John Francis Cronin

Father John Francis Cronin, S.S. (1908-1994), was a Catholic priest of the Society of St Sulpice and an anticommunist assistant of Nixon.

He was born October 4, 1908 in Glens Falls, New York. He graduated at the age of fourteen from St. Mary's Academy. An essay that discussed the dangers faced by coal miners was published in the Glens Falls Post Star. He attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and seminary at the Sulpician seminary of The Catholic University of America, where he earned bachelor's degrees in philosophy and sacred theology, and a master's degree in philosophy. In 1932, Cronin was ordained at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, New York by Bishop Edmund F. Gibbons. He joined the Sulpicians, and in 1935, was awarded a doctorate in philosophy by Catholic University.

Cronin taught economics at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland. While there, he published a pamphlet, A Living Wage Today, that built on Pope Pius XI's encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, and declared, "The wage paid to the workingman must be sufficient for the support of himself and of his family." In 1938, Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore asked Father Cronin to establish a School of Social Action to instruct Catholic clergy in the church's teachings on labor, which was later expanded to parishes. According to John T. Donovan, Cronin's writing and teaching helped to sharpen his skills in the area of labor and economics.

He was also Assistant Director of the Department of Social Action for the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

Around the end of the Second World War, Cronin wrote a report for the bishops on the Communist Party of the United States. He had the assistance of FBI officials, who unofficially provided some of the background material for him. When Richard Nixon was elected to Congress in 1946, he sought out information on Communism, and he was introduced to Cronin by Representative Charles J. Kersten (R.WI).

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