly at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. His first assignment was as an assistant pastor at St. Columba's Church in Youngstown, where he remained for four years. In 1923, he received an interim assignment to St. Philomena's Church in East Cleveland. Later that year, he was appointed to Immaculate Conception Church in Cleveland.
In 1927, Hurley accepted an offer to serve as secretary to Archbishop Edward Mooney, his former professor at St. Mary's Seminary and now Apostolic Delegate to India. He later accompanied Mooney to Japan when he was transferred to the Apostolic Delegation there in 1933. Following Mooney's return to the United States as Bishop of Rochester, Hurley served as chargé d'affaires of the Apostolic Delegation in Japan from 1933 to 1934. During this period, he helped resolve a conflict that arose between Japan and Canada after the newspapers in Kagoshima accused Canadian Catholic missionaries of conducting spying operations on the fortified islands off Kagoshima Bay.
Hurley was named a Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius XI in 1934. That same year, he became the first American to serve as an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State. During his work at the Secretariat of State, he acted as a liaison between the Holy See and the American Catholic hierarchy. He thus played an influential role in shaping the Vatican's policy towards Father Charles Coughlin, a controversial Michigan priest and radio personality.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Patrick Hurley
Famous quotes containing the word priesthood:
“The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years.”
—Bishop John Spong (b. 1931)
“The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognised as love at all.”
—Iris Murdoch (b. 1919)