Cardinal Spellman: Was He or Wasn't He?
He had a genius for making the right connections, for getting to know the rich and powerful, and for getting his way, even if he had to fight, and fight hard, to do it. Stubborn – some might even say pigheaded – he wasn’t afraid to stir up controversy, probably relished it. But if, at the height of his power and renown, he was referred to by some in the younger set as “Franny,” often with a wink and a smile, he may have been leading a double life. And if so, what a double life it was!
Born to an Irish American family in Massachusetts in 1889, Francis Joseph Spellman served as an altar boy, later graduated from Fordham University in 1911, decided to study for the priesthood, and was sent to pursue those studies in Rome. Ordained in 1916, he returned to the U.S. and did pastoral work in Massachusetts, but was unable to become a military chaplain during World War I because he failed to meet the height requirement. Other posts followed, including U.S. attaché of the Vatican Secretariat of State in 1925. While in Rome from 1925 to 1931, he made useful contacts in the Curia, and in 1927, during a trip to Germany, he began a lifelong friendship with Eugenio Pacelli, then the papal nuncio to Germany. Named Auxiliary Bishop of Boston in 1932, Spellman did more pastoral work and in 1936 helped arrange a visit to these shores by Pacelli, now the Vatican’s cardinal secretary of state, so Pacelli could meet secretly with President Roosevelt to discuss establishing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Holy See; Spellman was present at the meeting, though no formal ties resulted.
For a cleric on the rise, the friendship of a president is solid silver, but the friendship of a pope is gold. In 1939 Pope Pius XI died, to be succeeded by Pacelli as Pius XII. One of the new pope’s first acts was to make Spellman archbishop of New York and vicar of the U.S. armed forces, this last just in time for World War II. The new archbishop moved into the archiepiscopal residence, a handsome neo-Gothic structure at 452 Madison Avenue, at the corner of 51st Street, adjacent to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In these sanctified confines he would reside for the rest of his life amid oak paneling, thick red carpets, ornate furniture, priceless antiques, and a quiet almost unheard of in busy midtown Manhattan.
Archbishop Spellman was soon exerting great influence in religious and political matters and hosting prominent figures of the day. Once the U.S. entered World War II, His Eminence supported the war effort vigorously. In 1943 President Roosevelt sent him as his agent to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, where the globe-trotting prelate covered sixteen countries in four months. He met with Franco in Spain, Pius XII in Rome, and Churchill in London, and on his return to the U.S. helped arrange to have Rome declared an open city and thus free from bombing. Roosevelt’s death in 1945 diminished his influence in higher circles, but Pius XII made him a cardinal in 1946, just in time for the Cold War. As always, Spellman’s timing – or was it just dumb luck? – was flawless. And in his scarlet robes the cardinal was impressive.
In the years that followed – the years when I first became aware of him – Cardinal Spellman showed that, much as he loved the red of his robe, he loved the red, white, and blue just as much. “A true American can neither be a Communist nor a Communist condoner,” he declared. “The first loyalty of every American is vigilantly to weed out and counteract Communism and convert American Communists to Americanism.” Not surprisingly, he was a fervent supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who without offering hard evidence convinced the public that there were Communists in every nook and cranny of the government, and furthermore that—as I heard the Wisconsin senator once dramatically assert on television – the world was going up in flames. An old tradition in America, the politics of fear works wonders for those who practice it.
In 1949, when the gravediggers of Calvary Cemetery, a Catholic cemetery in Queens, went on strike for a pay raise, Spellman called them Communists and their strike immoral, recruited seminarians as strikebreakers to dig graves, and ample though he was in proportions, set a good example by doing a bit of grave-digging himself. When not so engaged, the archbishop was denouncing immoral Hollywood films and, in time, comedian Lenny Bruce.
No stranger to irreverence, the Jewish comedian sometimes imagined Christ and Moses returning to earth to observe people in East Harlem crammed twenty-five to a room, after which they would take note of the cardinal’s ten-thousand-dollar ring. Or the two visitors would enter St. Patrick’s Cathedral, followed by lepers whose flesh was falling on the polished floors, causing His Eminence to phone Rome in a panic and beg the pope to take them in, since in America he was up to his ass in crutches and wheelchairs. Admittedly, Bruce was breaching the limits allowed to comedy in America, where jibes at religion are unwelcome, and out-and-out obscenity is taboo. No wonder the archbishop encouraged the D.A., another Irish Catholic, to charge Bruce with obscenity. After a controversial six-month trial, Bruce was convicted in 1964 and sentenced to four months in a workhouse, but was set free on bail pending an appeal, and died of a drug overdose in 1966. In 2003 he received a posthumous pardon, the first in New York State, from Governor George Pataki.
