Francis Joseph Spellman, 1889–1967, American Roman Catholic cardinal, b. Whitman, Mass. Educated at Fordham and the American College at Rome, he was ordained May 14, 1916. He was a parish priest in Roxbury, Mass., held various offices in the Boston archdiocese, and was the first American assistant to the papal secretariat of state (1925). He was named (1932) auxiliary bishop of Boston and succeeded (1939) after the death of Cardinal Hayes to the archdiocese of New York. He was elevated to cardinal by Pope Pius XII in 1946.

See biographies by R. I. Gannon (1962) and W. Steibel (1966).