James Gibbons - Legacy

Legacy

President William Taft honored Gibbons for his contributions at his 1911 golden jubilee celebration. In 1917, President Theodore Roosevelt hailed Gibbons as the most venerated, respected, and useful citizen in America.

In his later years he was seen as the public face of Roman Catholicism in the United States, and on his death was widely mourned. He is famous for his support of the labor movement in the United States, and for the numerous schools named after him. Mencken, who reserved his harshest criticism for Christian ministers, wrote, in 1921 after the Gibbons' death, "More presidents than one sought the counsel of Cardinal Gibbons: he was a man of the highest sagacity, a politician in the best sense, and there is no record that he ever led the Church into a bog or up a blind alley. He had Rome against him often, but he always won in the end, for he was always right."

In 1932, sculptor Leo Lentelli created and installed the The James Cardinal Gibbons Memorial Statue in Washington, D.C.