William A. Hickey

William Augustine Hickey (May 13, 1869 – October 4, 1933) was an American Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Providence from 1921 until his death in 1933.

William Hickey was born on May 13, 1869, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to William and Margaret (née Troy) Hickey. His father served in both the Union Army and the Union Navy during the American Civil War. Hickey attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, then went to France to study at St. Sulpice Seminary in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Upon his return to Massachusetts, Hickey attended St. John's Seminary in Boston.^[1]

Hickey was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Worcester by Archbishop John Williams on December 22, 1893.^[1] He then held several pastoral roles in Worcester County.^[1]

From 1903 to 1917, Hickey served as a pastor in Gilbertville, Massachusetts, where he would preach in four different languages (English, French, Polish, and Lithuanian) every Sunday.^[1] He was then transferred to St. John's Parish in Clinton, Massachusetts, where he built a parochial school and parish hall. Hickey gained a reputation as an accomplished and patriotic speaker. After the United States entered World War I in 1917. U.S. Senator David I. Walsh made these comments about Hickey:

Father Hickey has...been a soldier camping in the homes of the sick and the poor under the white banner of the Church, fighting for salvation; has battled for Christ in the trenches of humanity. Not a day has passed over his head since our boys first left Clinton that he has not prayed for his people.^[1]

On January 16, 1919, Hickey was appointed coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Providence and titular bishop of Claudiopolis in Isauria by Pope Benedict XV. Hickey received his episcopal consecration on April 10, 1919, from Bishop Thomas Beaven, with Bishops Louis Walsh and Daniel Feehan serving as co-consecrators, in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Providence. He was immediately appointed as apostolic administrator for the diocese by the incumbent Bishop Matthew Harkins.^[1] Hickey automatically became the third bishop of Providence on Harkin's death on May 25, 1921.^[1]

In 1919, the Federation of Canadian Catholic Churches in America announced plans to build a Catholic high school in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a community with a majority French-Canadian population. As the local population started fundraising for the new school, they learned that Hickey was only going to allow classes there to be taught in English

For decades, the diocese had fostered French-language schools and had recruited both French and French-Canadian sisters to teach there.^{[2] [3]} However, by the 1920's, dioceses across the United States were switching to English instruction. When Mount Saint Charles opened in 1924, the classes were in English. Elphege Daignault, a Woonsocket lawyer, started organizing a protest movement. In one swipe at Hickey, who had Irish parents, he labeled the Irish-American clergy in the diocese as "national assassins".^[3] While Daignault had wide support in the parish, not everyone agree with his vitriolic attacks on Hickey and other Irish clergy.

in 1924, the dissidents founded the newspaper La Sentinelle, to express their opposition. The dissidents were now called Sentinellists.^{[2] [3]} They first appealed Hickey's decision to Archbishop Pietro Fumasoni-Biondi, the apostolic delegate, or Vatican representative, to the United States. When that appeal failed, Daignault sued the diocese in state court in Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Supreme Court eventually ruled against him, saying that it had no jurisdiction in church affairs. By this point, the controversy had gained publicity in French-Canadian communities throughout the United States and Canada. The Sentinellists finally sent a delegation to the Vatican to appeal directly to Pope Pius XI; he refused to see them.^{[4] [5]}

In 1928, four years after the language controversy started, Hickey excommunicated Daignault and 62 other Sentinellists and placed La Sentinelle on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ., prohibiting Catholics from reading it. He barred them in 1929 from entering any Catholic churches in the diocese Daignault and other Sentinellists quickly recanted their opposition to Hickey and he lifted their excommunications.^[5]

Hickey died in Providence on October 4, 1933, from a heart attack at age 64.^[1]

• History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
• Official site of the Holy See

• 1869 births
• 1933 deaths
• College of the Holy Cross alumni
• Seminary of Saint-Sulpice (France) alumni
• Saint John's Seminary (Massachusetts) alumni
• Clergy from Worcester, Massachusetts
• Roman Catholic bishops of Providence
• American Roman Catholic clergy of Irish descent
• 20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in the United States
• Catholics from Massachusetts

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