The Murder of a Priest

On this day in 1921 Fr. James Coyle was shot and killed by Klu Klux Klan member and Methodist minister Edwin Stephenson.

In April 10, 1921, Ruth Stephenson, only child of Edwin, became Catholic after turning 18. Her parents discovered the conversion and beat her. They even had papers drawn to put her in an insane asylum. Edwin had read much anti-Catholic literature of the day believing, among other things, that the Knights of Columbus were stockpiling weapons for the day when the Pope would command a Catholic takeover of the United States.

Father Coyle was born in Ireland in 1873, studied at the Pontifical North American College and was ordained in 1896 in Rome. He requested and received permission to serve in the American mission. His first assignment in the Mobile, Alabama diocese was to conduct parish missions. He was also assigned to the McGill Instiute for boys as an instructor and later rector. In 1904 he was appointed Pastor of St. Paul's Catholic Church in Birmingham.

Although a young city, it was Alabama's largest and a major steel-making center of the United States. The need for workers brought thousands of men to Birmingham from Europe and a large percentage of them were Catholic. This concerned the majority protestant population. In 1916 anti-Catholic riots broke out in Georgia, Kentucky and other southern locales. A new anti-Catholic party, the True Americans, was formed allied with the Klan. A Catholic church and school were burned in nearby Pratt City. Father Coyle started getting death threats and, after receiving information from Federal authorities, hired armed guards to protect the church and rectory.

After the anti-Catholic parties swept the 1916 municipal elections, all Catholic government workers were fired and employers were threatened with boycott if they hired Catholics. Those who didn't comply were “visited” by a member of the vigilance committee. The boycott forced many Catholics to leave town.

Fr. Coyle had been raised amidst Protestant injustice in Ireland so he encouraged his parishioners to stand up for justice and wrote many letters to the editor protesting the misrepresentations of Catholicism. His bishop suggested to Fr. Coyle that he tone things down a bit and he complied, admitting himself that his spirited defense sometimes made things worse. At the same time his Bishop had confidence in Fr. Coyle as he continued to find ways to better explain what the Church really believes.

In July 1921, Ruth accepted a marriage proposal from Pedro Gussman who was Catholic and Puerto Rican. Eloping, on August 11th, Pedro and Ruth received their marriage license in Bessemer. Unable to find a priest there, they returned to Birmingham to see if Fr. Coyle would marry them, which he did. Father Coyle then told Ruth, "The right thing for you to do is to notify your parents that you are married at once."

It turned out Stephenson was already looking for his daughter having learned that she hadn't returned to work after lunch. After reporting his daughter missing to the police and sheriff's department he received Ruth's message: "I am married to a Catholic boy."

Fr. Coyle was on his porch swing praying the Divine Office when Edwin Edwin Stephenson, dressed in ministerial black, walked up the porch steps, pulled out a gun and fired three shots. Fr. Coyle was rushed to St. Vincent Hospital but died 40 minutes later without regaining consciousness. Meanwhile Stephenson casually walked to police at the courthouse surrendering as he said, "It's all right gentlemen, I know what I'm doing" and asked to be locked up.

The Klan raised money for the defense team which included four Klan members. One of these was lead attorney Hugo Black who would later be a supreme court justice. Klansman Judge William Fort was designated the trial judge. The prosecution brought forth just five witnesses. Three were considered unreliable by the defense because they were Catholic.

The defense argued both that it was self defense and that the priest had attacked him, while also arguing that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. The latter allowed the defense to offer testimony  on the horrors Stephenson and his poor wife had endured in raising their daughter amidst the efforts of Catholics to invade their sacred home and destroy their only child’s life. Black also dimmed the lights in the courtroom before ordering Pedro , of Spanish heritage, to the stand so his skin would appear darker. Black said,  “A child of a Methodist does not suddenly depart from her religion unless someone has planted in her mind the seeds of influence.” Ruth never testified.

The official Klu Klux Klan prayer was allegedly read by Stephenson’s defense team as part of the closing arguments. We don't knwo for sure because all official transcripts of the trial vanished from the courthouse after its conclusion. After four hours of deliberation on October 21st, Edwin Stephenson was acquitted.

Father Coyle is buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, a ten-foot high Celtic cross marking his resting place. Plans are underway to re-inter his body near the Cathedral of St. Paul in downtown Birmingham.

Former Alabama Attorney General Judge William Pryor has written extensively of Father Coyle saying, “I think he was a scholarly guy. He was a prolific writer, especially of poetry. This was a sophisticated man.”

Of the murder and trial Judge Pryonr said, “Father Coyle was not just a priest who happened to perform a wedding and was murdered. He was a fearless truth-teller. He was standing up for people who looked different and people who worshiped differently. He stood up for a beleaguered minority in this rough town.”

