The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots : The Life and Ministry of Archbishop Philip M. Hannan

In early October, 1965, Archbishop Philip M. Hannan arrived at New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy. Where many may have seen hopeless despair, Archbishop Hannan saw hopeful opportunity. He immediately began rebuilding the local Catholic Church and creating a network of social services, ministering to the most vulnerable in the community.  

Archbishop Hannan's ministry in New Orleans was rooted in his family upbringing and priestly formation, as well as his exprience as a military chaplain. While his personality endeared him to presidents, heads of state and celebrities, it was his spirit of charity that endeared him to the people of New Orleans and beyond.

The exhibit commemorates the extraordinary life of a man who lived to its fullest his vocation to the priesthood. His legacy lives on in the people he served and the lives he touched.

Archbishop Hannans own words are used to narrate the exhibit.  His words are taken from his memoir, The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots : Memoir of an Extraordinary Life, From Combat, to Camelot, to Katrina.

Seminary Days

• May 20, 1913. Birth of Philip Matthew Hannan to Patrick Francis Hannan and Lilian Louise Keefe in Washington D.C.

 

• September 1931. Entered the seminary of St. Charles College in Catonsville, MD.

 

• 1936-1939. Continued his seminary studies at the North American College in Rome.

 

• December 8, 1939. Ordained to the priesthood in Rome and celebrated his first mass at the Greek Chapel of the Catacombs of St. Callistus.

 

• May 1940. Begins his priesthood in America at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Baltimore, MD.

   

I experienced only a keen sense of exultation that I was coming to grips with my choice in life, resolving that most difficult of possibilities: the priesthood.

The North American College in Rome was located in a 400-year-old building....the view of Rome from the main building was spectacular. Though peaceful, the feeling among the Italian populace was anything but serene.  Adolf Hitler, in the midst of his rabid campaign to conquer the world, had convinced Benito Mussolini, following "jackal-like," to share in the spoils of his conquests.
 

First Mass as Father Philip Matthew Hannan

I celebrated my first Mass on December 9, 1939, in the Greek Chapel of the Catacombs of St. Callistus ...celebrating Mass there was both thrilling and humbling. Today that is no longer allowed.  In fact, I was turned down, to my great disappointment, when I pleaded with the Benedictine Sisters, the caretakers of the Catacombs of St. Callistus, to celebrate Mass there during my 60th year of ordination in 1999.

Chaplaincy School

 

 On December 7, 1941, the Japanese suddenly attacked Pearl Harbor, reigniting my desire to        be an Army chaplain.  

On a brisk day just after Christmas -- December 28, 1942 --  I left Washington to report to the U.S. Army Chaplain School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The moto of the Chaplain School was Pro Deo et Patria ("For God and Country"), a simple statement that would define my life for the next three years.

In the field

   

My job was to give soldiers a reason to live.  When you are seriously wounded, it is much easier to die than it is to live. Living involves pain and suffering, and I tried to get the wounded to make the most extreme effort of their lives to keep fighting and undergo treatment.

We left Epinal [France] bound for Berlin in the first week of August 1945 -- just as the atomic bombs were being dropped on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) thus ending the war in the Pacific. Consequently, my immediate reaction was the hope that it would force the Japanese emporer to capitulate (as he did on August 15).  The 82nd at that time was scheduled to be deployed in January 1946 to the Pacific Theater -- a prospect no one favored since the military estimated two million casualties if that conflict continued.

 As the Queen Mary majestically pulled into the dock in New York, a noisy display of sound and water spray filled the harbor as boats, tugboats, and pleasuer craft gave the Queen Mary a royal boisterous reception.  

The parade for the 82nd down Fifth Avenue was bittersweet.  Though the frenetic enthusiasm and blizzard of paper swirling around us was a big thrill, it was tempered when we marched past the special, reserved-seating section for wounded paratroupers, many in wheelchairs and recliners. Next to them, the reserved section for Gold Star mothers, unable to cheer their own sons, wept as they waved to us. 
 

Duren, Germany

Looking down at the blood all over my boots and clothing, I felt a surge of gratitude well up inside, a thanks for being in my position.  "I am where I should be," I said to myself. "This is what I was ordained for. May God give me the grace to do what I should."

