Charles Coughlin

The Reverend Monsignor Charles Edward Coughlin
Father Coughlin c. 1938
Church	Catholic
Orders
Ordination	1916
Personal details
Born	Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-10-25)October 25, 1891 Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Died	October 27, 1979(1979-10-27) (aged 88) Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, U.S.
Buried	Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Southfield, Michigan
Education	University of Toronto

Charles Edward Coughlin (/ˈkɒɡlɪn/ KOG-lin; October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979), commonly known as Father Coughlin, was a Canadian-American Catholic priest based in the United States near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the Little Flower. Dubbed "The Radio Priest" and considered a leading demagogue,^[1] he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. During the 1930s, when the U.S. population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned to his weekly broadcasts.^[2]

Coughlin was born in Canada to working-class Irish Catholic parents. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1916, and in 1923 he was assigned to the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin began broadcasting his sermons during a time of increasing anti-Catholic sentiment across the globe. As his broadcasts became more political, he became increasingly popular.^[3]

Initially, Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal; he later fell out with Roosevelt, accusing him of being too friendly to bankers. In 1934, he established a political organization called the National Union for Social Justice. Its platform called for monetary reforms, nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of labor rights. The membership ran into the millions but was not well organized locally.^[4]

After making attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program to broadcast antisemitic commentary. In the late 1930s, he supported some of the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The broadcasts have been described as "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture".^[5] His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, using the slogan "Social Justice". After the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, the Roosevelt administration forced the cancellation of his radio program and forbade distribution by mail of his newspaper Social Justice. Coughlin largely vanished from the public arena, working as a parish pastor until retiring in 1966. He died in 1979 at the age of 88.^[6][7][8]