Bishop Cheverus

Bishop Cheverus became the first Bishop of Boston on April 8, 1808.

 

The following is taken from an old tattered and coverless book titled history of the Church in the US

He was a man of courage. In June, 1806, two young Irishmen, Dominic Daly and James Halligan, were executed in Northampton for murder. Daly’s mother and brother lived in Boston, and Cheverus went out to minister to the unfortunate men. He found an enormous assemblage, fully fifteen thousand people, who had driven in from within a radius of perhaps, thirty miles to witness the spectacle. He was received with great coldness. Northampton was the old home of Jonathan Edwards, and some of the inhabitants still would almost as gladly have hanged an Irishman as listen to a priest.

In those days the terrors of the death penalty were enhanced by compelling the doomed culprit to attend a sermon in church before proceeding to the scaffold. It had been arranged that a minister should deliver this discourse, but Daly and Halligan, who protested their innocence to the end, begged that the pulpit be tendered to Cheverus. There was opposition from the ministers, but Cheverus insisted. A petition from the lips of men about to die was held sacred and he ascended to speak. With that aptness for which he was remarkable he chose the cutting text, “Whoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”

As he looked about in the vast gathering he saw many women present. Indignation seized him, and he burst forth in stern rebuke. “You, especially, O women! What has induced you to come to this place? Is it to wipe away the cold damps of death that trickle down the faces of these unfortunate men? Is it to experience the painful emotions which this scene ought to inspire in every feeling heart? No, it is for this. It is, then, to behold their anguish, and to look upon it with tearless, eager, and longing eyes. Ah, I blush for you; your eyes are full of murder.”