William N. McNulty

Dean (Christianity) William N. McNulty (1829-1922), was an American pioneer Roman Catholic priest, who arrived in New York from his native Ballyshannon, Ireland in 1850, during the time of the Great Irish Potato Famine and when, there, then, existed little in the way of Roman Catholic facilities about near by Passaic County, New Jersey. He is responsible for much of the foundation of the structural and institutional infrastructure of today's Roman Catholic Church in Paterson, New Jersey. To the end of his 93 years, a simple parish priest and caring steward of his flock, he refused the Pope's appointment of him as a Domestic prelate and, even, the then powerful Ku Klux Klan could not intimidate this beloved priest's honored 1922 burial. Father "Mac" as he was affectionately known in Paterson was so revered by its Irish and German Roman Catholic communities that his mere admonishing appearance in midst of Passaic County's 1880 Garret Rock May Day Riot or what national newspaper coverage of the time called "the most serious riot that has ever occurred in that section of the country" was sufficient to permit police to thereafter act to end the rioting. During his lifetime, the Pope, anyway, accorded this truly Reverend Father the extraordinary honor of naming him to the office of Papal chamberlain, which office is normally the reserve of European nobility. Father McNulty lies in front of Paterson's St. John's Church under an honoring bronze monument of his counseling a parish youth.

During some of the course of his 65 years as an ordained Roman Catholic priest, the Reverend Father McNulty acted as the moving force behind the creation of most of the foundation of Paterson, New Jersey's Roman Catholic infrastructure, including St. John (later in 1937 upon that Diocese's formation renamed Cathedral Church of the Diocese of Paterson), St. Joseph, St. Agnes, St. Mary, Our Lady of Victories, St. Michael and St. Ann's Churches, Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, St. Joseph's Hospital, St. Agnes Institute Girls' School, St. Francis Home for Working Girls, the Home for the Indigent Poor and Aged, Mt. St. Joseph's Home for Boys and convents for Dominican and orders of teaching sisters.

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