Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home News World

Centennial of a murder – the priest, the Klan and a wedding remembered

byCNS
17 August 2021
Reading Time: 5 mins read
AA
Century passed: Fr Coyle was killed for carrying out a wedding at a time of Catholic persecution.

Century passed: Fr Coyle was killed for carrying out a wedding at a time of Catholic persecution.

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

ONE hundred years ago, at the height of the Spanish Flu pandemic, Irish Father James Coyle was shot and killed by a Protestant minister in Birmingham, Alabama.

Fr Coyle had faced prejudice and threats at a time when Catholics were heavily persecuted in the United States.

After ministering in Mobile, Alabama, for eight years, Fr Coyle served as pastor of the Cathedral of St Paul in Birmingham for almost 17 years.

In Birmingham, he became chaplain for the Knights of Columbus, and his contemporaries cited his passion and fervor for the faith.

At the time, the Catholic population of Birmingham was growing rapidly due to an influx of thousands of Italian miners and steelworkers.

The growing Catholic presence was not universally welcomed. The Ku Klux Klan was the predominant influence in Alabama and dubbed itself a “patriotic” fraternity that targeted Catholics, Jews, African Americans and others.

It was a time when laws were passed that allowed Catholic convents, monasteries and hospitals to be searched without a warrant.

The KKK fueled hysteria that the Knights were the military arm of the pope and were stockpiling weapons and planning an insurrection. It also claimed Catholics were kidnapping Protestant children and women.

Reverend Edwin Stephenson, a minister in the now-defunct Methodist Episcopal Church and a member of the KKK, had a well-known hatred of Catholics.

Ruth, his daughter, became fascinated with Catholicism when she was 12 and began secretly taking instruction from the nuns at the Convent of Mercy.

Related Stories

Cathedral green packed with families for festival day

Marymount College claims historic girls’ rugby league Confraternity title

Pope Francis asks for prayers after 50 migrants found dead in Texas trailer truck

She was baptised Catholic when she was 18. However, she was beaten badly when her parents discovered what she had done.

Just months later, on August 11, 1921, Fr Coyle celebrated the wedding of Ruth Stephenson and Puerto Rican Pedro Gussman, who had worked at Reverend Stephenson’s house several years earlier.

Shortly after the wedding, enraged by the ceremony, Reverend Stephenson went to the Catholic church with his rifle. There he found Father Coyle reading on the porch and shot him three times, once in the head. The priest died shortly afterward.

Reverend Stephenson immediately turned himself in and was charged with murder.

He was defended by a lawyer, Hugo Black, who later joined the Klan. The Klan paid Reverend Stephenson’s legal fees, and he was found not guilty. Black went on to serve in the US Senate and subsequently served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court until his death in 1971.

But on the centenary of his murder, Fr Coyle is still remembered with pride in his native County Roscommon.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic newspaper, Fr Coyle’s greatniece, Chrissy Killian, explained how her Great Aunt Marcella Coyle — Fr Coyle’s sister — lived with her after returning to Ireland from Alabama.

In the US, she had helped out in the parish where Fr Coyle was killed; after the murder, she moved to Mobile, before returning to Ireland in 1963.

“She was in the rectory when Stephenson walked up and shot Uncle Jim. She went out and she screamed and called for a doctor,” Ms Killian told The Irish Catholic.

Ms Killian recalled Fr Coyle being spoken of as “a very poetic man, a strong-minded and principled man — a strong Fenian (Irish nationalist) back in the early 1900s.”

By the standards of the day, Fr Coyle was progressive, Ms Killian said.

“He allowed Black people into his church, and I think he founded the first Black school in Birmingham, which was very badly received by the Ku Klux Klan,” she said.

“He was honored by the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, and they have a library dedicated in his honor and a website.

“They remember him everywhere in Alabama,” she said with pride.

On August 11, the Cathedral of St Paul livestreamed a Mass on its Facebook page (@stpaulbhm) for the 100th anniversary of Father Coyle’s death.

In May 2012, Catholics and Methodists gathered at Highlands United Methodist Church in Birmingham for members of both denominations to seek forgiveness and reconciliation.

A report on Fr Coyle’s funeral appeared in the September 1921 Catholic Monthly. A Mrs. L.T. Beecher wrote there were “thousands of men and women of all classes and denominations gathered around St Paul’s Church long before the hour of three o’clock, which has been fixed for the funeral service. …”

It said “all the Catholics of the district have been so stricken with grief, have received such a test of their Christian patience and fortitude as, pray God, may come no more to us personally or collectively while this earthly trial lasts. Deep in the hearts of all who revere simple goodness and loyalty to an ideal was our priest who, for 17 years, went about among us doing good.”

Then-Bishop Edward Allen of Mobile said Fr Coyle “labored and preached the word of God in season and out of season, visiting the sick, instructing the little ones of the poor and needy and afflicted. He especially labored to bring the people to the holy sacrifice of the Mass”.

During the Spanish flu, a pandemic in which it is estimated 50 million people died, places of worship in Alabama were closed to stop the spread of the virus — much like what happened in many jurisdictions due to the current pandemic.

Fr Coyle reached out to his parishioners at this time to emphasize the importance of the congregation coming together for Mass.

He said: “You are, for the first time in your lives, deprived of hearing Mass on Sunday, and you will, I trust, from this very circumstance appreciate more thoroughly what the Mass is for Catholics.”

ShareTweet
Previous Post

Brisbane diaconal candidate among two recipients of major scholarship

Next Post

Australian veterans in pain as Afghanistan falls to Taliban

CNS

Related Posts

Cathedral green packed with families for festival day
QLD

Cathedral green packed with families for festival day

4 July 2022
Marymount College claims historic girls’ rugby league Confraternity title
QLD

Marymount College claims historic girls’ rugby league Confraternity title

2 July 2022
Tragedy: Debra Ponce, left, and Angelita Olvera of San Antonio mourn near the scene where dozens of immigrants were found dead inside a trailer truck a day earlier on June 28. Photo: CNS
World

Pope Francis asks for prayers after 50 migrants found dead in Texas trailer truck

29 June 2022
Next Post
Australian veterans in pain as Afghanistan falls to Taliban

Australian veterans in pain as Afghanistan falls to Taliban

Two nuns killed in South Sudan after vehicle ambushed along highway

Two nuns killed in South Sudan after vehicle ambushed along highway

Long-serving leader: Fr Dan Carroll was remembered at funeral Mass yesterday.

Fr Dan Carroll remembered as a leader, a friend, an uncle and a brother at family funeral

Popular News

  • Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

    Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Plans for indigenous elements, memorials to trauma, to complement Catholic liturgy

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Mass with signs of indigenous respect launch historic Plenary Council assembly

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Called to share the message of Jesus at mission school

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Caritas Australia Richard Landels

‘We must act now’ – Caritas Australia chief says Ethiopian food crisis is acute

by Hannah Kennelly
6 July 2022
0

RITAS Australia chief executive officer Kirsty Robertson has called for an immediate response for ugent famine prevention...

Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

Vote over role of women disrupts Plenary Council assembly

6 July 2022 - Updated on 7 July 2022
Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.

Pope Francis condemns Independence Day parade attack and calls for end of violence

6 July 2022
Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

Plenary Council assembly reaches decision day about the Church role of women

6 July 2022
‘For the moment, no,’ – Pope Francis dismisses resignation rumours in wide-ranging interview

‘For the moment, no,’ – Pope Francis dismisses resignation rumours in wide-ranging interview

5 July 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping