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March 7, 2025By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press
WORCESTER – An estimated 700 people gathered to celebrate the Worcester diocese’s 75th anniversary March 2 at St. Paul Cathedral. You could say that’s the place where it all began.
The first bishop of the Diocese of Worcester – Bishop John Joseph Wright – was installed there before much larger crowds on March 7, 1950. It was reported that more than 2,100 people filled St. Paul’s and an estimated 15,000 lined surrounding streets to watch dignitaries coming and going.
Msgr. F. Stephen Pedone, current judicial vicar, said Bishop Wright officially took possession of the diocese when Archbishop Richard J. Cushing, then archbishop of Boston and metropolitan of the province, enthroned and installed him by seating him on the cathedra, and placing the crozier in Bishop Wright’s left hand.
The crozier, which is like a shepherd’s staff, symbolizes the bishop’s pastoral office.
“The Cathedral is the chief church in a diocese precisely because in it is erected the permanent seat of the Bishop’s authority, properly referred to in the Latin language as the cathedra,” said the 1950 program booklet for Bishop Wright’s installation.
CFP file photo
Archbishop Richard J. Cushing installed Bishop John J. Wright in the newly designated cathedral March 7, 1950.
“The cathedra or bishop’s chair, located at the center of the sanctuary, symbolizes the bishop’s three-fold ministry of priest, teacher and shepherd,” explains the website cathedralofsaintpaul.net/history. “As priest, he leads the diocesan family in worship of God.
As teacher, he guides the Church of Worcester in living the Gospel. As shepherd, he gathers the diocesan church together as one fold in God’s love.”
Msgr. Pedone said the Catholic Church took the idea of the cathedra from the Jewish people; rabbis sat down to teach – to emphasize the significance of their teaching.
The cathedra Bishop McManus now sits in is the one Bishop Wright was seated in at his installation, Msgr. Pedone said, and gave the following history.
With renovations of St. Paul Cathedral after the Second Vatican Council, this cathedra was replaced with another one. The original one ended up in a parish in the Boston Archdiocese.
Msgr. Pedone said that Cardinal Bernard F. Law, Archbishop of Boston, told him he’d found this cathedra and wanted to give it back as a gift to the Worcester diocese, and its ordinary at the time – Bishop Daniel P. Reilly. Cardinal Law did just that, after having the cathedra refurbished. When Bishop Reilly refurbished St. Paul’s Cathedral he had the green marble backing added to this cathedra.
Bishop Wright’s enthronement on the cathedra was among ceremonies written about in the installation booklet. Others included the reading, in Latin and in English, of documents in which Pope Pius XII decreed the erection of the diocese and appointment of Bishop Wright.
The booklet contained an English translation of three decrees. The first was the “Decree concerning the Division of the Diocese of Springfield and the Erection of the new Diocese of Worcester.”
At the 75th anniversary Mass last Sunday, Raymond L. Delisle, chancellor, carried in the entrance procession this framed decree, written in Latin, and read parts of an English translation of it.
The decree, given in Rome Jan. 14, 1950, says that Pope Pius XII “now separates from the Diocese of Springfield the county of Worcester … and constitutes this territory a new Diocese, the Diocese of Worcester.
“Moreover, His Holiness establishes the Episcopal See in the City of Worcester.
“In this city, the church already established and devoted to God and to the honor of Saint Paul is raised to the dignity of a Cathedral Church,” the decree says.
Msgr. Pedone said that, in this decree, Pope Pius XII was announcing his intention to erect the Worcester diocese.
The decree says the pope appointed Archbishop (later Cardinal) Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, apostolic delegate to the United States, to oversee the establishment of the new diocese.
In the second decree printed in Bishop Wright’s installation booklet, the Decree of Execution, Archbishop Cicognani said the Decree of Execution was to “obtain its full effect and juridical force” from March 7, 1950.
The Decree of Execution was dated Feb. 24, 1950, as was the third decree, which said Bishop Wright was being transferred “from the Titular Church of Aegea to the Church of Worcester.” (Titular churches are ancient sees that are no longer active. Their names are “assigned” to auxiliary bishops who do not head a diocese of their own, since each bishop must be bishop of a particular place.) Bishop Wright had been consecrated auxiliary of Boston on June 30, 1947.
Another significant date for the beginning of the Worcester diocese is March 6, the day before Bishop Wright’s installation, when he showed the papal documents to the college of consultors of the Springfield diocese. Msgr. Pedone said canon law requires this, but now it is done at installation ceremonies.
Bishop Wright came “to us from Boston,” where he was consecrated in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross “towards whose throne and pulpit the faithful eyes of the Catholics of Western Massachusetts looked for so many long years,” the installation booklet said. (Catholics in Worcester County belonged to the Diocese of Boston, formed in 1808 and made an archdiocese in 1875. They were part of the Diocese of Springfield after it was separated from Boston in 1870, until the Worcester Diocese was formed in 1950.)
Bishop Wright was in Worcester for less than a decade. On Mar. 18, 1959 he was installed Bishop of Pittsburgh. He went on to Rome, where he was named a cardinal in 1969 and was prefect of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of the Clergy. He died in Boston Aug 10, 1979.
– Do you remember the early days or significant events of the Worcester Diocese over the last 75 years? Tell us more by emailing cfpnews@catholicfreepress.org. Watch for a
special supplement commemorating the 75th anniversary of the diocese in May.
