Today in History: Slaveowning bishop appointed

It was a day like today.

John Philip Sousa, an American composer of Portuguese ancestry, was born on November 6, 1854. March music has never been the same since.

On this date in 1789, Pope Pius VI approved the election of Rev. John Carroll as the first Catholic archbishop of the United States. The clergy of the newly formed United States elected him in a 24 to 26 vote, and he was later ordained in a chapel of Lulworth Castle in Dorset, England. He is the only Catholic bishop to have been elected, rather than appointed by a pope.

A Jesuit, Carroll was also the founder of Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic university in the United States, and the Georgetown Preparatory School, the oldest Catholic day and boarding school in the United States. Both of these remain Jesuit institutions. His cousin was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who was to become the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. John Carroll's older brother, Daniel Carroll became one of only five men to sign both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.

Reflecting the times, Archbishop Carroll was a slaveowner who did not manumit his slave until his own death. While he favored emancipation of slaves by benevolent masters, he never advocated emancipation by law. Other Jesuits of the time also owned slaves.

The Christian church recalls on November 6 St. Leonard, a French nobleman who is considered the patron of prisoners. He died in 559 AD. According to tradition he built a retreat for himself in a forest near Limoges. One day, having found no water nearby, he dug a dry pit. Praying fervently, he saw it fill with water miraculously. Many other miracles were reported there and prisoners thereafter invoked him to be free of their fetters.

On this date in 1893 the world lost one of the luminaries of music, Russian composer Peter Tchaikosky who is most famous for his “Nutcracker” suite repeated as a ballet at Christmastide ever since.

Words of Wisdom: "If Moslemism (Islam) is a heresy, as Hilaire Belloc believes it to be, it is the only heresy that has never declined. Other have had a moment of vigor, then gone into doctrinal decay at the death of the leader, and finally evaporated in a vague social moment. Moslemism, on the contrary, has only had its first phase. There was never a time in which it declined, either in numbers, or in the devotion of its followers." - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in The World's First Love.