James Coyle
The Reverend James Edwin Coyle (born March 23, 1873 in County Roscommon, Ireland, died August 11, 1921 in Birmingham) was the pastor of St Paul's Cathedral from 1904 until his 1921 murder.
Coyle attended Mungret College in Limerick and at the American Colleges in Rome. He was ordained a priest in Rome on May 30, 1896 at the age of 23. He sailed later that year, with fellow priest Micheal Henry, to the port of Mobile and served under Bishop Edward Allen. He became an instructor, and later rector, of McGill Institute for Boys.
In 1904 Bishop Allen appointed Coyle to succeed Patrick O'Reilly as pastor of St Paul's. In 1909 Coyle founded Catholic Monthly
Coyle was shot in the head while reading the breviary on the front porch of his rectory next to the cathedral on 4th Avenue North by Methodist minister Edwin R. Stephenson. Stephenson was enraged that Coyle had secretly married his daughter to Puerto Rican Pedro Gussman. He died soon later at St Vincent's Hospital.
Stephenson, a member of the True Americans and the Ku Klux Klan, was defended in Judge and fellow Klansman William E. Fort's courtroom by Hugo Black who appealed to the jury's prejudices to win an acquittal.
Cathedral officials are researching Coyle's life in support of a potential nomination for canonization, based largely on what is viewed as his martyr's death. The cathedral has prepared a crypt in their new columbarium for Coyle's remains, which were first interred at the Southside Catholic Cemetery (now the site of the Alys Stephens Center and moved in 1936 to Elmwood Cemetery, where his grave is marked by a 10-foot Celtic cross. The current pastor, Reverend William Donohoe will ask the Vatican for permission to move Coyle's remains again. He also plans to rename the rectory, which was rebuilt after Coyle's death, in his honor.
References
- Garrison, Greg (August 20, 2006) "Burial site set for priest Klansman killed in '21". Birmingham News.
- Beecher, Mrs L. T. (September 1921) "The Passing of Father Coyle". Catholic Monthly. Vol. 12
- McGough, Helen (August 1, 1941) "Things I Remember about Father Coyle, His Death, Twenty Years Afterwards." Catholic Weekly.