Early life and education Thomas Kennedy was born in
Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. His father, Patrick, worked as a laborer. He was educated in a local public school, St. Matthew's School and Treemont Seminary. Kennedy became a teacher at St. Matthew's High School at age 17 and then later became the principal. He entered
St. Charles Borromeo Seminary to study for the
priesthood and continued his studies in Rome at the Pontifical North American College. Kennedy was ordained a priest in Rome for the
Archdiocese of Philadelphia on July 24, 1887, by Cardinal
Lucido Parocchi, the
Vicar General of Rome. After he returned to
Pennsylvania, Kennedy joined the faculty at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. He was named the Rector of the Pontifical North American College on June 14, 1901.
Bishop Pope Pius X appointed him as the
Titular Bishop of
Hadrianopolis in Honoriade on December 16, 1907. He was consecrated a bishop by Cardinal
Girolamo Maria Gotti,
OCD, the
Prefect of the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith, on December 29, 1907. The principal co-consecrators were Archbishop
Patrick Riordan of
San Francisco and Bishop William Giles, Rector of the
English College in Rome.
Archbishop Kennedy was given the personal title of
Archbishop by
Pope Benedict XV on June 17, 1915. At the same time he was changed to the
titular see of
Seleucia in Isauria. He died in Rome on August 28, 1917, at the age of 59.
Portrait In May 1907, whilst painting his first portrait of Pope Pius X, the Swiss-born American artist
Adolfo Müller-Ury completed the first of two portraits of Bishop Kennedy whom he had befriended. This bust-length oval portrait, described by the New York Evening Mail as 'warmly tinted and attractive', was exhibited in January and February 1908 at Knoedler's Gallery in New York, The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and in Philadelphia, before apparently being sent to Kennedy's two sisters, Theresa and Margaret, who apparently later gave it to the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, Pennsylvania, where it hangs today outside the Eakins Room. Müller-Ury's second much-larger half-length standing portrait of Kennedy was executed in 1911 when he was in Rome painting Pope Pius X again (which he presented to the Catholic University in Washington, D.C.) and remains at the North American College in Rome's Graduate House.
Legacy Archbishop Kennedy's birthplace (built 1776), at 113 W. Germantown Pike, is a contributing property in the
Plymouth Meeting Historic District. ==References==