When ink first spilled


First in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman

Few of the more than 100 newspapers and magazines that made their appearance in Rhode Island during the 19th century have survived to mark their 125th anniversary. That The Providence Visitor has survived and flourished all these years can be attributed to the fact that the Visitor was founded to serve a special purpose. While the Visitor, during its long history, struggled financially at times, it has endured because it continues to give the Catholic community in Rhode Island news of their church, to instruct them in the truths of their faith, to encourage them in the practice of it, and to defend the church and the faith when necessary.
When the Visitor first made its appearance on Oct. 9, 1875, it was also intended to serve the Irish-born immigrants of the state and their American-born children by providing news of their homeland. The launching of the Visitor in 1875 was but one sign of the growth and increasing importance of Rhode Island's Irish population. Most of the early Irish who had settled in Rhode Island in the first decades of the 19th century were forced to leave the state when an economic depression that followed the War of 1812 caused many of Rhode Island's new manufacturing enterprises to fail or suspend operations in the face of competition from abroad.
Irish immigrants began settling in Rhode Island once again toward the end of the 1820s. By the 1870s, the Irish had become an important part of the state's population. In 1870, Rhode Island-born son of Protestant Irish immigrants, Thomas A. Doyle, was re-elected mayor of Providence and would be annually returned to office until he ran for the state senate in 1880. In 1872, an Irish immigrant, Father Thomas F. Hendricken, was ordained as the first Bishop of Providence when Bishop Francis P. McFarland, having secured his fellow bishops and Rome's permission to divide his Diocese of Hartford to create the new Diocese of Providence, moved from Providence to Hartford. Many other Irish, immigrants and American-born sons and daughters, had achieved success in business and the professions. Among the more prominent in the 1870s was Limerick-born John B. Hennessy and American-born Charles E. Gorman. Hennessy had established himself in the grocery business in the 1830s and, by reason of shrewd investments in real estate and other ventures, acquired a considerable fortune before his death in 1888. Charles E. Gorman, whose father was an Irish immigrant and whose mother was a descendant of the early settlers of Cape Ann, Mass., was, in the 1870s, a rising young lawyer and politician, who became a leading proponent and defender of the civil rights of Catholics.
While the onset of the recent Civil War had initially caused economic distress in Providence and the state, war time demands and the Union's success in acquiring supplies of cotton brought renewed prosperity. However, the failure of the A. and W. Sprague Company in the financial panic of 1873 put its nearly 10,000 employees out of work and brought depression to the state. Since the Spragues were involved in many diverse enterprises in the state, their financial ruin helped to depress Rhode Island's entire economy. Property values in Providence alone dropped by $8 million and it would be almost a decade before they reached their 1873 level again.
Although the 1870s was a time more for retrenchment than for new enterprises, Bishop Hendricken did not share in the pessimism of many of his contemporaries. Shortly after he came to his new diocese, the bishop had announced his plan to tear down SS. Peter and Paul, his dilapidated cathedral church, and build a new, more fitting building. The panic of 1873 made the bishop's task of fund raising more difficult but he persisted nonetheless. About the same time that he raised the idea of constructing a new cathedral church, the bishop, who was accustomed to writing for the press, also raised the idea of beginning a journal that would represent the thought and sentiments of the Catholic community. Few, at the time he first suggested the idea, believed it was feasible because two earlier attempts to establish a Catholic paper had failed. The same spirit of faith and awareness of the needs of his diocese that drove him on to build a new cathedral also prompted the bishop to launch The Weekly Visitor, A Sunday School Magazine on Oct. 9, 1875.
The bishop's collaborator in the new venture was a young printer, newly trained in his trade, Andrew P. Martin. Martin, himself the son of Irish immigrants, was born in Lubec, Maine, in 1853 and was a convert to the Catholic faith. He had come to Providence about 1873 and had worked as an apprentice in the busy printing firm of Hammond and Angell, near the present Turk's Head building. After learning his trade, Martin, along with his brother, set up a small print shop, first in the Washington Building, and then on Constitution Hill at 359 North Main Street.
The only record of the bishop's thinking when he and Martin began the Visitor are a few entries in the bishop's diary. On Oct. 15, 1875, the bishop wrote, "On Saturday the 9th of October (last week), the first number of the Weekly Visitor Sunday School Magazine was issued. The first number was published at 3 cents and the subsequent numbers to be published at one cent."
Four days later, the bishop wrote, "The first issue of the Weekly Visitor 1,700 numbers cost 39 dollars. The second issue (Oct. 16, '75) 2,000 numbers cost 33 dollars. The first was sold at 3 cents. The second at 1 cent. The latter price not paying for the paper, it was determined to make the price 2 cents and enlarge the paper after the 3rd issue making it eight small pages instead of four. Published by A. P. Martin. He is to charge the enlarged paper $30 for the first 1,000 and 11 dollars for every additional thousand."
When the new publication first appeared, it was a single sheet which was folded to create four pages with four columns each. As noted above, it was quickly reduced in size to save costs but expanded to two sheets or eight pages. At the time he and Andrew Martin launched the Visitor, Bishop Hendricken was fortunate to have with him at the cathedral a talented, young Irish priest, Father William D. Kelly, who became the Visitor's first editor.
Kelly had emigrated to the United States with his parents when he was a boy and had been educated at Boston Latin, Holy Cross College and the Major Seminary at Montreal. Father Kelly and Martin filled the pages of the new journal with international, national and local news of the church. The paper's editorial page gave Father Kelly and Bishop Hendricken the opportunity to discuss the issues and challenges confronting the Catholic community.
In order to gather local news for the paper, Martin and the editors invited Visitor readers to send them short, spicy articles recounting the activities of the various parishes in the diocese. Such articles were a regular feature of the paper from its beginnings. From the first issue on, space was given to articles detailing issues and challenges confronting the Catholic community. Every issue featured an editorial page where the issues of the day were discussed. Also, the Visitor regularly gave space to special events in the lives of the ordinary members of the community by printing notices of marriages and deaths. During its first year, a series of articles on bible history appeared and, for many years, the paper regularly printed short stories for the amusement and edification of its readers. Wishing to serve a wide readership, the paper printed a column devoted to problems for its younger readers to solve, and initially offered cash to the ones who sent in the right answers first. Being the publication of an Irishman and being intended for a mostly Irish readership, the paper would, of course, regularly print poetry. Although the Visitor opened its pages to advertisements, its main source of income was paid subscriptions. In addition to being delivered through the mail, the paper was available at several stores in the Providence area.

Paper gains new professionalism under Walsh


Second in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
After publishing the Visitor for a year, Bishop Thomas F. Hendricken and Andrew Martin came to the conclusion that, while the paper had been successful, the press of work did not allow them to continue their partnership as editor and manager. On Sept. 16, 1876, therefore, the bishop printed a notice in the paper that he was transferring the Visitor's ownership "to other hands whose experience in journalism justifies the hope that an acceptable publication will be presented to the Catholics of the Diocese." The man who took over the Visitor was local newspaperman, Michael A. Walsh. Walsh was a native of Providence who had attended the parochial schools of the city. He began his newspaper career as a reporter for the Morning Star, an active rival of The Providence Journal. Walsh developed an expertise in "phonography," a form of shorthand invented in the 19th century, and soon attracted attention because of the reliability of his articles. His editor regularly assigned him to cover civic and political meetings. In 1870, Walsh left the employ of the Morning Star to launch a newspaper of his own in partnership with another Irish Catholic, James E. Hanrahan. On June 18, 1870, the two published the first issue of the Weekly Review, a newspaper they envisioned as a "firstclass family newspaper" which would provide its readers with a weekly account of foreign and domestic news as well as comment on the issues of the day.
By August 1870, financial difficulties on the part of both Walsh and Hanrahan prompted them to dissolve their partnership. Similar financial difficulties also forced the publishers of the Rhode Island Lantern, another weekly which had first appeared in February 1870, to suspend publication. The Lantern had been devoted to agitation for the expansion of suffrage in Rhode Island and was intended for the foreign-born. Because subscribers to the two papers had paid for a year's subscription, Walsh, in the same Aug. 20 issue of the Weekly Democrat, announced the end of his partnership with Hanrahan. Walsh also announced his intention to continue publishing a newspaper, the Weekly Democrat, in the same spirit as the Lantern and the Weekly Review. He explained that he did so "at the urgent request of the most prominent supporters" of the two papers. He promised to forward the new newspaper to the subscribers of both papers for the remainder of their unexpired terms. With his Dec. 24, 1870 issue, Walsh resumed publishing his newspaper as the Weekly Democrat, the last issue of which appeared on May 27, 1871. On taking over as both editor and manager of the Weekly Visitor, Walsh altered the magazine format adopted by Bishop Hendricken and Andrew Martin and began publishing the Visitor as a regular newspaper at 37 Custom House St. That was also the location of the Providence Press Company, which initially printed the paper and which also printed the Morning Star. Although he changed the Visitor's format, Walsh did not change the educational mission of the Visitor. He continued to fill its pages with news of the church and with articles offering instruction in Catholic doctrine and "in those principles which redound most to the well-being of society." On the evening of Sept. 27, 1877, a fire started at Pine Street and Harkness Court and destroyed four business blocks in the center of Providence before it was put out. While the fire did not touch the building where Walsh had his office, the roof of the building was crushed by a falling wall of an adjoining building. In the existing copies of the Visitor, there is a three-month-long gap between Sept. 29, when Walsh reported the fire, and Jan. 1, 1878, when he greeted his readers at the beginning of the new year. When the paper reappeared, it had a new masthead and was printed on a single, larger sheet by the J.R. Reid Company. During his years as editor and manager of the Visitor, Walsh would maintain his office at several different locations. In order to have more office space, in March 1878, Walsh established a new office at 56 Weybosset St. The need for additional space was prompted in part by Walsh's purchase of the assets of the Sun and the Sunday Gazette after those papers ceased publication. At the beginning of 1877, Walsh increased the size of the sheets on which he printed the paper. At the same time, he announced his aim of making the Visitor a first-class family paper. Walsh stated that the increase in size was necessary to meet the "heavy demands on its columns." Walsh increased the number of pages from four to eight and the size of his pages, so that they carried five rather than four columns, beginning with his Feb. 8, 1879 issue. At the same time, he began publishing two editions of the paper, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday. On Sept. 7, 1879, it appeared as the Sunday Visitor. The Saturday edition continued to appear as the Weekly Visitor and went chiefly to readers outside Providence; The Sunday edition was intended for circulation within Providence and could be purchased from the newsboys who delivered the local paper, which cost four cents a copy. Under Walsh's editorship, current political topics that concerned the immigrant and Catholic community, which made up the bulk of the paper's readers, received more notice. The Visitor regularly reported on the efforts of Catholics who favored abstinence from alcoholic beverages to advance the cause of "temperance." The paper's columns also contained accounts of the activities of the expanding number of Catholic fraternal and benevolent societies. It also reported on the various St. Vincent de Paul societies in the diocese and their efforts to help the poor. Walsh was a firm supporter of the rights of labor and his paper carried many articles on the living and working conditions of the poor. He also supported union efforts to improve wages and working conditions, particularly those aimed at securing a maximum 10-hour work day. As it had under Bishop Hendricken's direct control, the Visitor continued to defend the interests of Catholics when they were subjected to the prejudice of their neighbors. In 1876, the Rhode Island legislature tried to limit the exemption from local taxes to public schools only. Both the Visitor and The Providence Journal had provided their readers with extensive coverage. Among the issues were the legislative investigation of reported abuses by tax-exempt organizations of their preferred status and the subsequent decision, in its January 1876 session, to remove the tax-exempt status of private schools. To keep the issue before the Catholic population, the cathedral parish took up a special collection each year to pay the taxes on the cathedral schools, an occurrence regularly noted in the Visitor. Walsh also provided extensive coverage on its news and editorial pages of the efforts on the part of Charles Gorman and others aimed at expanding the right to vote to all of the state's naturalized citizens. Gorman's efforts achieved a measure of success in the passage of the Bourn Amendment to the Rhode Island Constitution in 1888.

