Patrick John Ryan

Patrick Ryan was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, to Jeremiah and Mary Tuohy Ryan. His father died when Patrick was nine years old. He received his early education from the Christian Brothers at Thurles, and attended a private school in Dublin from 1842 to 1847. In 1844, he led a delegation of students to Richmond Bridewell Prison, where he delivered an address to the imprisoned Daniel O'Connell. He then served as a professor of English literature at the seminary in Carondelet for a year. ==Priesthood==

Ryan was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick on September 8, 1853. At age 21, he was below the age requirement for ordination but was granted a dispensation by Pope Pius IX. He was then appointed an assistant rector at the Cathedral of St. Louis, and was advanced to rector in 1856. In 1860, he was named pastor of the Church of the Annunciation in St. Louis, where he built a church and parochial school. During the Civil War, he served as a chaplain for prisoners of war at the Gratiot Street Prison. In the same parish was a government military hospital. Every day Ryan visited the Confederate prisoners and the Union wounded. Following the war, he was transferred to St. John's Church in St. Louis, and accompanied Archbishop Kenrick, as theologian, to the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866. While on a visit to Europe in 1868, he delivered the English course of Lenten lectures in Rome at the invitation of Pius IX. ==Episcopacy==

for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, published December 19, 1909 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. 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. He also established national churches in the diocese for the Italians, Poles, Greeks, Slovaks, Lithuanians, and several other nationalities. Ryan was a spiritual advisor to Katharine Drexel. ==References==