Episcopacy
On May 10, 1825, Fenwick was appointed the second Bishop of Boston, Massachusetts, by Pope Leo XII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following November 1 from Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal, with Bishops John England and Henry Conwell serving as co-consecrators, at the Cathedral of Baltimore.
In 1827, Bishop Fenwick opened Boston College in the basement of his cathedral and took to the personal instruction of the city's youth. His efforts to attract other Jesuits to the faculty were hampered both by Boston's distance from the center of Jesuit activity at the time in Maryland and by suspicion on the part of the city's Protestant elite. Relations with Boston's civic leaders worsened such that, when a Jesuit faculty was finally secured in 1843, Fenwick decided to leave the Boston school and instead opened the College of the Holy Cross 45 miles west of the city in central Massachusetts where he felt the Jesuits could operate with greater autonomy.
He died on August 11, 1846 at the age of 63.
Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, Massachusetts is named in his honor.
Read more about this topic: Benedict Joseph Fenwick