The Other Radio Priest: James Gillis's Opposition to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Foreign Policy

Abstract

Th e newly invented electronic media of radio gave Father Charles Coughlin a pulpit that catapulted him into national prominence be ginning in October 1926. A Canadian native ordained in the Order of St. Basil in 1916, Coughlin immigrated to the United States and was incardinated into the Diocese of Detroit in 1918. In early 1926, Bishop Michael Gallagher appointed Coughlin pastor of a new parish, Little Flower, in Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit. In order to raise funds to repay loans negotiated for the construction of the new church and as a means to neutralize the vituperative effects of verbal rhetoric voiced by local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, Coughlin initiated a radio ministry. Calm and respectful at the outset, Coughlin's talks and sermons over the years became filled with contempt for all that was wrong with the United States. As recent biographer Donald Warren has called him, Coughlin became the father of hate radio,1 placing the blame for America's troubles in the 1930s at the feet of Jews and the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although lesser know today, Paulist Father James Gillis, a contem porary of Coughlin, was well known as a syndicated columnist, a widely-traveled speaker, a radio personality, and the editor of The Catholic World. Like Coughlin, Gillis enjoyed a honeymoon period with Franklin Roosevelt, believing him to be the savior the nation needed in the wake of what he perceived to be Herbert Hoover's disas trous administration. Like his more famous contemporary as well, Gil