James Coyle
| James Coyle | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
James Edwin Coyle March 23, 1873 Drum, County Roscommon, Ireland |
| Died | August 11, 1921 (aged 48) Birmingham, Alabama, USA |
| Education | Mungret College, Limerick Pontifical North American College |
| Church | Roman Catholic Church |
| Ordained | May 30, 1896 |
James Edwin Coyle (March 23, 1873 – August 11, 1921) was a Roman Catholic priest who was murdered in Birmingham, Alabama.
James Coyle was born in Drum, County Roscommon, Ireland to Owen Coyle and his wife Margaret Durney. He attended Mungret College in Limerick and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, and was ordained a priest at age 23 on May 30, 1896.
Later that year, he sailed with another priest, Father Michael Henry, to Mobile, Alabama, in the United States, and served under Bishop Edward Patrick Allen. He became an instructor, and later rector, of the McGill Institute for Boys. In 1904 Bishop Allen appointed Coyle to succeed Patrick O'Reilly as pastor of the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Birmingham, where he was well received and loved by the congregation. Father Coyle was the Knights of Columbus chaplain of Birmingham, Alabama Council 666.
On August 11, 1921, Father Coyle was shot in the head on the porch of St. Paul's Rectory by E. R. Stephenson, a Southern Methodist Episcopal minister and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. There were many witnesses. The murder occurred just hours after Coyle had performed a secret wedding between Stephenson's daughter, Ruth, and Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican she had met while he was working on Stephenson's house five years earlier. Gussman had also been a customer of Stephenson's barber shop. Several months before the wedding, Ruth had converted to Roman Catholicism.
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