Diocese buys fledgling newspaper


Third in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman

Even if one never knew the nationality of the Visitor's editor and manager, Michael A.Walsh, the prominence of news of Ireland and the Irish community in the state would have given his nationality away. For Irish news, Walsh drew on the pages of the Kilkenny Journal. For local news, in addition to the events he covered, he continued to rely on amateur correspondents in the various communities to send in information. The chief public focus of the Irish community in the state was the annual celebration of St. Patrick's Day held in Providence each year. In view of the hard economic times created by the 1873 financial panic, as well as the hard times Ireland faced during these years, a debate arose in the 1870s among the various Irish organizations in the state as to whether they should parade on St. Patrick's Day or use the money they would have spent to aid the poor and those in distress. The Visitor provided a wider forum for this debate than the convention of Irish societies at which plans for the annual celebration were made. It also provided a great deal of space for news of the Land League struggle in Ireland and of the meetings and activities of the Rhode Island branches of the Land League and of the Irish Aid Association. While the Visitor in its early years regularly printed ads which contained illustrations, it printed only a few illustrations on news pages. Among the few early illustrations that did appear in the paper during the 1880s was a portrait of the Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, and a drawing of the apparition of Mary at Knock, County Mayo, Ireland, on Aug. 21, 1879. With its issue on Oct. 1, 1881, the Visitor began its seventh year of publication. The article announcing the beginning of the new volume also announced a major change in the ownership of the paper. Rather than continue publication as the paper's sole owner, Walsh petitioned for and received from the General Assembly a charter of incorporation creating the Visitor Printing Company. With the money raised from the sale of stock, the company acquired its own press to print the paper. The new company offices remained at 56 Weybosset St. until Sept. 5, 1888, when the paper's offices moved to 27 North Main St. In January 1884, the Visitor Printing Company undertook to reorganize and improve itself. As part of the reorganization, the company discontinued publishing two editions and changed the paper's name to The Providence Visitor with its Feb. 2, 1884 issue, in order to avoid a confusion of names with the Weekly Visitor, another paper intended for state-wide distribution, published in Central Falls by Edward L. Freeman. The prosperity of the paper dictated a modest further enlargement of its facilities and also its size. With its March 27 issue, the paper expanded from seven columns to eight. In May 1887, the subject matter of the paper was further expanded by including regular columns on women's fashions and on science, both of which were often accompanied by drawings. It was in 1887 that one of the first references to the Visitor's editor and publisher as "Doctor Walsh" appeared. At some point during these years, Walsh took leave from his newspaper work to acquire a medical degree in Burlington, Vt., where he specialized in "electro-medicine." It was also in 1887 that an article appeared noting the wedding of a Visitor employee. As was the custom of the time, the article listed the wedding gifts the couple had received. Among the gifts were one from "Dr. Walsh" and another from "Mrs. E. A. Walsh." While the exact date of Walsh's wedding cannot be found out at this time, the "Mrs. E. A. Walsh" referred to was the former Elizabeth A. FitzSimon, whose nephew, Father James A. FitzSimon, was an assistant pastor at St. Charles, Woonsocket, and later pastor of St. Brigid's, Johnston, and St. Joseph's, Ashton. Mrs. Walsh was born into a literary family and received an excellent education. Before her marriage, she had been a principal of a boys' high school in Louisville, Ky. After her marriage, she was a frequent contributor to the Visitor's editorial page and the writer of miscellaneous articles. Several years after Bishop Matthew Harkins became the second Bishop of Providence in 1887, he and Dr. Walsh began discussions over the possibility of the clergy acquiring control of the Visitor Printing Co. On Nov. 25, 1892, Bishop Harkins met with the pastors of the parishes in Providence and its vicinity about taking over the Visitor and making it "a good and creditable Catholic paper." The pastors not only voted unanimously to adopt the proposal, but also agreed to buy the stock of the company. The next day, the bishop met with Dr. Walsh to work out the details of the transfer of the company's ownership. On Jan. 2, 1893, the new stockholders met with the bishop at the Cathedral rectory to adopt new bylaws for the company and to elect officers. Six priests and Dr. Walsh were elected as directors of the company while one of their number, Father Michael McCabe, the vicar general, was elected president. Dr. Walsh continued as manager of the paper and two priests, Father John C. Tennian, pastor of Assumption Parish, Providence, and Father Michael P. Cassidy, pastor of St. Patrick's, Valley Falls, were chosen as editors. The next week, in the Jan. 9, 1893 issue, in which the paper announced the clergy's taking charge, there also appeared for the first time a letter from Bishop Harkins recommending the paper to the "attention and good will of the clergy and laity of the diocese." The new money raised from the pastors who bought stock in the company went in part toward the purchase of a new press on which to print the paper, a complete supply of new type, and the refitting and improvement of the editorial and business offices at the paper's North Main Street address. A key element in making the Visitor a "good and creditable Catholic paper," was the hiring of an editor-in-chief to oversee the editorial elements of the paper and to provide articles. In March 1893, Bishop Harkins spoke with George Parsons Lathrop, who had worked on the editorial staffs of the Atlantic Monthly and Boston Courier and as a writer for Harper's Magazine, about becoming editor-in-chief, in addition to the writing he was currently doing. Lathrop, together with his wife Rose, the second daughter of the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, were converts to the Catholic faith. During his meeting with Bishop Harkins, Lathrop was reluctant to take the post because he felt that the responsibilities of editor would interfere with other work he was doing. Five days after meeting with the bishop, however, Lathrop wrote to Bishop Harkins to inform him that he had rethought the matter. In a subsequent letter, he began by explaining again why he was reluctant to take on new responsibilities. Nevertheless, he saw the editorship as an opportunity to serve the church and Bishop Harkins and he agreed to take on the post. In the course of his letter, Lathrop outlined what the new clerical directors of the Visitor needed to give the paper a distinctive character and make it pay its way. He advocated a considerable investment at the beginning, to establish the paper in the manner envisioned by its new owners. While he appreciated the value of Dr. Walsh's talent for gathering local news and in making up the paper, he did not believe that Walsh possessed the necessary talent or energy to advance the business side of the company, which, because of its new press, also sought to expand its commercial printing business. He advocated that the company hire a young man with experience on the business side of a newspaper as publisher or business manager who could devote his full energies to publishing and circulation. When Bishop Harkins delayed in answering his letter, Lathrop wrote again that he would be willing to accept the position as editor-in-chief even if the Visitor Printing Company chose not to follow his suggestions for the management of the paper. When Fathers Tennian and Cassidy favored hiring Lathrop, Bishop Harkins agreed, and arranged to have him take over editing the paper during the second week of May. In the Visitor's May 15, 1893 issue, Lathrop introduced himself to the paper's readers and discussed the changes made by the new directors. While Lathrop's entrance into the field of Catholic journalism as editor of the Visitor was hailed by his colleagues in the East and Midwest who knew him, his tenure at the Visitor lasted only 10 weeks. He found the time demanded by his responsibilities to be greater than he had anticipated. He also found it difficult to live in New London, where he had recently built a new home, and work on the paper in Providence. Furthermore, he was disappointed when the directors of the company failed to provide the resources he felt were essential to the well-being of the paper. In view of these circumstances and the strain they created on his health, Lathrop informed Bishop Harkins that he could not continue in the work. The directors of the company continued to offer Lathrop less than what he felt necessary; it sought some compromise to limit his involvement to two editorial pages. Lathrop found the proposed restriction a breach of contract and left the paper at the end of July.

Visitor stature grew amid flood of editors


Fourth in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

For several years after George Parsons Lathrop resigned as editor-in-chief of the paper, the Visitor did not list anyone's name on its editorial page. Fathers John C. Tennian and Michael P. Cassidy most likely continued to write for the paper as did Dr. Michael A. Walsh and his wife. With the Diocese of Providence becoming the Visitor's new owners, coverage of parish news expanded and was highlighted with bolder headlines.
Among the changes made possible by a new printing press was the capability of printing more sketches and, as technology developed, photographs. A new flag appeared with the Visitor's May 15, 1893 issue. The flag, which was used until October 5, 1901 when the paper went back to a simpler one, included sketches of the new Providence city hall that Mayor Thomas Doyle had built, the cathedral built by Bishop Hendricken and the state seal. Among the first photographs printed in the paper were those of the bishops of Hartford, Conn., who had lived in Providence and those of Bishops Thomas F. Hendricken and Matthew Harkins. They accompanied a series of articles on the history of the diocese written by the Visitor's first editor, Father William D. Kelly. The new flag and the articles were part of the Visitor's response to the charges of the nativists of the day that the Catholic Church was a foreign and anti-American institution.
In December 1895, Father Thomas F. Doran, who had succeeded Father Michael McCabe as vicar general and as a director of the Visitor, approached Bishop Harkins with the suggestion that the bishop offer the position as editor to Father Austin Dowling, a priest of the diocese who was then assigned to St. John Seminary in Brighton, Mass., where he held a position as professor of church history. Father Dowling had contributed to the paper previously and was familiar with its work. When Bishop Harkins spoke with Father Dowling on Jan. 10, the young priest agreed to take on the responsibility. The board of directors announced the change in an editorial in the Visitor's Feb. 22, 1896 issue.
Under Father Dowling, The Providence Visitor became, in the words of a later Visitor writer, "one of the leading exponents of Catholic thought in America and attained a foremost place in the ranks of Catholic journalism." Father Dowling's work as editor set a standard which subsequent Visitor editors had "no little difficulty in maintaining."
One of his innovations was the writing of short biographies of the saints which were widely recognized for their excellence. In his personal editorial greeting to the readers of the Visitor, Father Dowling expressed his conviction that a Catholic paper "ought to be an indispensable thing in every Catholic family" so that it might serve as an antidote to what was printed in the daily papers.
While Father Dowling's work helped raise the value of the Visitor in the eyes of other journalists, too few Catholics in the diocese subscribed to the paper to make it financially secure. By January 1897, the priest directors of the company had come to the same conclusion as had former editors Walsh and George Parsons Lathrop. Aside from many editorial contributions, an editor of the Visitor needed to have the business skills and vision necessary to push the financial side of the paper. For his part, Walsh, who continued to work at the paper having served as the editor from 1876 through 1893, believed that the paper's difficulties were created "by injurious expenditures ordered by the directors." In any case, the directors decided that a change was necessary and asked for Walsh's resignation, which he submitted at the annual meeting of the company in January 1897. In noting Walsh's resignation, the editorial that week complimented him by saying that his "experience, ability and prudence have given the Visitor a standing in the diocese which shall be its highest ambition to maintain." At the end of January, William L. Kenefick was hired to take his place.
After two years at the Visitor, Father Dowling went to Bishop Harkins in June 1898 to ask for a change of assignment because his duties as editor left him "little time for study." At the time, he was working on a history of the diocese that was to be a critical contribution to the "History of the Catholic Church in the New England States," published in 1899 by the New England Catholic Historical Society.
In August 1898, Father Dowling was replaced as editor by another priest-scholar, Father Thomas L. Kelly. Father Kelly had taught Greek and Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary Seminary in Emmittsburg, Md., from 1891 until 1895. Subsequently, he was pastor of St. Mary's, North Easton, Mass. Like Father Dowling before him, Father Kelly had previously contributed articles to the Visitor. He was widely read in classical and modern literature and his book reviews had appeared on the front page of the paper. In part, because of his new assignment, Father Kelly was made pastor of Assumption Parish in Providence at the beginning of 1899. Father Tennian became pastor of St. Mary's, Pawtucket.
Father Kelly, like his predecessors, found the dual responsibilities of editing the paper and administering a parish "too weighty a burden." To ease the situation, the Visitor hired a talented young priest to serve as associate editor. The priest, Father Cornelius C. Clifford, had been ordained for the Jesuits in 1898, but had left the order the following year. When Father Kelly asked to retire as editor in June 1901, Father Clifford was chosen to succeed him.
Father Clifford's tenure as editor was a relatively tranquil and productive one until March 1902. In the Visitor's March 1, 1902 issue, he wrote an editorial entitled "Anglophobia," in which he gave the English-speaking people credit for bringing the principle of toleration to the world at large. The editorial prompted a protest from a group of Irish men in Pawtucket who were members of the Pleasant View Literary Society. Society members, gathered to commemorate the birthday of Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet, wrote to Bishop Harkins protesting Father Clifford's praising the English. Father Clifford again ventured editorially into the volatile area of Irish nationalism with an editorial in the Dec. 20, 1902 issue. The editorial discussed the position of Irish politician John E. Redmond and his followers in regard to the School Bill, which recently had been discussed in Parliament. This editorial provoked another protest from the Irish in Pawtucket, which led to three Society leaders meeting with Bishop Harkins on Jan. 9, 1903, to discuss the question. At the meeting, Bishop Harkins disclaimed responsibility for the Visitor and its opinions and expressed his own criticism of the Irish party deserting the cause of education. Father Clifford defended himself against his critics in the Visitor, published the next day, by saying that he had no concern with politics at all "save insofar as they trench upon traditional orthodoxy."
In addition to the controversy with his Irish readers, Father Clifford also experienced difficulties in the internal management of the paper. He visited Bishop Harkins at the episcopal residence on January 11 to discuss a "dual management" that existed at the paper. The bishop recommended that Father Clifford take up the matter with the paper's board of directors at the annual meeting, set for the next day. The day following the directors' meeting, Father Doran met with the bishop to talk about the Visitor. He reported that the directors had given Father Clifford complete control of the paper.
A measure of tranquility returned to the paper until October 1903, when Father Clifford wrote a piece for the editorial page on the Archdiocese of Boston, which was observing the centenary of the dedication of Holy Cross Cathedral. Bishop Harkins perceived the article as "most abusive of Boston Catholics and sneering in its allusions to Boston Irish" and immediately wrote a letter of apology to Archbishop John J. Williams and the Catholics of Boston. However, before his letter reached Boston, Msgr. William Byrne, the vicar general of the Boston Archdiocese and a longtime friend of Bishop Harkins, wrote to the bishop expressing his surprise at the Visitor article, referring as well to a previous article which he also found in poor taste. The Boston issue was particularly sensitive because Bishop Harkins was friendly with Archbishop Williams and many other Boston priests. It also came at the moment when Bishop Harkins was one of those most often mentioned as the archbishop's possible successor.
Unlike the previous incidents concerning the Irish in Pawtucket, the offense given by Father Clifford's editorial forced Bishop Harkins to act. On the day that the article appeared, the bishop called in Father Doran to say that he was withdrawing his commendation of the Visitor and advised a change in its editor. Father Clifford wrote a letter of apology to the bishop the next day. He declared that he had no intention of criticizing individual Catholics in Boston, but admitted that he might have been influenced by prejudice. He offered to resign and asked the bishop for advice. Bishop Harkins suggested that he offer his resignation. The Visitor Printing Company held a special meeting on Monday, Oct. 5, 1903, at which they voted to accept Father Clifford's resignation. When told of the directors' action, Bishop Harkins wrote in his diary simply, "a good riddance." After leaving Providence, Father Clifford went on to a distinguished career as a professor and pastor in New Jersey.

For the Visitor: First turmoil, then new glory


Fifth in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman Diocesan Historian

