John Heenan (cardinal)
English prelate of the Roman Catholic Church (1905–1975)
John Carmel Heenan (26 January 1905 – 7 November 1975) was a senior-ranking English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1963 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1965.
Biography
Early life and ordination
John Heenan was born in Ilford, Essex, the youngest of four children of Irish parents John and Anne Heenan (née Pilkington). He auditioned for Westminster Cathedral Choir School at age 9, but Sir Richard Terry rejected him for his "metallic voice". Heenan studied at St. Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, Ushaw College in Durham, and the Venerable English College in Rome before being ordained to the priesthood on 6 July 1930. He then did pastoral work in Brentwood until 1947, at which time he became Superior of the Catholic Missionary Society of England and Wales. In this position, Heenan criticized the United States for being too concerned about communism, and not enough about spiritual matters. By this time he had published a biography (1943) of Cardinal Hinsley, Archbishop of Westminster, who had recently died.
Bishop
On 27 January 1951, Heenan was appointed the fifth Bishop of Leeds by Pope Pius XII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 12 March from Archbishop William Godfrey, Apostolic Delegate to Great Britain, with Joseph McCormack, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, and John Petit, Bishop of Menevia, serving as co-consecrators.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Heenan (cardinal)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.