The cardinal that I knew from photos at the time was a portly, spectacled, jowly prelate whom some thought cherubic and humble (I would have said a cuddly, well-fed little porker), a man with a ready smile but perhaps not too bright. But behind this façade was a shrewd player on the world stage. A longtime Jesuit friend and his official biographer described him as “fearless, tireless, and shrewd, but at the same time humble, whimsical, sentimental, incredibly thoughtful, supremely loyal, and above all, a real priest.” Mayors, senators, and businessman consulted him, referring to his office as “the powerhouse.” But he was also a tireless worker, a skillful administrator, a shrewd negotiator of real estate deals, and an excellent fund-raiser – in short, a first-rate businessman. And a poet and novelist as well; his novel The Foundling came out in 1951. But he was not one to admit error or to give up an opinion, no matter now outdated or unpopular; prudence was unknown to him.
In the 1960s the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the eruption of antiwar protests on college campuses across the country, brought new opportunities for the patriotic cardinal and his critics. So outspoken was His Eminence’s support of the war that protesters labeled it “Spelly’s War.” He spent Christmas 1965 with the troops in South Vietnam, said Mass in Saigon, sprinkled holy water on B-52 bombers, and blessed them prior to their departing on a mission. The war, he declared, was “Christ’s war” and a “war for civilization,” and the troops were “Christ’s soldiers.” Said a four-star general who met him at the airport, “We hardly count it a war, if you don’t come.”
All this resounded harshly in the Vatican, where Pius XII had died in 1958, to be succeeded by the reform-minded John XXIII (“He should be selling bananas,” Spellman reportedly opined), followed in turn by Paul VI, who favored negotiations to end the war. That the Cardinal Archbishop of New York was not in tune with the reigning pontiff was, to put it mildly, awkward. Vatican sources made it clear that the archbishop spoke only for himself, not for the pope or the Church. Back home, where humorous buttons were now all the rage, and the draft was controversial, a button saying DRAFT CARDINAL SPELLMAN was popular, as were T-shirts bearing the same imperative; in January 1967 war protesters disrupted a Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
In 1966, when Pope Paul VI initiated a policy whereby bishops would retire at age 75, Spellman, then 77, offered to resign, but the pope asked him to remain at his post. He probably hankered to be the first American pope, but this was not to be, for he died in December 1967, the cause of his death never disclosed. Attending his funeral were President Lyndon Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, New York State Senators Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Mayor John Lindsay, and others. He was buried in the crypt under the main altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, alongside other archbishops and cardinals. His twenty-eight-year tenure as archbishop is the longest to date in the history of the archdiocese of New York. A New York City high school bears his name.
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Now at last we come to the crucial question: was he or wasn’t he? Rumors then and now have abounded. A friend informs me that in the standees line at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1950s gay jokes about “Franny” Spellman were rampant, especially among standees with a Catholic upbringing, though all the ones he remembered are too bawdy to bear repeating here. I’m always skeptical about such stories, until conclusive evidence appears, since some elements of the gay community commonly assert with conviction that this or that world leader or celebrity is or was screamingly gay, without offering solid proof. But Spellman’s case is not so simple.
One of Spellman’s biographers, John Cooney, whose work The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman appeared in 1984, mentioned four interviewees who stated that Spellman was indeed homosexual. Cooney offered no direct proof but was convinced that the allegations were true. “I talked to many priests who worked for Spellman and they were incensed, dismayed, and angered by his conduct.” Monsignor Eugene V. Clark, Spellman’s personal secretary for fifteen years, promptly labeled Cooney’s accusations “preposterous.” (Interestingly enough, Clark, an arch-conservative who was notoriously anti-gay in his pronouncements, had to resign as rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2005 when, at age 79, he was named as the “other man” in a divorce case – a reminder that neither age nor a cassock is proof against the inroads of eros.)
Reinforcing Cooney’s claim is gay author and journalist Michelangelo Signorile’s online article “Cardinal Spellman’s Dark Legacy” (2002), which labels Spellman “one of the most notorious, powerful, and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church’s history.” According to him, the closeted cardinal was known as “Franny” to assorted Broadway chorus boys and others, but the Church pressured Cooney’s publisher, Times Books, to reduce the four pages on the Cardinal’s sexuality to a single paragraph that only mentioned “rumors.” Signorile also asserts that Spellman was involved in a relationship with a dancer in One Touch of Venus, a Broadway revue that ran from 1943 to 1945. Spellman would have his limousine pick up the dancer several nights a week and bring him to the archiepiscopal residence. And if a portly prelate might seem lacking in sex appeal to a frisky young chorus boy, his status as the Cardinal Archbishop of New York would have enhanced his image mightily. All of which prompts a titillating fantasy: after the performance, the young man whisked off from his theater by a dark limousine and minutes later emerging from it to slip into the neo-Gothic mansion and tread stealthily, among ornate furnishings and uniformed servants, into His Eminence’s presence and embrace. How they first connected is not explained. But when the young man asked Spellman how he could get away with it, the cardinal allegedly answered, “Who would believe that?” Who indeed?