Following Father Cornelius C. Clifford's departure from the editorial offices of The Providence Visitor, Bishop Matthew Harkins sought an editor from the ranks of his own priests. On Nov. 14, 1903, the bishop spoke with Father James E. Cassidy, then assistant at St. Mary's, North Attleboro, Mass. - at the time a part of the Diocese of Providence - about the editorship of the Visitor. Father Cassidy was quoted often in the local papers when he spoke out on issues and he would continue to do so as a pastor in the Diocese of Fall River, when that See was formed a year later, and eventually as bishop of that diocese. Father Cassidy, however, did not feel he was able to take on the work of editor.
Four days after he had spoken with Father Cassidy, Dr. Charles Rivier, who had served for a time as professor of Church History at St. Bernard Seminary, in Rochester, N.Y., called at the episcopal residence to inquire about the job. The bishop was favorably impressed by him and sent him to Father Thomas F. Doran, who was chairman of the board of the Visitor Printing Company. The bishop met with Father Doran later that same day to further discuss Rivier's suitability for the position. When the Visitor's board of directors later voted to hire Rivier, Bishop Harkins met with him again. On Dec. 19, two weeks later, Rivier introduced himself in the Visitor. In his introduction, Rivier said that the bishop "spoke at length on the conduct of the paper." The bishop had insisted that the Visitor must be "a Rhode Island paper" and that only incidentally should it treat outside matters and then "only for general interests of religion."
However, the choice of Rivier as editor proved to be an unfortunate one. At their meeting on Feb. 19, 1904, the Board of Directors of the Visitor expressed dissatisfaction with work of Rivier and the paper's manager, William L. Kenefick. The board did not take action at the time. In subsequent weeks, Rivier adhered to the guidelines Bishop Harkins had laid down. However, in the Visitor's April 16, 1904 issue, Rivier printed an editorial entitled, "Is It Absolutism?" In the piece, he criticized the writer of a letter to the editor in the New York Sun for discussing church matters in a "Protestant paper." The subject of the letter was the Vatican's passing over of Bishop John Lancaster Spalding, whom the American hierarchy had recommended to be archbishop of Chicago, in favor of another man. In the course of his editorial, Rivier leveled a certain criticism of the papacy and of the Italian church, raising the ghost of Americanism. After its publication, several readers of the Visitor sent copies of the article to the apostolic delegate. On April 25, 1904, Archbishop Diomede Falconio sent a copy of the article to Bishop Harkins suggesting that, because the paper carried his recommendation, it could appear that Bishop Harkins approved the article in question. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, the delegate suggested that the bishop or a priest appointed by him should examine future articles before they appeared in the Visitor.
On the day he received the delegate's letter, Bishop Harkins called in Kenefick and again withdrew the printed commendation that had been appearing in the paper. Two days later, he went to the Visitor's office to speak with Rivier about the article about which the delegate had complained. The bishop watched the paper carefully over the next few weeks. When on June 4, 1904, two articles appeared which the bishop also found objectionable, he resolved that Rivier had to go. The directors asked for the editor's resignation, which he gave, in what Bishop Harkins described as an "ugly letter."
The directors lost no time in appointing another layman, James I. Conway, as editor. In his first editorial on July 9, 1904, Conway informed his readers that he would not concern himself with political and nationalistic questions as Rivier had because he believed that "a Catholic journal issued in the interests of Catholics of every nation should not be a medium of preaching or engaging in controversies regarding the superior excellence of any particular nation over others. Least of all should the editor of such a paper take sides in a question entirely foreign to his mission." He therefore excused himself from printing a letter he had received from a correspondent who had taken issue at something Rivier had written.
Under Conway, complaints about the Visitor ceased and the bishop returned his commendation to the paper. However, the paper did not fare well financially under Conway's management after he accepted that added responsibility to his other duties when Kenefick resigned on Oct. 1. Over the next three years, the financial condition of the paper continued to weaken. One of the problems was that the Visitor's equipment had become outdated. The paper was also unable to take full advantage of the new technology driving the newspapers of the day. In March of 1907, Conway spoke to Bishop Harkins about having the paper printed by an outside company. In May 1907, now Msgr. Doran, in his capacity as chairman of the board of directors, spoke with Bishop Harkins about the possibility of leasing the paper to the publisher of The Monitor, a Catholic newspaper in New Jersey. The publisher of The Monitor agreed to take the paper for a year on a trial basis, but apparently the conditions he laid down for so doing were not satisfactory to the Visitor board. Finally, in August of 1908, Bishop Harkins met with Conway and the Visitor Printing Company's directors to discuss the future of the paper. Nothing specific was decided at the meeting, but a general consensus emerged that change was necessary.
Over the next two weeks, Bishop Harkins met twice with Msgr. Doran about the Visitor. On Oct. 23, 1908, the two met with the pastors of the English-speaking parishes in the Providence area to discuss the paper. At the meeting, the priests agreed to support the paper financially out of parish funds. Bishop Harkins finalized plans for the assessment of the parishes to help the Visitor when he met with his Board of Consultors on Nov. 23. The bishop announced the plan to the priests of the diocese as a whole in a letter written on Dec. 1.
As part of the reorganization, Conway was replaced as business manager by Edward J. Cooney, and as editor by a board of priests drawn from Providence, headed by the director of the Mission Band, Father Peter E. Blessing. The paper also opened new offices in the Lederer Building at 139 Mathewson St. The first issue of the reorganized paper appeared on Nov. 28, 1908. The new editors committed themselves to supply the Catholics of the diocese with full and accurate knowledge of church affairs in the state and in the country, and to assert the church's rights and defend its principles. Under Father Blessing's direction and Cooney's efficient management, the Visitor regained the influence and esteem which it had enjoyed a decade earlier under Fathers Austin Dowling and William D. Kelly.

Local priests take Visitor to national recognition


Sixth in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

The improvement in the quality of the paper after Father Peter E. Blessing and the priests of the Diocesan Mission Band took charge prompted Catholics and others to take out an increasing number of subscriptions. As a means of further increasing the number of subscribers, the Visitor, beginning in May 1910, offered a free trip to the major cities of Europe and to the Passion Play at Oberammergau, Germany to seven women who gained the most votes from Visitor readers. Official ballots to be used for nominating prospective winners were printed in each issue of the paper during the length of the contest. The paper divided the diocese into seven districts, and the woman who received the most nominations in each district was declared the winner.
The success of the paper made possible the establishment of a new printing plant at 23 Mathewson St. This, in turn, made possible the printing of the paper in a new modern format. The first issue appeared on Sept. 30, 1910 and won praise from many quarters. Among those who wrote to compliment the editors on the new format of the paper was its first printer, Andrew P. Martin, who was enjoying a successful new career as a Providence police officer.
Under Father Blessing, the Visitor highlighted local news, particularly the work of the diocese's institutions, and attracted attention to the articles by the printing of pictures or sketches of the buildings that housed them. Because nativism was again beginning to stir, the Visitor also carried articles on the contributions of the Irish to the building of the nation and of Rhode Island. In addition, the Visitor continued to be a vigilant defender of Catholic rights and principles. One example of the Visitor's aggressiveness was the paper's first special issue, a 56- page, seven-section, Anti-Socialist and Industrial edition, which appeared on May 19, 1911. Among its features were a survey of the history of the church in Rhode Island and several articles on the economic and industrial life of the state.
In addition to its regular articles and editorials which commented on the national and local scene, the Visitor, from January 1910 until early 1912, also carried a column, written by a Catholic layman who signed himself "The Bystander." The column surveyed and commented on the local political and religious issues. "The Bystander" regularly called his readers' attention to examples of religious and ethnic bigotry on the part of local ministers, the Providence Journal and other opinion makers. In addition to that weekly column, the paper also carried a weekly column on Christian doctrine. Such columns became standard fare in the paper.
In 1910, the Visitor ran numerous front-page articles challenging what it regarded as bigotry in the Providence school system and in the actions of the Providence School Board. The strident tone of the Visitor during this controversy caused Bishop Matthew Harkins, in November 1910, to suggest to Msgr. Thomas F. Doran that the Visitor should "be quiet for a little while" in respect to its criticism of the school committee. Shortly after this conversation with the bishop, Msgr. Doran returned to say that Father Blessing wished to retire from the management of the paper "on account of nervousness." Bishop Harkins was reluctant to grant his request because he felt that he had no one to take his place. However, in July 1911, the bishop agreed to a change and asked Father Michael F. O'Brien, another priest assigned to the Providence Apostolate, and who had worked with Father Blessing on the paper, to take over the editor's chair. When Father O'Brien accepted the post, he also retired from the Mission Band.
Shortly after he left the Visitor, Father Blessing and Edward J. Cooney, the Visitor's business manager, played significant roles in the formation of the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada. The association was created during a convention of Catholic editors held in Columbus, Ohio, in August 1911. Cooney opened the convention and was elected its permanent chairman. Father Blessing served on the committee which drafted the association's bylaws and delivered an address entitled "A Catholic Associated Press" in which he advocated the need for Catholic papers to publish news of the whole Christian world in addition to their local coverage.
Father O'Brien would maintain the high standard set by Father Blessing. Under Father O'Brien, the Visitor published one of the largest of its special issues on April 19, 1912, to commemorate Bishop Harkins' 25th anniversary of his ordination as Bishop of Providence and the work that had been accomplished during those years. Other special issues were published on Feb. 12, 1915, to celebrate the Visitor's own 40th anniversary and, on Oct. 22, 1915, the Visitor printed a 40-page, five-section "Safety First" issue to emphasize safety in the home, on the highway and in the workplace. These special issues were in part a response to a request Bishop Harkins made to Father O'Brien that he "make the paper more interesting to Rhode Islanders by touching on our own matter."
During Bishop Harkins' remaining years as head of the diocese, the editors of the Visitor met frequently with him to discuss their plans and to receive suggestions.
In January 1913, Father O'Brien asked Bishop Harkins to be relieved of his assignment as editor. The bishop agreed to his request and gave charge of the Visitor to the paper's associate editor, Father Thomas C. Cullen, who had joined the paper in September 1912. Father Cullen was a relatively young priest when he took over the paper and often discussed the Visitor's affairs with the bishop during his first year or more on the job. Under Father Cullen, the paper again moved its offices, this time to the Hanley Building at 63 Washington St. The paper announced its move in its Sept. 3, 1915 issue. At this time, the Visitor appeared as an eight-page, seven-column paper with a circulation of about 3,300. In time, Father Cullen's work as editor won him recognition throughout the country. In 1918, his former seminary professor, Archbishop Edward J. Hanna, who was then Archbishop of San Francisco, invited him to come to California to take charge of the San Francisco Monitor.

