MALONE, SYLVESTER

Parish priest, social reformer; b. Trim, County Meath, Ireland, May 8, 1821; d. Williamsburg, N.Y., Dec. 29, 1899. His parents, Laurence and Marcella (Martin) Malone, sent him for his early education to an academy run by the Protestant Carroll brothers. He later said that this offered him an early breadth of viewpoint. In 1838 Rev. Andrew Byrne of New York induced him to study for the priesthood. He started his theological studies at St. Joseph's Seminary, New York, and he was ordained on Aug. 15, 1844, for that diocese, which included the states of New York and New Jersey. In September of 1844 he was assigned to a parish in Williamsburg (later part of Brooklyn, N.Y.), a village of 5,000 that included 500 Catholics. He reported 37 years later that 25 parishes had been erected within his original parish of SS. Peter and Paul. As pastor he constructed a Gothic church, the first designed by Patrick C. Keely, leading architect of the time; zealously cared for immigrants; and increased his flock to 5,000 within a decade. In 1866 he was Bp. John Loughlin's theologian at the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore.

Malone attracted wide attention by his public positions. He was an abolitionist and a Republican. When he received word of the surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederates, he ran up an American flag at the foot of the cross on his church steeple. He later recalled that no parishioners protested, despite the crosscurrents of opinion in the area. After the Civil War, he toured the South and, when he returned, spoke on behalf of the rights of African Americans. Although he visited and admired Cardinal Henry Manning, he became a strong supporter of the Irish Land League. Malone adopted liberal views on a variety of civic subjects, and these were widely publicized in the New York press. He was himself, as he wrote to Leo XIII in defense of Dr. Edward mcglynn, "the advocate of temperance and of every good cause that works for the public good." As a defender of the public schools, he was supported by Hamilton Fish and Abp. John Ireland for a Catholic vacancy on the New York Board of Regents. Because the bishops of the state had supported Bp. Bernard mcquaid, some interpreted his election in 1894 as a victory for the anti-Catholic faction. When he died, he was still pastor of the parish that he had founded.

Bibliography: j. k. sharp, History of the Diocese of Brooklyn, 1853–1953, 2 v. (New York 1954).

[f. e. fitzpatrick]