Statewide paper began in Miami
Posted: 01.02.08
FLORIDA CATHOLIC FILES
The first edition of the Florida Catholic was published Dec. 1, 1939.
MIAMI | For many Catholics in the Archdiocese of Miami, the Florida Catholic is the “new” newspaper – although it actually predates the one most of them remember.
The Voice, the newspaper of the archdiocese from 1959 to 1990, was only the second Catholic newspaper to be established in Florida. But the first was established in Miami as well.
In 1939, a visionary priest named Msgr. William Barry founded the Florida Catholic and became its first publisher and executive editor. It was the state’s first Catholic newspaper and it covered the entire Diocese of St. Augustine, which at the time encompassed nearly the whole state of Florida.
It helped, of course, that Msgr. Barry’s brother was the bishop of St. Augustine: Bishop Patrick Barry served from 1922 until his death in 1940. Together with their sister, Mother Geraldine Barry of the Adrian Dominicans, they also gave the state its first Catholic college for women, the now coed Barry University in Miami Shores.
Msgr. Barry had founded St. Patrick Parish on Miami Beach in 1926, and he would serve there for 40 years. His brother’s successor as bishop, Archbishop Joseph P. Hurley, took over as publisher of the Florida Catholic in 1942 and moved the central office to St. Augustine.
“We used to publish the paper on an old flatbed press. There was just me and my boss, Charles Dunn,” recalled one of Msgr. Barry’s first hires, a newly minted graduate of St. Patrick High School named Marjorie Lennehan, age 18.
From 1939 until well past her official retirement in 1987, she would become known to readers of both the Florida Catholic and The Voice as Marjorie Fillyaw, and later still, Marjorie Donohue.
“I wrote stories, sold ads and did the books until I fouled them up,” she recalled in a 1987 interview with The Miami Herald. “We had two filing cabinets and no filing system. My boss used to say, ‘Only God and Miss Lennehan … know what’s in the files. And I doubt that God knows.’”
When the paper moved to St. Augustine, Donohue moved on to other jobs with the church but continued freelancing for the newspaper. In 1959, she became a founding member of the staff of The Voice, concluding her career as the archdiocese’s information director.
Another venerated Miami priest, the late Msgr. James Walsh, served as a regular columnist for the Florida Catholic for many years, and continued in that role with The Voice.
Few Catholics in south Florida today remember the old Florida Catholic, but one who does is Father Ronald Pusak. The retired pastor of St. Richard in Palmetto Bay recalls reading it every week as a student at St. Mary High School in Miami, from which he graduated in 1952.
“Not only reading it but enjoying it,” Father Pusak said. “Every Monday morning we had to write a report on articles from the Florida Catholic, and quizzes.”
“I don’t think it came into the home,” he said, referring to the fact that the paper’s circulation was not mandated by the diocese. “But Archbishop Hurley made sure that all of the schools knew about the Florida Catholic.”
He said he learned many things about the church and the state from the newspaper, including what the abbreviation ISL meant – Islamorada. He also remembers being an avid fan of a columnist, John O’Brien, who engaged his lifelong interest in issues of social justice.
“It was a terrifically effective program” of evangelization, Father Pusak said. “Archbishop Hurley got us all to read it.”