Visitor hailed as best Catholic paper in America


Seventh in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

When Father Thomas Cullen accepted, with Bishop Matthew Harkins' permission, Archbishop Edward J. Hanna's invitation to become editor of the San Francisco Monitor, Bishop Harkins asked Father James P. O'Brien, the brother of the former editor, Father Michael F. O'Brien, to take over the paper. Like his brother, Father James O'Brien was Irish-born and had come to the United States as a boy. He had later returned to Ireland to study for two years before entering St. Mary Seminary, Baltimore, to prepare for the priesthood.
As had his predecessors, Father O'Brien used his editorials to comment on the local and international scene from his Catholic perspective. He continued to support the Catholic Church in Mexico that was suffering under the hands of a revolutionary government. He also offered his views on America's and the world's efforts to create a world based on justice that would ensure peace in the days after World War I. However, on the issue of statehood for Ireland, an issue brought to the fore by the Easter Uprising of 1916 and the guerilla war fought by the Irish Republican Army in the aftermath of England's defeat of the rebels, Father O'Brien was particularly passionate.
Frequently enough, Father O'Brien's editorials were directed at the positions taken in the editorials by the pro-British editor of the Providence Journal, John Ravelstoke Rathom. Rathom was as passionately pro-British as Father O'Brien was pro-Irish.
In the pages of the Visitor, Father O'Brien readily defended the Irish nationalist cause in its struggle for the independence of Ireland from British rule. Rathom's credibility was tarnished in 1920, following the publication of a confession he had made in 1916 to the U.S. Attorney General in which he admitted to manufactured news of anti-American German espionage during World War I. The animosity between the two editors escalated with the climax of the Irish struggle in 1922. On March 17, 1922, Rathom asked the Journal's cartoonist, Milton Halladay, to picture the Free State's President, Eamonn de Valera as a cobra with the legend, "Another St. Patrick Needed." Rathom had the cartoon printed on the Journal's front page. Seeing the cartoon as an insult both to the Irish and to the church, Bishop William A. Hickey invited Rathom to a meeting with him and a lawyer in the Chancery. Toward the end of the meeting, he called in Father O'Brien. That same day, Bishop Hickey noted in his diary that the meeting ended "with friendly conclusions."
At the beginning of his episcopacy, Bishop Hickey decided to make the advancement of Catholic education his legacy to the diocese. He saw the Visitor as a key component in informing and strengthening the faith of his people, and set as a goal that the Visitor be read by every Catholic in the diocese. To achieve that end, he was ready to provide the Visitor with a building to house its presses and its editorial and business offices. In 1923, he dedicated a newly-constructed home for the Visitor at Fenner and Pond streets across from the Cathedral rectory. In order to increase circulation, Father O'Brien, with the bishop's support, embarked on a preaching tour of the parishes to encourage the people of the individual parishes to subscribe to the Visitor.
The new facilities and the financial support provided by Bishop Hickey enabled Father O'Brien to increase the Visitor to 16 pages. He filled them with local news and columns supplemented by the newly-established news service created by the American bishops' National Catholic Welfare Conference. To make the paper financially viable, Bishop Hickey announced a new circulation plan to all the pastors of the diocese during Catholic Press Month in 1922. He was allotting each of them a specific number of subscriptions which the pastors were to pay for by selling subscriptions to their parishioners or by taking the money from parish funds. Beginning on March 1, 1924, the Visitor began running a new masthead with the statement that the Visitor was "America's Largest and Best Catholic Newspaper." More than a boast, this claim was substantiated in part by the School of Journalism at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., which, during the 1920s and '30s, consistently selected the Visitor as the leading Catholic newspaper in America. The quality of the paper bore practical results. In 1933, the Visitor could claim that it led the Catholic newspaper field in the United States and Canada in advertising lineage for diocesan papers.
The rise of the Visitor to the first rank of American Catholic newspapers was made possible not only by the support of Bishop Hickey and the talent of Father O'Brien, but by the hard work of a dedicated staff of priests and lay people who helped put out the paper and managed its printing department. In July 1923, Bishop Hickey appointed Father James C. McCarthy to the editorial staff and sent him to Columbia University's School of Journalism to prepare him for his work on the paper. When ill health forced Father McCarthy to take a new assignment in January 1926, Bishop Hickey appointed Father Francis J. Deery as the paper's assistant manager.
The Providence Visitor was not the only journalistic enterprise with which Bishop Hickey and Father O'Brien concerned themselves. In November 1910, Father Antonio Bove, the pastor of St. Ann Parish, Providence, who, since February 1920, had been contributing a column entitled, "Events of Interest to the Italians," called together several of his fellow Italian priests and a few prominent laymen to consider undertaking the establishment of an Italian-language Catholic weekly. With the promise of financial support from Bishop Hickey and with his encouragement, the priests and laymen formed the La Sentinella Publishing Company and bought stock in the new company. The first issue of La Sentinella appeared at Christmas 1920. The new corporation chose Father Bove as the paper's manager and Scalabrini Father Emilio Greco, pastor of Holy Angels, Barrington, as its editor.
As had the Visitor before it, La Sentinella made its appearance during an economic depression caused by the transition of the American economy from wartime to peacetime production and the demobilization of America's World War I forces. The paper struggled financially from the beginning. In 1921, in an effort to see the paper succeed, Father O'Brien, whose press printed the paper, suggested to Bishop Harkins that La Sentinella be reduced in size. He also suggested that the Italian parishes be asked to take and pay for a certain number of copies each week in order to ensure the paper had the necessary funds. In 1922, Bishop Hickey asked the Italian pastors to help La Sentinella financially, in the same way he asked his other pastors to support The Providence Visitor, by agreeing to accept responsibility for a certain number of papers each week which they would have sent to their parishioners. When the paper continued to struggle, Bishop Hickey left its fate in Father Bove's hands. In late 1923, the decision was made to cease publication.
In 1929, when Bishop Hickey returned from a visit to Rome, he recognized the work Father O'Brien had done at the Visitor by announcing Father O'Brien's appointment as a domestic prelate with the title of monsignor. In 1934, Msgr. O'Brien's colleagues in the Catholic Press Association also recognized his work by electing him vice president of the Association. However, failing health forced Msgr. O'Brien to offer Bishop Francis P. Keough his resignation as editor in January 1935, after 16 years service to the paper.

Newspaper builds subscriptions, decries obscenity


Eighth in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

AWARD-WINNING ARTWORK - June Burns, a student at St. Mary Academy - Bayview, won third prize for her entry to the Visitor's annual Catholic Students Press Crusade poster contest in 1941. (Visitor photo)

When Msgr. James P. O'Brien became ill and later resigned as editor of The Providence Visitor, Father Francis J. Deery, who had joined the paper in 1926 as assistant manager, filled in for him temporarily, and later was appointed editor. Father Deery's tenure as editor coincided with the replacement of the Visitor's press with a new high speed one. The new press enabled Father Deery to increase the size of the paper again, from seven to eight columns, and to print the paper a day earlier, on Thursday rather than on Friday. Among the more important issues printed on the new press was the Visitor's Tercentenary Issue published on April 9, 1936 as part of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of Providence. The issue contained a history of the Catholic Church in Rhode Island written by former editor, Father Thomas F. Cullen, which the Visitor printed in book form that same year.
Two years prior, Father Deery had begun a new subscription campaign, the first in 10 years. Starting February 1933 at the Cathedral, he had been making the rounds of the parishes in the diocese preaching on behalf of the Visitor. During the first year of the campaign, Father Deery visited 34 parishes and gained 8,132 new subscriptions for the paper. After becoming editor, Father Deery put a temporary halt to his parish visits. However, he found other ways to boost readership and circulation. On March 14, 1935, the Visitor began running a series on the history of the parishes in the diocese, written in many cases by their pastors, beginning once again with the Cathedral parish. The series ran until May 27, 1937 and included most but not all of the parishes. Father Deery kept the pastors informed as to when the history of their parish would appear, and many of the pastors responded by ordering hundreds of extra copies of that week's Visitor for sale in their parishes. Beginning on July 1, 1937, the Visitor also ran a series on the history of the high schools of the diocese, drawn from a dissertation done by Edward J. Carroll, a student at St. Mary Seminary, Baltimore, Md.
In September 1935, Bishop Francis B. Keough sent a young Father Russell J. McVinney to the University of Notre Dame to study journalism and appointed him to the Visitor staff when he finished in June. In the same month, Bishop Keough appointed another young priest, Father Joseph F. Bracq, an assistant at the Cathedral who had been responsible for the Question Box column which appeared weekly in the Visitor, to be assistant editor of the paper. In January 1937, with the aid of his two new assistants, Father Deery resumed his visits to the parishes with the aim of achieving the goal Bishop Hickey had set: A Catholic paper in every Catholic home. As in the past, the campaign focused on the English-speaking parishes, but the publicity generated also prompted a number of subscriptions to come in from parishes with French- and Italian-speaking Catholics. In March 1937, Father Deery reported that, since the beginning of the campaign, the Visitor had gained 5,000 new subscribers.
In September 1938, Father Deery announced a reorganization of his efforts and those of his staff. He persuaded Bishop Keough to authorize a diocesan-wide campaign for The Providence Visitor which would enlist the services of the children and young people in the diocese, particularly those in Catholic schools, as agents. Beginning in September, Father Deery and his assistants began visiting schools, beginning with Providence College and the diocesan and parish high schools, to explain the program and win the cooperation of their teachers. In January 1939, Bishop Keough sent a letter to all the priests of the diocese giving details of the plan. Designated priests were to visit the schools in the days before the start of the annual subscription campaign, held Feb. 13-23, to explain the goals of the Press Crusade to the children. Each school principal was to designate a teacher to take charge of the campaign in his school.
Each pastor without a parish school was to form a committee of children between the ages of 11 and 18. One crusader was to be assigned for every 10 families in a parish. The crusade began with a Mass in the Cathedral celebrated by Bishop Keough which was attended by 2,500 students and their teachers. The campaign gained more subscriptions to the Visitor than had ever before. In March, the Visitor awarded prizes to the schools in each of eight divisions and to the individual students who solicited the most subscriptions. The next year, Father Deery also initiated a poster contest, which invited the school children of the diocese to submit designs for posters marking the Students Catholic Press Crusade. A panel of judges awarded prizes to the student whose design was used and to others who submitted designs reaching the final selection process.
Historically, whenever Bishop Hickey and Bishop Keough urged the people of the diocese to subscribe to The Providence Visitor, both also urged them to avoid indecent literature. In 1933, two priests in West Warwick, Father Stephan Grenier, pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel, and Father John J. McLoughlin, assistant at St. James, used their sermons on Catholic Press Month to urge parents to ensure that their children do not purchase "salacious magazines" and to advocate a ban against the sale of such periodicals. Following the publication of the story on West Warwick, Father Deery sent reporters to investigate conditions in Providence. The Visitor investigation revealed that the Rhode Island law regarding "obscene, indecent or impure" literature was being widely violated by private lending libraries in the city. In his sermon in the cathedral for Catholic Press Month, Bishop Hickey backed the Visitor and the clergy in their campaign, as did many Catholic organizations. State Attorney General John P. Hartigan quickly responded to the call for action and issued a public warning to distributors of obscene books. The Providence Police quickly made an arrest of an out-of-town salesman and a grand jury returned an indictment against him. Police in other cities and towns in the state also began a crackdown on magazine dealers who violated the law.
Although the police responded quickly to the complaints by clergy and parents about the indecent magazines, the Visitor continued its campaign. Father Deery, in January 1938, wrote a front page editorial in which he announced the opening of a campaign aimed at halting the sales of "rotten magazines." It would be modeled in the same manner that the Catholic Church throughout the nation, through the Legion of Decency, had persuaded movie goers to avoid indecent movies. With the blessing of Bishop Keough, who was on the committee of bishops overseeing the Legion of Decency, the Visitor urged its readers, their families and friends to sign pledge cards stating that they would not patronize any news dealer who sold such magazines. The Visitor also published the names of news dealers who pledged not to carry any of the publications on the newspaper's list. The campaign to protect the children of the state received widespread support from Catholics as well as non-Catholics. By April, over 200,000 Rhode Islanders had returned their pledges.
Among the innovation's of Father Deery's years as editor was the undertaking of a radio program over WFCI, a newly-established radio station in Pawtucket. In an announcement in the Visitor on May 1, 1941, arrangements were completed for broadcasting a regular news program at 5:15 p.m. each Thursday.


