Pittsburgh to Canon Law

Jerome Daniel Hannan was born in Pittsburgh on November 29, 1896, the son of James and Rose Tiernan Hannan. His father and grandfather worked in Pittsburgh steel mills, a background that put Hannan’s path into the church some distance from the industrial work that had shaped the family before him.

He graduated from Duquesne University in 1916 and entered Saint Vincent’s Seminary in Latrobe the same year. On May 22, 1921, he was ordained to the priesthood at Saint Vincent’s Archabbey for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Hannan’s early priesthood moved through parish and diocesan work, but his direction was legal and administrative. He earned a law degree from Duquesne in 1931, then studied at Catholic University’s School of Canon Law, where he received a Doctor of Canon Law in 1934. That training made him useful in chancery work back in Pittsburgh and later sent him to Washington, where he joined Catholic University’s canon law faculty in 1940 and taught as an associate professor through the 1940s.

Sent to Scranton

Pope Pius XII appointed Hannan Bishop of Scranton on August 17, 1954. He was consecrated on September 21 at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, with Archbishop Amleto Cicognani as principal consecrator and Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle and Bishop Henry Klonowski as co-consecrators.

Nine days later, Hannan was installed at Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton. The date, September 30, was the Feast of Saint Jerome, a tidy ceremonial coincidence for a bishop whose own name would soon be attached to buildings, schools, and diocesan memory.

The diocese he inherited was still building institutions for a large Catholic population across northeastern and north-central Pennsylvania. Hannan arrived as a canon lawyer with a taste for order, and his first years in Scranton showed that preference in brick, administration, and program design.

Chancery and Seminary

In September 1955, after floods hit the Scranton and Pocono areas, Hannan announced a $25,000 donation for victims. Three years later, in December 1958, he announced plans for a new diocesan chancery building at Wyoming Avenue and Linden Street, directly across from Saint Peter’s Cathedral.

The chancery opened in June 1960. Its cornerstone held diocesan records, a Catholic Light issue from April 30, 1959, and coins from years tied to the institution and to Hannan himself: 1868, the founding year of the diocese; 1896, his birth year; 1921, his ordination year; and 1954, the year he became bishop.

His larger project was Saint Pius X Seminary in Dalton. Hannan announced the seminary in April 1961, presided over the groundbreaking on April 28, and blessed and dedicated the $1.26 million building on September 3, 1962. The first class of twenty-four seminarians entered that month. Hannan died before that class reached ordination, but he saw the men admitted to the clerical state on March 13, 1965.

Alongside those projects, the diocese credited his tenure with three new parishes and fourteen Catholic schools, including eleven elementary schools and three high schools. The same years also brought Pre-Cana marriage preparation courses, Serra International, and reactivated diocesan councils of Catholic men and women.

Vatican II

In September 1960, Pope John XXIII appointed Hannan to the Commission of Bishops and Diocesan Government, one of the preparatory bodies before the Second Vatican Council. Hannan attended all four sessions of the council after it opened in Rome on October 11, 1962.

That made him the second Bishop of Scranton to take part in an ecumenical council. William O’Hara, the diocese’s first bishop, had attended the First Vatican Council in 1869 and 1870. Hannan’s council was different. It would reshape Catholic liturgy, ecumenical relations, and the public posture of the church just as his own life was ending.

The council closed on December 8, 1965. Seven days later, Hannan died in a Rome hospital of pneumonia and heart disease. He was 69, after 44 years as a priest and 11 years as a bishop.

The Record Reopened

For decades, the institutional memory of Hannan’s episcopacy rested on the chancery, the seminary, Catholic schools, and his place at Vatican II. The 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report forced a second record into view.

The Scranton section of the report began its bishop chronology with Hannan, listing his tenure from August 17, 1954, through December 15, 1965. It found that, within the Diocese of Scranton, abuse matters were usually handled by the bishop personally and that diocesan administrators, including bishops, had knowledge of abuse complaints while priests were still placed in ministry.

One case reached directly into Hannan’s years. In 1961, a high school student later identified as Joe said Father Joseph T. Hammond assaulted him after card games at a rectory connected to Saint Leo the Great in Ashley. Joe’s mother contacted the diocese the next day and wanted Hannan made aware. Diocesan leadership told the family that the bishop had been informed and that the matter would be addressed. Decades later, when the grand jury subpoenaed records, the modern diocese said it had no records showing Hammond had engaged in sexual misconduct with children.

The report did not leave Hannan’s name as a closed honorific. On August 20, 2018, the University of Scranton announced that it would rescind honorary degrees and rename campus buildings recognizing Hannan, J. Carroll McCormick, and James C. Timlin. Hannan Hall became Giblin-Kelly Hall. From then on, the public memory of Scranton’s fifth bishop had to hold both the builder of the chancery and the bishop named in a record of institutional failure.