Gibbons, James (1834–1921)

US Catholic prelate. In 1877 he was named archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland, becoming a cardinal in 1886. For several crucial decades he was the preeminent leader of American Catholicism. He presided over a national church council that established the Catholic University (1884), and he became the university's first chancellor. A prudent leader as archbishop, he discouraged ethnically separate parishes, circumvented church condemnation of the Knights of Labor, and acted as an interpreter between the Vatican and American Catholicism. His writings included The Faith of Our Fathers (1876), a simple exposition of beliefs, which became a Catholic best-seller.

Gibbons born in Baltimore. He was a pastor and Civil War chaplain before becoming secretary to the archbishop of Baltimore (1865), bishop and apostolic vicar of North Carolina (1868), and bishop of Richmond (1872).