Ninth in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

In 1946, Father Francis J. Deery became ill, and Bishop Francis P. Keough appointed his assistant editor, Father Joseph F. Bracq, acting editor of the Visitor. After Father Deery chose to leave the paper in early 1947, and Bishop Keough appointed him as assistant at St. Augustine's, Providence, Father Bracq became editor in his own right. The Student Press Campaign, which Father Deery had created in 1939, had at last placed the paper on a firm financial foundation. Father Bracq became editor at a time of renewed expansion for the diocese and he worked to maintain and increase the paper's subscription base.
Also in 1947, Bishop Keough left the diocese following his appointment as archbishop of Baltimore. A year later, Bishop Russell J. McVinney, who once was a Visitor staffer, was named his successor. In January 1952, with the strong support of Bishop McVinney, the Visitor sought to further its goal of placing the paper in every Catholic home by ensuring that every parishioner was invited to subscribe to the paper. On Sunday, Feb. 17, the bishop directed that pastors distribute to every parishioner a self-addressed envelope that could be used to subscribe to the Visitor. The envelopes could either be collected by the children of the parish, returned by mail or dropped in the collection baskets at Mass. That way, the school children of the diocese continued to play an important role in the continuing success of the subscription drives.
As part of the annual Students Catholic Press Crusade in 1955, Father Bracq invited the readers of the Visitor to send in response cards to the paper with their opinion on whether or not the Visitor should introduce a comics section. The secular press of the day was carrying numerous stories on many groups' efforts to ban bad comics because of their adverse influence on young people. Rather than simply condemn comics as smutty contributors to juvenile delinquency, the Visitor proposed to offer to its readers a healthy alternative to what was available elsewhere. However, the response of the paper's readers was not enough to justify the added expense of subscribing to a comics service.

Two years earlier, in January 1953, the Visitor announced its intention to publish a diocesan directory and information guide. The publication, which appeared for first time that fall, contained the names and addresses of all churches, schools and clergy, in addition to information on the religious communities that staffed them. It also contained information on the various social agencies of the diocese and the various Catholic organizations, religious, fraternal and social, as well as Catholic colleges, seminaries, scholasticates and novitiates. When it first appeared in 1953, the directory contained a section on Catholics who had made important contributions to American history and a calendar of important church dates for the coming year.
In July 1955, Bishop McVinney assigned Father Edward H. Flannery to serve as Father Bracq's assistant editor. During these years, Fathers Bracq and Flannery headed a staff of about 30. In an article Father Bracq wrote in February 1952, entitled, "This is What We're Doing to Bring You the Visitor," an article included pictures of the various department staffs within the paper. Father Bracq singled out three of his lay staffers for special mention. One was a Visitor feature writer, Conway McCrystal who also wrote "The Observant Visitor." While the focus of many of the columns was McCrystal's reaction to the parishes and other institutions he visited, for several months the column provided a guide to the organization of the diocese and information about its various agencies.

FIVE DECADES OF SERVICE - Barbara Jencks, shown here in an undated photo, began a column called "Jottings" in 1948, after being hired by The Providence Visitor. She was one of only a handful of women given press credentials to Vatican II. Her column ran in the paper for nearly 50 years. (Visitor file photo)

Another of those singled out by Father Bracq was Barbara Jencks, who Father Bracq had hired in 1948 after she received her journalism degree. Besides the stories she wrote, Jencks wrote a column entitled, "Jottings," which continued to appear in the paper for almost 50 years. The third member of the staff singled out was Frank Greene, who screened the news that came in from the National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service and the Visitor's own correspondents, and who selected the pieces the paper would run.
In the print shop below the editorial offices, James R. Malarkey continued his work on the Visitor's presses. Malarkey was the subject of several Visitor articles over the years. He first came to work at the paper as an errand boy in January 1912. By 1916, he was a pressman. He would work for the paper for more than 50 years, lastly as foreman of the press department. Another longtime employee of the Visitor was Joseph F. Afflect, the paper's advertising manager who came to work for the paper in July 1915 and gave the greater part of his adult life to the paper. Although not a permanent member of the Visitor staff, photographer Joseph R. Marcello covered a host of parish and diocesan events for the paper as official Visitor photographer for many years.
During its heyday, The Providence Visitor, with 20 pages, rivaled many of its secular counterparts in size. Father Bracq essentially carried on the conservative editorial policy he inherited from Father Deery. National and international news of the church were staples, as were national and state programs and proposals which impacted on the church. There continued to be a sprinkling of local, non-controversial features on people and places, especially at the time of the Catholic Charity Drive. The Visitor's sports page carried news of CYO and Scouting activities. Among the columns carried by the paper in the 1940s was one entitled "Wheat and Chaff" which focused on local news and "The Question Box," a column that Father Bracq had once written and to which he continued to contribute. In addition to the locally written columns, the Visitor in these years carried three syndicated columns: Paulist Father James M. Gillis' "Sursum Corda," Jesuit Father Daniel A. Lord's "Along the Way" and Father George C. Higgins' "Yardstick," which looked at social matters. The Visitor was a long-time promoter of the foreign missions, and in the 1940s and '50s carried news supplied by the Propagation of the Faith under the title, "With the Missionaries."
Book and movie reviews appeared frequently, as did the Legion of Decency's, "Motion Picture Guide." News of the activities of parish societies was found under "Diocesan Social Notes," while student correspondents supplied information concerning activities at diocesan high schools and on college campuses. Correspondents for the Erie Society and for the Ancient Order of Hibernians regularly sent in information on their activities, as did other fraternal and benevolent groups. For many years, a Visitor staffer dedicated time to collecting and writing news solely of the Knights of Columbus. Father Edmond J. Brock used the pages of the Visitor to share news of the Social Action Institute and its Labor Schools, which he helped found, in a column entitled, "Labor Notes." Other correspondents provided information on the Specialized Catholic Action movement, which had its origins among the French-speaking parishes, for a column of the same name.
Since its founding, the Visitor had carried death notices and, later, obituaries. During Father Bracq's years, this feature was cut out because of the time demands on the Visitor staff and because the daily papers carried them. While the mix of content shifted frequently, The Providence Visitor continued to fulfill its


Tenth in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

In September 1956, Bishop Russell J. McVinney appointed Father Joseph F. Bracq pastor of a new parish, St. Martha's, East Providence. A year later, in September 1957, after Father Bracq had suffered a heart attack, the bishop lightened his responsibilities by appointing the paper's assistant editor, Father Edward H. Flannery, his successor as editor and manager of the paper.
Father Flannery was ordained in May 1937, and had served, after a short summer assignment, as an assistant pastor in the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in Providence and then at St. Joseph's, Pawtucket. Like many priests ordained in the 1930s, he had an interest in social ministry or Catholic Action as it was then called. In 1941, he helped organize the Catholic Laymen's First Friday Club, which brought Catholics together to hear speakers and to discuss their faith, and served as its moderator until 1949. From 1946-49, he was also associated with the diocese's Social Action Institute which organized Labor Schools for labor and management. While attending a summer institute at Fordham University in New York in 1948, he met Father James A. Keller, a Maryknoll priest who had founded the Christophers three years earlier. Father Flannery later arranged for Father Keller to speak to the First Friday Club. When he did so, Father Keller took advantage of his presence in Providence to ask Bishop McVinney to allow Father Flannery to come to New York to work with the movement. Beginning in 1950, Father Flannery traveled to New York on Monday and back to St. Joseph's on Friday, a trip he made each week for five years. When in 1955, having read a book review that Father Flannery had written and which was printed on the front page of the Visitor, Bishop McVinney asked its writer if he would be interested in working for the paper. Father Flannery accepted the offer.
With Father Flannery's appointment, the Visitor once again had a socially conscious editor. Upon taking charge at the paper, Father Flannery proceeded to "spruce it up a bit." In his view, the paper looked the same each week. Among his innovations was the running of articles written by non-Catholics and supplied by the Religious News Service. Along the same lines, he believed that the paper had become too narrowly focused on Catholic issues alone. In order to widen the Visitor's concerns to include those of the state as a whole, he introduced a column entitled, "What's Right with Rhode Island," which was written by prominent Rhode Islanders, Catholics as well as non-Catholics, and which provided an opportunity to focus on the good things going on in the state.
To Father Flannery, one aspect of the state that was not right was in the area of housing discrimination. After Father Anthony Robinson and other concerned citizens formed Citizens United for a Fair Housing Law in Rhode Island in 1958, Father Flannery threw editorial support in the Visitor behind the effort, which also had the support of Bishop McVinney. The Visitor was the first Rhode Island paper to support the fair housing movement. In 1960, the National Conference of Christians and Jews awarded Father Flannery and The Providence Visitor their National Brotherhood Award in the newspaper editorial and news category. In that same year, the Catholic Press Association recognized Father Flannery's editorial by honoring the paper with and award for "Best Campaign in Public Interest." In the fall of 1960, Father Flannery was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize "for distinguished editorial writing." It would not be until 1965 that proponents of the legislation were able to overcome the reservations of the Rhode Island's lawmakers and secure the passage of the legislation.
Among the other changes Father Flannery introduced was the return of a "Letters to the Editor" column which his predecessors had abandoned, as had most Catholic newspapers. When Father Flannery brought the idea to Bishop McVinney, the bishop was a little skeptical. He agreed to allow the introduction of the column when Father Flannery assured him that if there was any questionable letter, he would certainly show it to the bishop first.
One of Father Flannery's primary interests was Catholic-Jewish relations. In 1954, prior to his appointment to the Visitor, he accepted a position as assistant editor of The Bridge, the yearbook published by the Judeo-Christian Institute at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. While editor of the Visitor, he researched and published a book on the history of Catholic prejudice against the Jews, which was published in 1964 under the title, "The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-three Centuries of Anti-Semitism." Father Flannery's interest in Catholic-Jewish relations was reflected also in the many articles he wrote on the subject for the Visitor.
Among the biggest news stories covered by the Visitor during Father Flannery's tenure as editor was the Second Vatican Council. Besides articles supplied by the NCWC News Service, Father Flannery also engaged four correspondents in Rome to provide the paper with weekly or special columns. Among them were Divine Word Father Ralph M. Wiltgen and Gary MacEoin, who wrote weekly articles; Visitor columnist Barbara Jencks, who was in Rome during the Council's first session, and Father John Sullivan, a priest of the diocese who was studying in Rome at the time.
The Visitor played a very important role in the years during and after Vatican II by informing people of the diocese of the developments in theology and liturgy that flowed from the council's deliberations and decisions. Particularly important would be the articles, many of them written by priests of the diocese, which attempted to explain the liturgical changes mandated by the council and implemented at the direction of the American bishops.
Years later, in an interview with another editor of the Visitor, Father Flannery offered his own appreciation of his work as editor. "We served as an agent that tried to favor change, to move from a static to a dynamic view of Catholicism. But we would never allow the secular culture to infiltrate the church. There needed to be a certain balance between the old and the new."
For the most part, Father Flannery had the support of Bishop McVinney. However, the bishop did at times intervene in the management of the paper. When the Visitor ran an obituary of Pope John XXIII taken from the Religious News Service, Bishop McVinney, then in Rome for the council, found it too liberal for his taste and immediately notified Father Flannery to cancel the paper's subscription to the service.
During his first years at the Visitor, Father Flannery labored without the assistance of another priest. In September 1962, Bishop McVinney appointed Father John P. Reilly as assistant editor at the paper shortly after he had completed his doctorate in philosophy at St. Louis University. Father Reilly's responsibilities were to contribute to the editorial page. When in August 1956, Father Reilly joined the faculty of Salve Regina College, Bishop McVinney appointed Father John F. Ferry, then an assistant at St. Rose of Lima, Warwick, to succeed Father Reilly at the paper.

