Word: spellmans
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...Rome again in 1925, as the first U.S. priest to serve as assistant to the Papal Secretary of State, Spellman became a leader in the $1,000,000 playground system erected in Rome by the Knights of Columbus, startled dignified Italian clerics and Italian urchins by his boxing and skill at tennis...
...awed his colleagues with a typical American solution to a deadlock in negotiations between the Papacy and Italy over the sovereignty of the Vatican: both Church and State claimed jurisdiction over marriages. Spellman suggested the U.S. procedure-a civil license followed by a religious ceremony...
...years later he showed his American dash by smuggling to Paris a papal indictment of Fascist attacks upon the Catholic action and youth movement; he turned it over to the A.P. and U.P. for release to the world. In Italy Spellman learned to fly, became the first Catholic bishop to win a pilot's license...
...Spellman's sure progress in the Church led some to suspect that he was ambitious, a church politician, an organizer who in secular life might have become chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He has never worn his piety on his sleeve, and even in an age of publicity, an archbishop's devotional life is largely a personal matter between him and his God. His rule has been the Biblical injunction: ". . . When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and -when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret... ." (Matthew...
...more obvious explanation of Spellman's rise in the Church is that he has qualities the Church wants in its leaders. The hierarchy is always eager to make the most of its personnel, and an industrious young cleric can be sure that a strain of humility will not handicap his rise in the Church Militant. His superiors will see that he learns the art of patience. When Rome first suggested to Cardinal O'Connell that Spellman join the Vatican Secretariat, the Cardinal, who did not always look kindly upon the rising young cleric, kept Spellman in suspense...