It should be noted that Signorile has made a name for himself by “outing” public figures whom he claims are closeted homosexuals, a practice that many in the gay community denounce. Further complicating the picture is Curt Gentry’s biography J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (1991), which alleges that Hoover’s files had “numerous allegations that Spellman was a very active homosexual” (p. 347).
Surprisingly, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI’s declassified file on Spellman is available online and I have looked at it. Unsurprisingly, what are probably the most informative and juicy parts are blacked out. So what do we learn? Here is a sample from the 1940s:
A letter of June 16, 1942 to Hoover (signature deleted) giving him the names of those attending a luncheon at the archbishop’s residence on June 11, 1942, with all those names blacked out.
A letter of June 21, 1942, to Hoover from Spellman’s office (signature deleted) saying that the sender is glad Hoover enjoyed [another] luncheon, and that the archbishop has confirmed his standing invitation to Hoover to lunch at the archbishop’s residence whenever he is in New York.
A letter of November 30, 1942, from Spellman to Hoover congratulating him on “your twenty-five years of devoted, patriotic, successful service to the country in the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” and Hoover’s appreciative reply on December 10, 1942.
A letter to Hoover from Rome (signature deleted) of February 7, 1946, noting that Spellman will arrive in Rome on February 14 to be consecrated a cardinal by Pope Pius XII. The writer believes it will be of interest to the Bureau to know that there is speculation in Vatican circles and the Roman public at large regarding Spellman’s perhaps being appointed papal secretary of state, a position giving the recipient a better than average chance of being elected pope. Feeding the speculation is the fact that Pius XII is said to be tubercular and in poor health generally. [Spellman was indeed offered the position but turned it down.]
So what have we learned? About homosexuality, nothing; if there are any files mentioning it, they must still be classified. The letters show Spellman and Hoover exchanging cordialities, and His Eminence and others keeping the director well informed about Spellman’s activities and a possible significant appointment. Spellman was careful to maintain friendly ties with Hoover, and Hoover was keeping track of Spellman’s career. Which shows how powerful people deal with one another, which in itself is hardly surprising or shocking. The archbishop was probably carrying on a similar correspondence with every person of power within his ken, and Hoover was surely keeping files on hundreds of persons of influence.
It is of course in the Church’s interest to squelch, whenever possible, even rumors or allegations about His Eminence’s sexual proclivities. After all, what would happen if the charges turned out to be true? Would the Cardinal Spellman High School have to be rechristened? Would His Eminence’s remains have to be disinterred from under the main altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and if so, where should they go? Messy, messy, messy. But if he made a full confession on his deathbed, perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary. Who among us has not sinned? Still, messy in the extreme.
When I came to New York in the fall of 1953 to study French in graduate school at Columbia University, I heard nothing of these rumors, not at Columbia and not in the underground gay world that I was beginning to explore. I had a casual affair with a Broadway dancer who, as it happened, was a lapsed Catholic, but he never mentioned Spellman, perhaps because the subject never came up; we had other things to talk about … and do. When, after a year and a half in San Francisco, I returned to New York in the fall of 1961, it was to teach French at St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens, where I was one of a handful of non-Catholic teachers. Among the St. John’s faculty were a few closeted gay people. In keeping with the times (this was the turbulent 1960s), the younger members of the faculty were a rebellious bunch, impatient with the Church’s authoritarianism and rigid ideology. When a slew of both younger and older dissidents were suddenly terminated without explanation, many of us went out on strike in January 1966 and walked a picket line for the next six months; Spellman died in December 1967. Of all the Catholic community in New York at that time, my fellow strikers were surely the ones most open to rumors about Spellman, yet never once, on campus or on the picket line, did I hear a “Franny” joke or any reference to the sexuality of the Cardinal Archbishop of New York. So those rumors about him were obviously confined to a few tight circles: people in theater and the arts, Broadway chorus kids, standees at the Met.
So what do I conclude? Was Cardinal Spellman gay? Probably. Is it absolutely certain? Not quite. What would nudge me toward certainty? If one or several ninety-year-old ex-chorus boys tottered forth to announce, “Yes, I had sex with His Eminence back in the 1940s.” But for that, of course, time is running out. In the meantime, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Of all the archbishops of New York, to my knowledge it is only around Francis J. Spellman that rumors and innuendoes swirl.
Contact with the rich and famous, luncheons with J. Edgar Hoover, a confident of three presidents, a strike-breaking gravedigger, a white-hot patriot who blessed departing bombers, and posthumously the subject of a passionate controversy – what a life!
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Finally, a Spellman quote: “There are three ages of man – youth, age, and ‘you’re looking wonderful.’ ” His Eminence did have a sense of humor.
