Thomas Francis Brennan

Thomas Francis Brennan (born October 6, 1853 in Tipperary , Ireland , † March 20, 1916 in Grottaferrata , Italy ) was an American Roman Catholic clergyman. Brennan was the first bishop of the Dallas Diocese .

Life

Thomas Brennan was the son of James and Margaret Brennan. In 1863, at the age of eight, Brennan moved with his parents to the United States, where he found a new home in New York State . Here he began studying at St. Bonaventure's in Allegany County . As a young man he went to Europe , where he continued his studies first at the University of Rouen in France and later at the University of Innsbruck in Austria-Hungary . He obtained his doctorate in Innsbruck in 1876.

On July 4, 1880, Brennan received the sacrament of episcopal ordination in Brixen , in today's South Tyrol , which diocesan bishop Johann von Leiß donated to him. He then went back to the USA, where he did his pastoral work as a chaplain in some parishes in the Diocese of Erie in Philadelphia in the 1880s .

Pope Leo XIII. appointed the 37-year-old Brennan on January 9, 1891, the first bishop of the Diocese of Dallas. The episcopal ordination donated him on April 5, 1891 the Bishop of Erie, Tobias Mullen and the co-consecrators, the Bishops Richard Phelan and Thomas McGovern . Brennan was considered a gifted speaker and charismatic bishop, whose speeches were published in various daily newspapers. He also founded the Texas Catholic . On the other hand, he was a man unable to handle large sums of money. In a period of one and a half years he had eleven church buildings erected in the cities of Texarkana , Forney , Pilot Point , Muenster , Windthorst , Lindsay , Wichita Falls , Clarendon , Fort Worth , Waxahachie and Denton . He had underestimated the cost of this, so that he unconsciously piled up a mountain of debt.

On November 17, 1892, he had to answer questions from the Pope in the Vatican and was subsequently withdrawn from his office as bishop. Just three months later, on February 1, 1893, he was transferred by the Pope to Newfoundland in Canada , where he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint John's, Newfoundland under Bishop Thomas James Power .

In December 1904 he moved to Rome , where he on October 7, 1905 by Pope Pius X to the titular bishop of Caesarea in Mauretania was appointed.

He spent the last years of his life in a monastery of the Congregation of St. Basil's Priests in Grottaferrata, a suburb of Rome. He died here in March 1916 at the age of 62.

Web links

• Entry to Thomas Francis Brennan on catholic-hierarchy.org

predecessor	Office	successor
new office	Bishop of Dallas 1891-1892	Edward Joseph Dunne