On April 15, 1939 Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman was appointed sixth Archbishop of New York.

Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman (1889-1967) was ordained a priest in 1916 in Boston, and worked in the Vatican until 1932, when he returned to the United States. Spellman helped arrange a meeting between FDR and the Vatican Secretary of State that ultimately led to the President’s appointment of a personal representative to the Vatican in 1939. Spellman’s relationship with FDR became strained after 1943 when they differed over such issues as bombing targets in Italy and the results of the Yalta Conference. After the war, Spellman became increasingly anti-communist, which put him at odds with Eleanor Roosevelt’s liberal opposition to the red scare and communist hunting of the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1949, ER and Spellman openly clashed over the Barden Bill, a proposed law that would exclude federal aid to parochial schools. Ultimately, Spellman realized his vicious attacks on ER’s Americanism and sense of motherhood had damaged himself and the public perception of the Catholic Church.