John Aloysius Marshall
John Aloysius Marshall was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Burlington, Vermont and Bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts.Biography
John Marshall was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to John A. and Katherine T. Marshall. After attending St. John's High School and Holy Cross College, he studied at the Collège de Montréal in Quebec and at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. While in Rome, Marshall was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Martin John O'Connor on December 19, 1953. After a period of pastoral work, he completed his graduate studies at Assumption College in his native Worcester and at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
On December 14, 1971, Marshall was appointed the seventh Bishop of Burlington, Vermont, by Pope Paul VI. He received his episcopal consecration on January 25, 1972, from Bishop Robert Francis Joyce, with Bishop Bernard Joseph Flanagan and James Aloysius Hickey serving as co-consecrators. His tenure in Burlington was marked by a decline in both vocations and church attendance, but still founded Our Lady of the Mountains Parish at Sherburne in 1979. He completed the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in 1977, after an arsonist had destroyed the original cathedral in 1972. From 1984 to 1990, he headed an apostolic visitation into the doctrinal orthodoxy of American seminaries. Records show that he transferred a priest from a Montpelier parish to another in Milton after charges of sexual abuse surfaced against the priest.
Marshall was named the sixth Bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts, on February 18, 1992. Although he established the Diocesan Misconduct Commission in response to sexual abuse among the clergy, he accepted Rev. Edward Paquette despite the repeated allegations of child molestation against him. Marshall even said that he was "determined to take the risk of leaving in his present assignment" despite "the demands of...irate parents that 'something be done about this.'"
He died at age 66.
