John Joseph Keane

John Joseph Keane (September 12, 1830 - 1918), an American Roman Catholic archbishop, was born in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, Ireland. His family emigrated to America when he was seven years old. He was educated at Saint Charles's College, Ellicott City, Maryland, and at Saint Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, and in 1866 was ordained a priest and made curate of St Patrick's, Washington, D.C. On the 25th of August 1878 he was consecrated Bishop of Richmond, to succeed James Gibbons, and he had established the Confraternity of the Holy Ghost in that diocese, and founded schools and churches for negroes before his appointment as rector of the Catholic University, Washington, D.C., in 1886, and his appointment in 1888 to the see of Ajasso. He did much to upbuild the Catholic University, but his democratic and liberal policy made him enemies at Rome, whence there came in 1896 a request for his resignation of the rectorate, and where he spent the years 1897 to 1900 as canon of St John Lateran, assistant bishop at the pontifical throne, and counsellor to the Propaganda. In 1900 he was consecrated archbishop of Dubuque, Iowa. He took a prominent part in the Catholic Young Mens National Union and in the Total Abstinence Union of North America; and was in general charge of the Catholic delegation to the Worlds Parliament of Religions held at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. He lectured widely on temperance, education and American institutions, and in 1890 was Dudleian lecturer at Harvard University. He died of a heart attack in Houston on January 6, 1967 and was buried in Houston at Memorial Oaks Mausoleum.

A selection from his writings and addresses was edited by Maurice Francis Egan under the title Onward and Upward: A Year Book (Baltimore, 1902).

• Adapted from the 1911 encyclopedia
• Biopgraphy of the Historic Images of the Catholic Universities of America