Eleventh in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

When, in December 1966, the Visitor announced that Father Edward H. Flannery would, on Feb. 1, 1967, accept newly-created positions with the Institute for Judeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University and with the Secretariat on Catholic-Jewish Affairs of the American bishops' Commission on Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs, it also announced that Father John F. Ferry, Father Flannery's assistant editor, would succeed him as editor. Father Ferry was a veteran of World War II and had entered the seminary later in life than most of the priests of the diocese. He was ordained in February 1957, and his only assignments prior to being appointed to the Visitor was as an assistant pastor at St. Rose of Lima, Warwick, and teacher at Our Lady of Providence Seminary at Warwick Neck.
When Father Ferry took over control of the Visitor, the paper's subscription base was still very strong. The paper had initiated a new method of securing subscriptions during Catholic Press Month in February 1960. The new plan aimed to place the Visitor in more homes than had been reached so far. It meant that the pastors, rather than the school principals, would have responsibility for organizing the campaign. The pastors were to appoint a curate or a lay person, in parishes where there were no assistants, to take charge of the actual campaign. The assistant or lay person in charge was to organize a canvass of the parish or of parish organizations to ensure that every household was contacted. Each parish again was responsible for a minimum number of subscriptions for which they were expected to pay. It was envisioned that payment for the papers would come from the subscriptions taken out by the members of the parish. If a parish did not gain a sufficient number of subscriptions to meet its quota, the money was to be taken out of general parish funds. For its part, the staff of the Visitor was assigned to help individual parishes handle the administrative duties of the campaign.
In 1958, Bishop Russell J. McVinney had given permission for any pastor to use parish funds to send a copy of the paper to every family in the parish. The bishop left it up to the pastors to work out the details of funding the full coverage program. The new parish campaign introduced in 1960 had full coverage as its ultimate aim. The plan worked well in 1960 and many parishes secured subscriptions in excess of their quotas. In 1967, the staff of the Visitor launched a pilot program in St. Thomas Parish, Providence, to relieve that parish clergy of the work associated with the annual subscription campaign by recruiting lay people from within the parish to lead and organize the campaign.
In 1966, during the time when Providence and diocesan officials were working out an urban development plan for the cathedral and its environs, the original plan was amended to include the acquisition and demolition of the Visitor Building on Fenner Street, deemed incompatible with the new in-city housing uses proposed in the renewal plan. Many of the diocesan offices that had been in the Visitor building found quarters in a new Chancery Office that was to be part of the Cathedral Square project. The Visitor's presses, editorial and business offices would have to be relocated. Bishop McVinney and the paper's Board of Directors agreed on a new site for the paper at 50 Park Lane in the new Huntington Expressway Industrial Park. Father Ferry broke ground for the new plant in June 1967, and, on April 21, 1968, Bishop McVinney blessed and dedicated the Visitor's new home.
Plans for a Visitor building had been included in the Cathedral Square redevelopment plan before Father Flannery left. However, he had proposed to Bishop McVinney that the paper close its print shop, having found personally the difficulty in dealing with the printers' union. Furthermore, he pointed out, pastors were no longer taking their printing business to the Visitor, but to less expensive and more convenient print shops. Bishop McVinney insisted that, because the paper had had a print shop, it should continue to do so. Three years after the opening of the new facility, Father Ferry placed a notice on the front page of the Visitor's Sept. 18, 1970 issue, stating that the paper's Board of Directors had arranged for the printing of the paper on the offset presses of The Herald Press on Webster Street in Pawtucket. He explained that the change was prompted by the Board of Directors' desire to publish the Visitor in the "most modernized, contemporary format available."
The decision to have the paper printed in Pawtucket made the Visitor's new building in the Huntington Industrial Park far too large for the paper's needs. Within a month of the announcement, the paper's Board of Directors received an offer on the building from a manufacturer starting a new company and needing a building without extensive renovations. The board accepted the offer. After ordering renovations to a building at 184 Broad St., formerly occupied by the St. Pius X Salvage Bureau, Father Ferry moved the Visitor's editorial, advertising, circulation and business departments there at the beginning of January 1971.
One casualty of the moves was the Visitor's morgue or library of articles and pictures that had appeared in the Visitor. For many years, a Visitor staffer, Helen Hanley, maintained them, but when she died, in 1973, the contents of the Visitor's files were scattered and only a portion of them were transferred to the diocese's historical archives.
The Visitor did not remain unaffected by the social and religious changes it reported in its pages. As the popularity of many of the traditional parish organizations waned along with the populations of parish schools, pastors found it increasingly difficult to organize their parishes for the annual Catholic Press Month drives. Faced with dwindling funds to maintain their parishes, pastors sought to cut expenses. In many cases, a parish's Visitor bills went unpaid. Parishes did little more than meet their quota. For the first time since the late 1930s, the Visitor Publishing Company began having financial problems.
In the midst of civil rights and then anti-Vietnam War agitation, many Rhode Islanders, especially the young, began to reexamine the structures and values of both church and state. In the Visitor's July 16, 1971 edition, Father Ferry wrote a lead editorial, "Dishonesty in the Church," in which he took issue with positions on the church and priesthood offered by two priests and a Sister of Mercy during a panel discussion sponsored by the Rhode Island Association of Laymen at Rhode Island College on July 7, 1971. The panelists and other readers criticized the editorial. They also criticized what they saw as the paper's refusal to publicize "newsworthy" events regarding peace activities, social movements and theological, liturgical and catechetical developments. Some of the protesters took to the streets. The Visitor, which under Father Flannery had carried news of diocesan groups picketing in support of a grape boycott called by Cesar Chavez's United Farmworkers Union, found itself being picketed. Father Ferry was shaken by this reaction.
In view of the controversy and financial problems, Bishop Louis E. Gelineau, who became the sixth bishop of Providence after Bishop McVinney died in 1971, created a task force in 1972, chaired by Msgr. Joseph F. Bracq, to examine the Visitor's operations and make recommendations. The recommendations, announced in November, called for a reorganization of the paper along the lines of its secular counterparts, with an editor-in-chief, a managing editor and a business manager, who would be responsible to the paper's Board of Directors and to its publisher, the bishop. The study also drafted a statement on editorial policy and content. In response to the study, Bishop Gelineau accepted the resignation of the old Board of Directors and appointed a new one which included a number of lay people. Among the task force's recommendations was that the Visitor's Board of Directors hire a professional journalist as editor of the paper. In January 1973, as the Board of Directors was ready to announce its choice, Father Ferry submitted his resignation and was once again appointed an assistant at St. Rose of Lima, Warwick.