Birmingham writer John Wright, Jr said, “I believe his life and assassination and the not-guilty verdict for the person who killed him have relevance for Birmingham today because of our embarrassing history of unenlightenment and prejudice toward people who are ‘different,’ I believe Father Coyle’s story…presents a conscience-searing question to all of us. That question is, ‘What are you doing to discourage and curb prejudice wherever you work or worship or live or socialize?’”

Rising Road, is Sharon Davies' book on the incident.

Shortly after Sacred Heart Academy, the forerunner of St. Columbkille Catholic School, was built in 1916, the Klu Klux Klan burned a cross at the new building.

Fr. Coyle, pray for us.

Blessed Miguel Pro, Pray for Religious Liberty

The 1917 Mexican Constitution created laws that attacked the Catholic Church: seizing church property, outlawing religious orders, taking control of church matters—and went even further. The Constitution also prohibited priests from voting, the Church from even commenting on any public policy, and would not allow priests to wear their clericals or vestments outside their churches. President Calles, who was virulently anti-Catholic (and a Freemason), enforced these restrictions vigorously after his election in 1924. He also required state licensing of priests; thus the state could limit the number of priests by not licensing them. When priests continued to serve the Catholics of Mexico without being licensed, they were forced underground. The results of this persecution were war and martyrdom.

The most famous martyr is Blessed Miguel Pro, the Jesuit priest executed on November 23, 1927 -- 88 years ago today. Father Pro entered Mexico illegally and had to wear disguises and hide to celebrate the Sacraments. He would come in the middle of the night dressed as a beggar to baptize infants, bless marriages and celebrate Mass. He would appear in jail dressed as a police officer to bring Holy Viaticum to condemned Catholics. When going to fashionable neighborhoods to procure for the poor, he would show up at the doorstep dressed as a fashionable businessman with a fresh flower on his lapel. His many exploits could rival those of the most daring spies.

When captured, he was accused of plotting against the government and condemned without trial. President Calle ordered his execution photographed in great detail, hoping to incite fear in the Cristeros army. But the photographs had the opposite effect and Catholics began to show great devotion to the martyr—soon the government forbade the distribution of the very photos it had publicized!

Pope Pius XI wrote three encyclicals denouncing this persecution. The persecution finally ended when a Catholic president, Manuel Avila Camacho, was elected in 1940. When Blessed John Paul II visited Mexico in 1979 it was still illegal for him to celebrate Mass in public. In 1992, a new Constitution amended the anti-Catholic provisions of the 1917 version.

Pope John Paul II beatified Miguel Pro in 1998; he also canonized 25 Martyrs of this period on May 21, 2000. Thirteen more martyrs were beatified in 2005 in Mexico.

A Martyr's Last Homily

According to an Italian newspaper, the Vatican's commission on sainthood voted unanimously to recognize the 1980 assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as martyrdom. This is a bit step towards being proclaimed a saint someday.

He was the archbishop of San Salvador at the start of El Salvador's 1979-1992 civil war. He continually called upon the country's military government to stop their crackdown of their leftist opponents. This was his last homily:

You have just heard in Christ’s gospel that one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and that those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others, will live, live like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone. The harvest comes about only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest....

This is the hope that inspires us as Christians. We know that every effort to better society, especially when justice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.... Of course, we must try to purify these ideals, Christianize them, clothe them with the hope of what lies beyond. That makes them stronger, because it gives us the assurance that all that we cultivate on earth, if we nourish it with Christian hope, will never be a failure. We will find it in a purer form in that kingdom where our merit will be found in the labor that we have done here on earth....

Dear brothers and sisters, let us all view these matters at this historic moment with that hope, that spirit of giving and of sacrifice. Let us all do what we can. We can all do something, at least have a sense of understanding and sympathy....

[I]t is worthwhile to labor, because all those longings for justice, peace, and well-being that we experience on earth become realized for us if we enlighten them with Christian hope. We know that no one can go on forever, but those who have put into their work a sense of very great faith, of love of God, of hope among human beings, find it all results in the splendors of a crown that is the sure reward of those who labor thus, cultivating truth, justice, love, and goodness on earth. Such labor does not remain here below but, purified by God’s Spirit, is harvested for our reward. 

The holy Mass, now, this Eucharist, is just such an act of faith. To Christian faith at this moment the voice of diatribe appears changed for the body of the Lord, who offered himself for the redemption of the world, and in this chalice the wine is transformed into the blood that was the price of salvation. May this body immolated and this blood sacrificed for humans nourish us also, so that we may give our body and our blood to suffering and to pain --- like Christ, not for self, but to bring about justice and peace for our people.
Let us join together, then, intimately in faith and hope at this moment of prayer....

A postscript reads: "a shot rang out in the chapel and Archbishop Romero fell mortally wounded. He died within minutes, on arriving at a nearby hospital emergency room."