Religion: The Bishop of Charity

From boyhood in his native Nashville, Tenn., Samuel Stritch led the way. He was only ten when he finished grammar school. At 16 he graduated with a B.A. from St. Gregory's Seminary in Cincinnati, was ordained a Roman Catholic priest at 22. When he was 34 he became Bishop of Toledo, the youngest bishop in the U.S., and nine years later he was Archbishop of Milwaukee. A decade after that, in 1940, the Most Rev. Samuel Alphonsus Stritch became Archbishop of the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the U.S.—Chicago—and six years later he was elevated to cardinal. His rare combination of...