Francis B. Schulte

Francis Bible Schulte, O.H.S. (December 23, 1926 – January 17, 2016) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston from 1985 to 1989, and Archbishop of New Orleans from 1989 to 2002.^[1]

Biography

Schulte was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the only child of John Schulte, a pharmacist, and his wife, Katherine Bible.^[2] His parents had him baptized with both their surnames.^[3] As a child, his parents enrolled him in the Norwood Academy for Boys, during which time his father died, when Francis was 11 years old.^[2] He went on to study at St. Joseph's Preparatory School in Philadelphia.

Following a call to become a Catholic priest, with his mother's strong support, Schulte enrolled at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook to prepare for the ministry. He later studied at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he obtained a master's degree in political science, and did gradutate studies at Oxford University in England, and at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Schulte was ordained to the priesthood on May 10, 1952, for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and then was named by John F. O'Hara, C.S.C., the Archbishop of Philadelphia, to serve as a faculty member and department head of various Philadelphia-area parochial schools. He was appointed an assistant superintendent of the schools of the archdiocese (1960–70) by O'Hara's successor, John Krol, and later superintendent (1970–80). He was raised to the rank of Papal Chamberlain by Pope Paul VI, and was named pastor of St. Margaret Parish in Narberth in 1980.

Episcopate

On June 27, 1981, Schulte was appointed an auxiliary bishop of his archdiocese and the Titular Bishop of Afufenia by Pope John Paul II. He was ordained as a bishop on the following August 12 by Krol (by then a cardinal) as his principal consecrator and Bishops John J. Graham and Martin N. Lohmuller serving as co-consecrators. He was named, on June 4, 1985, by that same pope the sixth Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia.

Pope John Paul transferred Schulte to become the twelfth Archbishop of New Orleans on December 6, 1988, in which office he was installed on February 14, 1989. Among the many challenges he faced in leading the Catholics of the archdiocese was the shifting of its population, which led to the closing or merging of several parishes. He also brought his long experience as an educator to bear with a major restructuring of the school system of the archdiocese.^[3] He served as the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Education, helping to write and research a document on the role local bishops and archbishops should play in Catholic universities within their jurisdictions.^[4] In 1992, he created the archdiocese's first formal process for dealing with complaints of sexual abuse by priests or other church employees.^[5]

In addition to Schulte's duties in the archdiocese, in 1992 he also took on the leadership of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre for the Southeastern United States, being named the grand prior of that region.^[6]

Schulte retired as archbishop on January 3, 2002. He remained in residence in New Orleans, until his diagnosis of prostate cancer shortly after the city had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Upon the recommendation of his doctors, who advised better facilities would be available in his hometown of Philadelphia, he moved there. After spending some time in a nursing home in that city, he died there on January 17, 2016, at the age of 89. His remains are to be interred in the crypt of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, in New Orleans.^[2]

References

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by –	Auxiliary Bishop of Philadelphia 1981–1985	Succeeded by –
Preceded by Joseph Howard Hodges	Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston 1985–1988	Succeeded by Bernard William Schmitt
Preceded by Philip Matthew Hannan	Archbishop of New Orleans 1988–2001	Succeeded by Alfred Clifton Hughes
Preceded by Stanley Joseph Ott	Grand Prior Southeastern Lieutenancy of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre 1992–2002	Succeeded by Alfred Clifton Hughes