William Hickley Gross

William Gross was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Jacob and Rachel Haslett.[1] His father was German and his mother was Irish;[2] his paternal ancestors came to the United States from Alsace during the nineteenth century.[3] Following his mother's death, his sister assumed responsibility for William and his five brothers.[1] He enrolled at St. Charles College in Ellicott City at age 13.[4] In 1853 he returned to work in his father's store after St. Charles decided that he was not suited for the priesthood.[5]

In 1857, Gross entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (more commonly known as the Redemptorists) at Annapolis.[4]

Following the outbreak of the Civil War, the Redemptorists received permission from the Holy See to advance Gross to Holy Orders sooner than permitted in Church law in order for him to avoid the military draft.[5] He was ordained a priest by Francis Kenrick, the Archbishop of Baltimore, on March 21, 1863.[6] After six months of further studies,[1] Gross was assigned as chaplain to the wounded Civil War soldiers at Annapolis.[4] He was also charged with a chapel for Confederate prisoners on the outskirts of Baltimore, and worked among the freedman.[5] From 1865 to 1872, he served in a Redemptorist Mission Band, which performed parochial missions throughout Maryland, New York, Florida, and Georgia.[1][5] Gross, after recuperating his health in Baltimore over the next three years, returned to Georgia and thence continued his missionary work in Baltimore, at St. Alphonsus Ligouri Church (New York City), and Boston, Massachusetts, where he served as superior of the Redemptorist community at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Mission.[5]

On February 14, 1873, Gross was appointed the fifth Bishop of Savannah by Pope Pius IX.[6] He received his episcopal consecration on the following April 27 at the Baltimore Cathedral from James Roosevelt Bayley, then the Archbishop of Baltimore, with Bishops Thomas A. Becker and James Gibbons (later a cardinal) serving as co-consecrators.[6] At age 36, he was then the youngest member of the American hierarchy.[5] He selected as his episcopal motto: "Lumen Aeternum Mundo Effudit" (Latin: "She gave forth to the world the Everlasting Light").[7]

During his tenure in Savannah, Gross laid the cornerstone of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in November 1873 and dedicated it in April 1876.[2] In addition to erecting several churches, schools, orphanages, and hospitals, he opened a men's college at Macon, introduced into the diocese the Jesuits and Benedictines, and established a diocesan newspaper, The Southern Cross, in 1875.[1][2][5]

Coat of arms of William Hickley Gross.

Pope Leo XIII promoted Gross to the third Archbishop of Oregon City on February 1, 1885.[6] Installed as Archbishop on the following March 31,[6] he visited the 10,000 Catholics throughout the extensive Archdiocese by carriage, horseback, train, steamer, and even foot.[5] During his tenure, he dedicated St. Mary's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in August 1885, acquired the Catholic Sentinel as property of the Archdiocese, and founded the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon in 1886.[5] Cardinal Gibbons, who had earlier assisted at Gross' episcopal consecration, invested him with the pallium in October 1887.

Archbishop Gross opened Mount Angel College in 1887, a minor seminary in 1889, and an elderly home in 1896; and presided over the Third Provincial Council of Oregon in 1891. In 1895 he ordained the first native Oregonian priest, Arthur Lane, the grandson of the Mexican–American War general and Oregon politician Joseph Lane.[5]

After falling ill while giving a retreat for Redemptorist students in Annapolis, he died shortly afterwards at St. Joseph's Hospital in Baltimore, aged 61.[5] He was buried at Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery in Baltimore.[8] His eloquence had led him to become known as "the silver tongued orator of the hierarchy."[3]