WYNNE, JOHN JOSEPH

Editor, author; b. New York, N.Y., Sept. 30, 1859;d. there, Nov. 30, 1948. He completed his early education at St. Francis Xavier's High School in New York City in 1870, and received his B.A. from the College of the same institution in 1876. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at West Park, N.Y., on July 30, 1876, and studied philosophy at Woodstock College, Md. (1879–82). He taught science and classics at his alma mater in New York (1882–86) and mathematics at Boston College (1886–87). He returned

to Woodstock for theological studies in 1887 and was ordained Aug. 24, 1890, by Cardinal James Gibbons. In 1891 Wynne joined the staff of the Messenger of the Sacred Heart (New York) and was its editor for the next 17 years. In the same period he was director of the Apostleship of Prayer, raising the number of centers from 1,600 to more than 8,000; director of the Shrine of the Jesuit north american martyrs at Auriesville, N.Y., and promoter of the beatification of those martyrs; editor of the Pilgrim of Our Lady of Martyrs; originator of the holy hour movement; and assistant in the revitalization of the Holy Name Society. Seeing the need for "a magazine of general Catholic interest," Wynne transformed the Messenger of the Sacred Heart into such a publication in 1897, and published a supplement as the official periodical of the Apostleship. In 1902 the magazine took the title of the Messenger, and the Messenger of the Sacred Heart resumed its link with the Apostleship of Prayer. The Messenger changed its name and editorial offices in 1909 to become the new weekly review America, and Wynne served as its editor for one year. He resigned to continue his work, begun in 1905, as associate editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia. From 1914 to 1917 he edited Anno Domini, the organ of the League of Daily Mass. He was author of The Jesuit Martyrs of North America (1925), editor of The Great Encyclicals of Leo XIII (1903), and coeditor (with Condé pallen) of The New Catholic Dictionary (1927). In 1923 Wynne was appointed vice-postulator of the causes of the North American Martyrs and Kateri tekakwitha, and carried on this work until the martyrs' beatification in 1925 and canonization in 1929. The Catholic University of America (Washington, D.C.) awarded him the honorary degree of S.T.D. (1926), as "an outstanding apologist of our faith and life." His office was moved to Fordham University, New York, in 1929. Selecting a site in 1946 on Lake George for a statue of St. Isaac Jogues was Wynne's last service to the church.

Bibliography: xavier alumni sodality, Fifty Years in Conflict and Triumph (New York 1927), autobiography and tributes from others.

[e. g. ryan]