About Charles Coughlin
Charles Edward Coughlin ( kawg-lin; October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979), commonly known as Father Coughlin, was a Canadian-American Catholic priest based near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the Little Flower. Dubbed "The Radio Priest " and considered a leading demagogue, 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 in to his weekly broadcasts. Coughlin was born in Ontario 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. 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 the National Union for Social Justice, a political organization whose platform called for monetary reforms, nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of labour rights. Its membership ran into the millions but was not well organized locally. After making attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program Golden Hour 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". 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 National Association of Broadcasters forced the cancellation of Golden Hour. In 1942, the Archdiocese of Detroit forced Coughlin to close his newspaper Social Justice and forbade its distribution by mail. Coughlin vanished from the public arena, working as a parish pastor until retiring in 1966. He died in 1979 at age 88. In 1926, he was assigned to the newly founded Shrine of the Little Flower, a congregation of 25 families in Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin's radio network became the largest one of its type in the United States.
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