Image:John Hughes archbishop - Brady-Handy.jpg

English: Archbishop John Joseph Hughes ( June 24, 1797 - January 3, 1864) was the fourth bishop and first Archbishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of New York. He was born in County Tyrone, Ireland and followed his parents to the United States. Initially employed as a gardener at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, he was admitted as a student, and was ordained a priest on October 15, 1826 and ordained a bishop on January 7, 1838 with the titular see of Basileopolis. He succeeded to the bishopric of the diocese of New York on December 20, 1842 and became an archbishop on July 19, 1850, when the diocese was elevated to the status of archdiocese. He campaigned actively on behalf of Irish immigrants, and attempted to secure state support for religious schools. He protested against the United States Government for using the King James Bible in Public schools, claiming that it was an attack on Catholic constitutional rights of double taxation, because Catholics would need to pay taxes for public school and also pay for the private school to send their kids to in order to avoid the protestant translation of the bible. When he failed to secure state support, he founded an independent Catholic school system which was taken into the Catholic Church's core at the third plenary Council of 1884 which mandated that all Parishes have a parochial school and that all Catholic children be sent to those schools. He founded St. John's College (now Fordham University) and began construction of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He served until his death. He was originally buried in old St. Patrick's Cathedral and was exhumed and reinterred in the crypt under the altar of the new St. Patrick's Cathedral.