page_title: Patrick John Ryan
section_title: Episcopacy
hierarchical_section_title: Patrick John Ryan / Episcopacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Archbishop Patrick John Ryan, with a sketch of him by Marguerite Martyn, 1909
context_page_description: Patrick John Ryan was an Irish-born prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1884 until his death in 1911.
context_section_description: On February 15, 1872, Ryan was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of St. Louis and Titular Archbishop of Tricomia by Pius IX. He received his episcopal consecration on the following April 14 from Archbishop Kenrick, with Archbishop Patrick Feehan and Bishop Joseph Melcher serving as co-consecrators. His titular see was changed to Salamis on January 6, 1884. After the death of Archbishop James Frederick Wood, Ryan was named the second Archbishop of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 8, 1884. His installation took place at the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul on the following August 20.
  During his 27-year-long tenure, Ryan erected 170 churches and 82 schools; increased the number of priests by 322 and nuns by 1,545; and oversaw a rise in the Catholic population from 300,000 to 525,000. During that time also the Roman Catholic High School for Boys was built, and put in operation; high school centers for girls taught by the different communities were established; a new central high school for girls was partly endowed and begun; St. Francis' Industrial School for Boys was endowed and successfully operated, the Philadelphia Protectory for Boys was erected; St. Joseph's Home for Working Boys was founded; a new foundling asylum and maternity hospital was built; a new St. Vincent's Home for younger orphan children was purchased with the archbishop's Golden Jubilee Fund of $200,000; a third Home for the Aged was erected; a Memorial Library Building, dedicated to the Archbishop, was begun at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook; and the three Catholic hospitals of the city doubled their capacity. He also established foreign churches in the diocese for the Italians, Poles, Greeks, Slovaks, Lithuanians, and several other nationalities. He founded two congregations for African Americans, and was appointed to the U.S. Indian Commission by President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1888, he again visited Rome, where he preached the sermon at the laying of the cornerstone of St. Patrick's Church and presented Pope Leo XIII with a gift from President Grover Cleveland.
  Ryan died at age 79, nine days before his eightieth birthday.
caption: Ryan in a photo and as sketched by journalist Marguerite Martyn for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, published December 19, 1909
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