John Aloysius Marshall

John Marshall was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to John A. and Katherine T. (née Redican) Marshall.[1] After attending St. John's High School and Holy Cross College, he studied at the Collège de Montréal in Quebec and at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.[1] While in Rome, Marshall was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Martin John O'Connor on December 19, 1953.[2] After a period of pastoral work, he completed his graduate studies at Assumption College in his native Worcester (1961–1968) and at the Pontifical North American College in Rome (1969–1971).[1]

On December 14, 1971, Marshall was appointed the seventh Bishop of Burlington, Vermont, by Pope Paul VI.[2] He received his episcopal consecration on January 25, 1972, from Bishop Robert Francis Joyce, with Bishop Bernard Joseph Flanagan and James Aloysius Hickey serving as co-consecrators.[2] His tenure in Burlington was marked by a decline in both vocations and church attendance, but still founded Our Lady of the Mountains Parish at Sherburne in 1979.[3] He completed the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in 1977, after an arsonist had destroyed the original cathedral in 1972.[4] From 1984 to 1990, he headed an apostolic visitation into the doctrinal orthodoxy of American seminaries.[5] Records show that he transferred a priest from a Montpelier parish to another in Milton after charges of sexual abuse surfaced against the priest.[6]

Marshall was named the sixth Bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts, on February 18, 1992.[2] Although he established the Diocesan Misconduct Commission in response to sexual abuse among the clergy,[7] he accepted Rev. Edward Paquette despite the repeated allegations of child molestation against him.[8] Marshall even said that he was "determined to take the risk of leaving [Paquette] in his present assignment" despite "the demands of...irate parents that 'something be done about this.'"[9]

He died at age 66.