Blazon of arms: parted per fess Argent and Vert a stag trippant proper between three trefoils slipped counterchanged of the field.
SOURCE/NOTES & CREDITS: Illustration for background and blazon, plate IV and some text pp 85-86 from “Irish Families” by Edward MacLysaght, Dublin, Hodges, Figgis & Co., Ltd. 1957. Additional text from the Wikipedia website on William Henry O’Connell.
Cardinal William Henry O’Connell on 8 Dec 1859 was an American cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Boston from 1907 until his death in 1944, and was made a cardinal in 1911.
William O’Connell was born on December 8, 1859, in Lowell, MA to John and Bridget (nĂ©e Farrelly) O’Connell, who were Irish immigrants. The youngest of eleven children, he had six brothers and four sisters.
O’Connell was ordained to the priesthood by Lucido Cardinal Parocchi on June 8, 1884. He then served as curate of St. Joseph Church in Medford until 1886, when he became curate of St. Joseph Church in the West End of Boston. Returning to Rome, O’Connell was named rector of the North American College in 1895. He was raised to the rank of Domestic Prelate by His Holiness in 1897.
On February 8, 1901, O’Connell was appointed the third Bishop of Portland, Maine, by Pope Leo XIII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following May 19 from Francesco Cardinal Satolli, with Archbishops Edmund Stonor and Rafael Merry del Val, at the Lateran Basilica.
He was appointed as the second Archbishop of Boston on 30 Aug 1907. On 27 Nov 1911, O’Connell became Boston’s first Archbishop to be named a Cardinal by Pope St. Pius X.
O’Connell favored a highly centralized diocesan organization, encompassing schools, hospitals, and asylums in addition to parishes. He wielded immense political and social power in Massachusetts, earning him the nickname “Number One”.
Cardinal O’Connell died on 22 April 1944, age 84.
We have included Cardinal O’Connell here as he wrote the Preface on pages xix-xx to “True Devotion to Mary” by St. Louis de Montfort on 8 Dec 1940 in our edition published by TAN Books in 2010.
The artwork is an interpretation of John Hamilton Gaylor
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