Twelfth in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

When Father John F. Ferry offered his resignation as editor at the end of 1972, the Visitor's Board of Directors, which under Bishop Louis E. Gelineau came to play a more active role in the management of the paper, sought to find an experienced journalist to head up the paper. In January 1973, after extensive interviews, the board announced the appointment of a layman, Robert T. Connaughton, as the paper's new editor. Connaughton had worked as a reporter for the Lawrence, Mass., Eagle-Tribune, and as a staff member of the Providence Journal, where he served as a bureau chief before resigning to become Director of Administration for the city of Cranston.
The 1970s continued to be a time of change in the church and society, and during these years, the Visitor struggled to maintain its subscription base while containing costs. Among the changes made when Connaughton took over, the paper began accepting the wire service offered by the National Catholic News Service, which previously had been available only through the mail. The Visitor was the first weekly paper in Rhode Island to be served by a wire.
A second change introduced by Connaughton was the return to an emphasis on local news. The change was aided in August 1974, when Bishop Gelineau appointed Father Barry R. L. Connerton, associate editor of the paper. Prior to his appointment, Father Connerton had been a member of the Visitor's editorial advisory board for two years and had frequently contributed articles to the paper. In addition to assisting Connaughton in writing editorials and news stories, with a particular responsibility for Catholic schools and religious education, Father Connerton also took on directing the paper's business operations, including advertising, circulation and accounting. Like his priest-predecessors, Father Connerton visited the parishes on the Visitor's behalf, preaching at weekend Masses. He worked at the paper until September 1978, when he was appointed an assistant at St. Augustine's, Providence.
To reach out to the state's Portuguese population, estimated at nearly 20 percent, on June 22, 1973, the Visitor began printing a column in Portuguese chronicling events of the church and the Portuguese community in Rhode Island. The paper had published only three columns when the staffer who provided the translation of the material from English became ill. The column was suspended temporarily in hopes that the staffer would be able to continue the work after recuperation, but the experiment was never resumed.
After two-and-a-half years at the paper, Connaughton resigned. He was succeeded by another Providence Journal staffer, Robert F. Baldwin, in September 1975. Baldwin was raised "in a non-churchgoing family of Protestant background," but his work with the Visitor complemented his conversion to Catholicism, an experience in which his wife, a Catholic, played a great part. In November 1980, Baldwin converted the Visitor format from broadsheet to tabloid and began using color on its pages. At the time of the format change, Baldwin also shortened the official name of the paper to The Visitor. The renovated Visitor included several new type faces in its five-column tabloid format. The design changes were made to make the paper easier to read, to offer more interesting possibilities for page design and to give advertisements more prominence than they had on the larger-size page.
An increase in advertising revenues, which would help make the paper self-supporting once again, was among the reasons for the name change, as Baldwin hoped that potential advertisers would see the paper as concerned with the whole state, and not merely Providence. As part of the make over, Baldwin strove to gather and publish more news and feature stories from outside the metropolitan area. He sought to make the paper more open and willing to devote articles to controversial issues within the church. It was his view that all matters "should be reported in charity and be reported in the eyes of faith." The paper carried the new name and masthead for nine years, until July 12, 1984, when, without ceremony, the paper returned to its old name.
In November 1981, Bishop Gelineau, in his capacity as publisher of the Visitor, made a rare intervention into the management of the paper. The Visitor had long carried a variety of viewpoints in commentaries to its editorial pages. Some columns were provided by the National Catholic News Service; others, like the column written by the controversial Father Andrew Greeley, were syndicated by private sources. While Bishop Gelineau found Father Greeley's column thought-provoking and positive, he came to the conclusion at the end of 1981 that Father Greeley's attacks against his critics had gone beyond the bounds of constructive criticism. Consequently, after consulting with Baldwin and the paper's Board of Directors, the bishop ordered that the paper drop Father Greeley's column.
Baldwin resigned his position as editor in March 1982. The Board of Directors appointed his assistant editor, Gloria Barone, who had joined the staff in 1981, as interim editor. In August, Bishop Gelineau announced that the Board of Directors had appointed Barone editor at the same time it had appointed Father John W. Hunt as executive director. While he contributed editorials to the paper, as did other priests of the diocese, Father Hunt's primary responsibilities would be overseeing the business operations of the paper. Father Hunt joined the paper at a time when the United States was experiencing an economic downswing and many were out of work. To be of service to the community, the Visitor, which had a small classified advertising section, offered those out of work free space in hopes of finding employment.
A major change in the fortunes of the paper came when, in May 1983, Barone resigned to take a position with the New England Newspaper Association and Visitor staff writer Owen McGovern was named first as interim editor and then as editor. The circulation of the paper had continued to decline from 10,000 paid subscriptions in 1980 to about 7,000 in 1983. In a move to increase revenues, McGovern introduced several news features, such as the "Spotlight on the Parish" series which focused on activities and personnel in the individual parishes of the diocese. As part of the promotion, McGovern arranged to have several hundred copies of the paper provided free of charge to the spotlighted parish and, with the promise of increased circulation, sold ads to businesses and individuals wishing to attract business from parishioners. He also introduced a series of articles on the diocesan and parish schools and on parish religious education programs. To enlarge the horizons of his readers' world, McGovern also wrote articles on his trips to Poland and to Haiti and the condition of the church in those places.
During Catholic Press Month in 1988, McGovern revived the practice of recruiting Catholic school students as agents for the Visitor, this time on a voluntary basis on the school's part. Once again, the Visitor offered prizes to the students and schools selling the most subscriptions. Under Father Hunt's and McGovern's leadership, the Visitor again was able to support itself financially. When in October 1988, McGovern was named executive director of the Catholic Press Association, the Board of Directors named his editorial assistant, Julie E. Marrinucci, as interim editor and, in February 1989, as editor.


Last in a series
By Father Robert W. Hayman
Diocesan Historian

In June 1990, Bishop Louis E. Gelineau made Father John W. Hunt pastor of St. Joseph Parish, in the Ashton section of Cumberland. Following Father Hunt's assignment, the bishop consulted with the Visitor's Board of Directors and others as how best to respond to difficulties again confronting the paper, particularly the paper's decline in quality and revenue. While the paper's editor, Julie E. Marrinucci, was a fine writer, she did not have a strong background in journalism prior to joining the paper. After some consultation, Bishop Gelineau, in October 1990, appointed Father Stanley T. Nakowicz, pastor of Our Lady of Loreto Parish, East Providence, as executive editor of the paper and Father Robert J. McManus, the diocesan Vicar for Education and director of the Office of Ministerial Formation, as the paper's theological consultant and editorial writer. To complete the paper's reorganization, in September 1991, Father Nakowicz hired Robert J. Cote as business/advertising manager.
After he took charge of the paper, Father Nakowicz discovered the paper's deficit was greater than he had initially believed, as the diocesan subsidy had grown to $200,000 a year. The financial difficulties of the Visitor were not unique, however, as other diocesan papers around the country were facing similar difficulties. The problem was rooted in a decline in the number of paid subscriptions, while the costs of publishing the papers continued to increase rapidly. Like his predecessors, though, Bishop Gelineau was convinced of the value of the paper in fostering the mission of the church and did not want to close it.
At the same time, the diocese itself was wrestling with another problem: The need to publicize the social and charitable services made possible by the annual Catholic Charity Fund Appeal. The bishop wanted to encourage increased donations and was contemplating a capital campaign. In order to secure more funding for the Visitor and to increase subscribers, Father Nakowicz proposed using the paper to tell the story of the diocese's stewardship. Although the Visitor had traditionally highlighted a few agencies and services supported by the Catholic Charity Fund, those articles usually were printed shortly before and during the time of the yearly drive. Under Father Nakowicz, The Providence Visitor added a "Stewardship at Work" page as a regular feature. Rather than spending an estimated $250,000 on a separate publication, the diocesan Stewardship & Development office provided $300,000 in addition to the monies the Visitor had been getting to ensure the viability of the paper.
Under Father Nakowicz's plan, everyone who donated $50 or more to the Catholic Charity Fund Appeal would receive a weekly copy of the Visitor as a gift subscription from the bishop. Later, all who contributed $300 or more to the 1996 Vision of Hope capital campaign also received a gift subscription. In addition, all clergy, religious, religious education directors and state legislators received weekly subscriptions to the paper. Through this arrangement, subscriptions rose to over 30,000 within a year and continued to increase in subsequent years. The increased circulation led to an increase in advertising revenues for the paper as well.
In late 1991, Marrinucci resigned as editor to take a job as a writer with Quantic Communications, Inc. After conducting an extensive search, the Visitor's Board of Directors selected a Pawtucket native, Michael Brown, as the new editor. Brown brought to his new position a strong academic background in journalism and theology, as well as extensive work experience at secular and religious papers.
Brown would continue the work initiated by Father Nakowicz aimed at improving the quality of the paper. In addition to the mix of local, national and international news of the church and related issues on the Visitor's front page, five pages of national and international news of the church appeared regularly, as did two pages of commentary. The Stewardship page continued, and new pages focusing on various dimensions of the life of the church such as the "Worship," "Family," "Youth," "Seniors" and "School" pages were also developed. Two writers regularly featured on the "Worship" page were Father John A. Kiley, whose column, "The Quiet Column" began appearing in the paper in late November 1974, and Dr. Patrick V. Reid, a Scripture scholar teaching at Providence College, whose column on the Sunday readings began shortly after Father Nakowicz became executive editor. Later, Father Frank S. Salmani contributed a column on the saints. Despite these changes, when asked what his greatest achievement was at the newspaper, Father Nakowicz responded that it was to increase the number of cartoons appearing regularly from one to four.
As early as 1993, the efforts of the new management, business and editorial team at the Visitor attracted national notice as the paper was recognized as among the best Catholic newspapers in the nation by the Catholic Press Association. As part of Catholic Press Month each year, the paper prints articles about the staff and about the challenges facing them.
In the tradition of La Sentinella and the short-lived Portuguese language section of the Visitor, in October 1993, The Providence Visitor began publishing a four-page monthly Spanish-language edition of the paper, called The Providence Visitor en espanol. It was distributed free of charge to parishes with Spanish-speaking populations. The previous September, the Visitor had hired reporter Diana Pena, who had lived for 14 years in the Dominican Republic before coming to Rhode Island and earning a degree in communications at Rhode Island College. Pena wrote stories for the Spanish publication, in addition to her work on the English-edition. When she left to pursue other interests, the paper hired Silvio Cuellar as a free-lance writer to continue the Visitor en espanol. In addition to Cuellar and copy in Spanish from Catholic News Service, Sister Marta Ines Toro, the director of the diocesan Hispanic Ministry office and later director of the Office of Evangelization, wrote the editorials. Her successor as director of the Hispanic Ministry, Aida Hidalgo contributed a column on spirituality and assisted in proof-reading the paper. Father Hugo Carmona also contributed a monthly commentary for the paper.
In the first eight years of its publication, The Providence Visitor en espanol became one of the most highly decorated Spanish-language Catholic newspapers in the country.
Although recognition by one's colleagues in one's field is appreciated, the real test of the value of a paper lies in the views of its readers. Bishop Gelineau and his successor, Bishop Robert E. Mulvee, acknowledged the valuable service performed by The Providence Visitor in the diocese.

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