From Wikipedia: James Gibbons (July 23, 1834 – March 24, 1921) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Apostolic Vicar of North Carolina from 1868 to 1872, Bishop of Richmond from 1872 to 1877, and as ninth Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until his death in 1921. Gibbons was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1886.
Gibbons was consecrated a bishop August 16,1868 at the Baltimore Cathedral. The principal consecrator was Archbishop Martin J. Spalding. He was 34 years of age, serving as the first Apostolic Vicar of North Carolina. He attended the First Vatican Council, where he voted in favor of defining the dogma of papal infallibility. In 1872 he was named Bishop of Richmond by Pope Pius IX. In 1877, Gibbons was appointed Archbishop of Baltimore, the premier apostolic see in the United States. During his 44 years as Baltimore's archbishop, Gibbons became one of the most recognizable Catholic figures in the country. He defended the rights of labor, and helped convince Pope Leo XIII to give his consent to labor unions. In 1886, he was appointed to the College of Cardinals, becoming only the second cardinal in the history of the United States, after Archbishop John McCloskey of New York.
On March 3, 1868, Gibbons was appointed the first Apostolic Vicar of North Carolina and Titular Bishop of Adramyttium by Pope Pius IX.[5] He received his episcopal consecration on the following August 15 from Archbishop Spalding, with Bishops Patrick Neeson Lynch and Michael Domenec, CM, serving as co-consecrators. This ordination, like his priestly ordination, also occurred at the Baltimore Cathedral. At age 34, he was one of the youngest Catholic bishops in the world and was known as "the boy bishop."
His vicariate, the entire state of North Carolina, had fewer than seven hundred Catholics. In his first four weeks alone in North Carolina, Gibbons traveled almost a thousand miles, visiting towns and mission stations and administering the sacraments. He also befriended many Protestants, who greatly outnumbered Catholics in the state, and preached at their churches. Gibbons made a number of converts, but finding the apologetical works available inadequate for their needs, he determined to write his own; Faith of Our Fathers[1] would prove the most popular apologetical work written by an American Catholic.[4]
Gibbons became a popular American religious figure, gathering crowds for his sermons on diverse topics that could apply to Christianity as a whole. He was an acquaintance of every president from Andrew Johnson to Warren G. Harding and an adviser to several of them.
From 1869 to 1870 Gibbons attended the First Vatican Council in Rome. Aged 35 years and 4 months when the Council opened, he was the youngest American bishop present by a mere six days (the second youngest was Jeremiah Francis Shanahan, Bishop of Harrisburg) and the second youngest in all (Basilio Nasser, Melkite Bishop of Baalbek, Lebanon, was more than five years his junior, aged just 30 years and 3 months at opening). Gibbons voted in favor of the doctrine of papal infallibility. He assumed the additional duties of Apostolic Administrator for the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, in January 1872.
Gibbons was later named the fourth Bishop of Richmond on July 30, 1872. He was installed as Bishop on October 20, and served there until May 1877, when he was named Coadjutor Archbishop of Baltimore. He succeeded as Archbishop that October on the death of Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley.[4] For the first twenty years of his administration, he had no auxiliary bishop, and thus through the repeated confirmation tours to all parts of his jurisdiction, he came to know the priests and people very well.
Coat of arms of Cardinal Gibbons
In 1886 Gibbons was created a Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, becoming the second American, after John McCloskey, to attain that rank in the Catholic Church. Gibbons advocated the creation of The Catholic University of America and served as its first Chancellor[1] upon its creation in 1887. He was the first American cardinal to participate in a papal conclave, in 1903. He would have participated in the 1914 conclave but he arrived late.[6]
In 1899 Pope Leo XIII sent Gibbons an encyclical, known by its first words in Latin Testem benevolentiae nostrae ("Concerning New Opinions, Virtue, Nature and Grace, with Regard to Americanism"), condemning what was termed "Americanism".[7] This was prompted by the preface of the French translation of the Life of Isaac Hecker,
wherein the translator attributed certain opinions to the late Father Isaac Hecker. Members of the hierarchy in the United States assured the Pope that the opinions expressed were not those of Father Hecker, who had never countenanced any deviation from, or minimizing of, Catholic doctrines.
During World War I Cardinal Gibbons was instrumental in the establishment of the National Catholic War Council, and afterwards supported the League of Nations. Although initially opposed to women's suffrage, when the nineteenth amendment passed Gibbons urged women to exercise their right to vote "...not only as a right but as a strict social duty."[6]
James Cardinal Gibbons died on March 24, 1921 at the age of 86.