Concentration Camps

I helped carry victims of the concentration camp in Wobbelin, a village near Ludwigslust, Germany.

Walking into the barracks, we were immediately assailed by a suffocating stench, leading to the shocking panorama of hundreds of half-alive, emaciated prisoners, dressed in tattered, utterly soiled uniforms, shuffling amongst clumps of corpses...Never in my life had I experienced -- nor will I ever again -- such an incomprehensibly barbaric insult to the human spirit.
 

Washington Years

In the spring of 1956, Archbishop O'Boyle told me that the Apostolic Delegate [Archbishop Amleto Giovanni Cicognani] wished to see me. To my complete surprise he informed me that my name had been submitted as a candidate for the episcopacy, to serve as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Washington...I accepted the appointment with very deep gratitude.  

A person can never say he is completely prepard to be a bishop, but he can say he is sufficiently prepared to respond to an appointment to be bishop. I was ready to respond to the appointment.

The date for the ordination was the feast of St. Augustine, August 28, 1956.

    

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Though I was immensely privileged to have been his trusted friend and consultant, even more meaningful was having had a priest's relationship with the President. God knows, we didn't always agree on religious matters. But he never tried to change or twist my decisions. Flashing back to that whirl-wind presidential campaign, I smiled, recalling his long, involved questions on Church policy...my, undoubtedly, equally long-winded answers which he always accepted. We might argue like the devil but no verbal skirmish was ever disrespectful of either of our identities. Oh, how I would miss that intellectual parrying -- miss my friend, Jack. (Even now, a half century later, I still marvel that God saw fit to bring John Kennedy and me into each other's lives at that particular moment in America's history. In the end, I have only the most inexpressible wonder and gratitude for having enjoyed such a remarkable relationship with such a remarkable man -- one of America's truly great leaders.)

 

The Kennedy Family

Dealing with the President usually meant dealing with Bobby.  And Jack's younger sibling ...was his brother's polar opposite. Whereas JFK's enemies frequently viewed his religion as more cultural than religious, the same could not be said for Bobby, who devoutly practiced his Catholic faith, which I credited, in large part, to his wife, Ethel, who never missed Mass. Though others were too often critical of Bobby, my own experience with him was first rate. Whenever I needed him, he was there. I hope he felt the same.

In June 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles, I was the Archbishop of New Orleans... Archbishop O'Boyle and I decided to attend [the funeral] together. When we finally arrived at the burial site in Arlington, Ethel and her children paid me the great compliment of asking that I perform the Rite of Interment. 
 

JFK Funeral

November 25, 1963. As I slowly climbed the familiar, winding steps to the elevated pulpit in the Cathedral of St. Matthew in Washington, D.C., I felt as numb and emotionally exhausted as every other American struggling to make sense of the stunningly brutal murder of the thirty-fifth President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  My own grieving, however, would have to wait.  First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had asked that I deliver the eulogy for her husband -- and my friend.

 One of the greatest regrets of my priesthood is that, in the immediate months following the President's assassination, I did not make more of an effort to sit down and encourage Jackie to talk about her feelings. Given her condition, it should have been a priority. To my eternal regret, I neither had, nor made, enough time to provide Jackie with the spiritual direction that she needed before moving to New York.

In the final analysis, it was my privilege and honor to play even a small part in the lives of three such extraordinary human beings; Jack, Jackie, Bobby...May you rest in peace.
 

New Orleans

 

Arrival and Installation

I was installed as archbishop of New Orleans on October 13, 1965, at St. Louis Cathedral, and my lasting impression of the occasion was how thoroughly the Cathlic culture had permeated New Orleans in the city's nearly two hundred fifty years of existence. After all, where else in the United States does a cathedral serve as the icon of a city?

Integration

It's hard to believe, but when I was installed in October 1965 as Archbishop of New Orleans, I had to walk through a phalanx of women picketing against the integration of churches and schools and the appointment of Bishop Harold Perry as the first African-American bishop in the modern-day South. 

Archbishop Rummel had written and spoken out forcefully about the sin of racism and segregation...

