James Gibbons

James Gibbons (1834–1921) was an American Catholic prelate, Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 and a cardinal from 1886. Born in Baltimore and raised partly in Ireland, he was ordained in 1861, became the youngest bishop in the world as vicar apostolic of North Carolina in 1868, and later Bishop of Richmond. His book The Faith of Our Fathers (1876), a plain exposition of Catholic belief for Protestant readers, sold in the millions. As the leading American churchman of his age he defended the Knights of Labor at Rome, supported the Catholic University of America and argued that the Church and the American republic were natural allies.