Archbishop Cody was the key person who sealed the official excommunications of Plaquemines Parish boss Leander H. Perez, Sr., and two other lay persons -- Jackson G. Ricau, secretary of the Citizens Council of South Louisiana, and Mrs. B.J.Gaillot Jr., president of Save Our Nation -- for challenging Archbishop Rummel's authority on the issue of integration. Archbishops Rummel and Cody sent out personal letters to many individuals warning them they would incur excommunication if they continued their public opposition to Church teaching, and most agreed to cease their verbal attacks. However, when Perez, Ricau and Gaillot refused to capitulate, Archbishops Rummel and Cody officially excommunicated them on April 16, 1962.

Catholic schools were officially desegregated in the fall of 1962.
 

Saints

On November 1, 1966 -- ironically enough, All Saints Day --- The Times-Picayune trumpeted the announcement that New Orleans  had been awarded a National Football League expansion franchise... I had become good friends with Louisiana Governer John McKeithen, and a short time after the announcement was made about the expansion franchise, he called me on an urgent matter. "You know, Archbishop," the governer began, "we were given permission to have a professional football team...They say they want to call it the 'Saints' because of the song, 'When the Saints Go Marching In.' Is that agreeable with you and the Church, or would that be sacrilegious?" It didn't take long for me to reply. "There would be no objection at all to name the team the Saints," I told the governor, "but I have to tell you, from the viewpoint of the Church, most of the saints were martyrs."
 

Vietnamese

After the Vietnam War ended in chaos in 1975, thousands of Vietnamese refugees who had managed to escape from Saigon by boat ended up in camps in the Philippines.  From there, thousands were shipped to Fort Chaffe, Arkansas, and at last to New Orleans. It didn't take me a long time after visiting Fort Chaffee to decide that the Archdiocese of New Orleans would throw out the welcome mat to the Vietnamese. Some dioceses across the country placed limits on the size of families they would accept, but I wanted to keep the large Vietnamese fishing families together...some fishing families had as many as twenty members. I think we did a tremendous favor to the archdiocese and the Vietnamese, who were so industrious that they returned that favor a hundredfold.
 

Pope John Paul II Visit to New Orleans

The Holy See convened a quiet meeting in Rome of U.S. bishops whose dioceses were being considered for his 1987 visit.  I spoke up: "One of the biggest questions in the United States is the issue of race relations between whites and blacks, and in New Orleans we have the largest number of black Catholics in the country.  This is the place you ought to come to talk about race relations and show black Catholics how much you care for them."  I guess my forthright nature, which goes back to my childhood, served me well. The Pope smiled and said he liked my proposal. That's when I really knew he was coming to New Orleans!

Television Ministry

No one has to convince me about the overpowering influence of television...nothing rivals TV for its ability to communicate visually and immediately to a far-flung audience. 

In 1981 we legally constituted the Educational Broadcasting Foundation, with Dr. [Norman] Francis as President of the board, with the expressed mission of expanding educational programming on TV in the New Orleans market.

After I retired as archbishop of New Orleans in 1989, I started Focus Worldwide Television Network and traveled extensively to bring Catholic issues, personalities, and history to light.
 

Social Ministries

Our new Office of the Social Apostolate grew out of the first, ten-week Summer Witness program in the summer of 1966. It began with a simple premise -- poor kids, especially African-Americans, needed a place to balance fun and academic enrichment during the three, broiling months of summer vacation.

We began the Social Apostolate with ten programs, and two years later we expanded by opening six year-round community centers, the idea being that people's needs extended far beyond ten weeks during the summer. 
 

Disaster Relief

 Coming to New Orleans as I did in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in September 1965, I learned quickly about the resilience of the people of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. People often tell me that our response after Betsy -- simply going out and being with the people -- meant more to them [then] anything else.  People need to see their priests -- their Church-- after a major disaster. 

God was there...both during and after Betsy, Camille, and Katrina. It is the responsibility of the Church to seek the lost and bind up their wounds, which is both a physical and a spiritual response.
 

Archbishop Philip M. Hannan Exhibit at the Catholic Cultural Heritage Museum