HARTFORD, Conn. — Retired Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford died April 21 at age 88. He was Hartford’s fourth archbishop, serving from 2003 until his retirement in 2013.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated April 30 at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford with Archbishop Christopher J. Coyne as principal celebrant. Burial will follow at St. Benedict Cemetery in Bloomfield.
As a tribute to Archbishop Mansell, a video highlighting his tenure was posted to the archdiocese’s Facebook page.
“God’s grace. Fundamentally we always get back to God’s grace,” Archbishop Mansell said in one video clip. “There are things that simply cannot be done, we’re not alive (without) God’s gifts. We have to rely on that. We won’t be faithful, we won’t be true to Church unless we’re in communion, in harmony with God.”
He also reminded the faithful that “the central event in the life of the Catholic is attendance and participation in Mass every week. It is the identifying action of the Catholic.” From that, all good works and pastoral activities of the Church flow, he said.
Concern for the poor and marginalized and his strong support of Catholic education became the hallmarks of Archbishop Mansell’s 10 years as Hartford’s archbishop, the archdiocese said in a post on its website.
In 2014, at its annual dinner in Washington, the National Catholic Educational Association awarded the archbishop its prestigious St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Award “for his untiring dedication to Catholic education.”
Under his direction, the former Cathedral Grade School in Hartford was renovated as an affordable and supportive housing development known as Cathedral Green. A new center for Hispanics was dedicated as Central San Jose, and two hospital mobile units known as the Malta House of Care health care vans were put into service to provide necessary health services for those in need in the cities of Hartford and Waterbury. Plans for a third medical van in the New Haven region were begun under his leadership.
He also actively promoted the sainthood cause of Blessed Michael McGivney, former diocesan priest of Hartford and founder of the Knights of Columbus. Father McGivney was beatified Oct. 31, 2020, during a Mass celebrated at the Hartford cathedral after the late Pope Francis approved a decree in May 2020 recognizing a miracle attributed to the priest’s intercession.
In 2005, the Hartford Archdiocese paid $22 million to settle sexual abuse claims brought by 43 people against 14 priests, the majority of cases occurring in the 1960s and 1970s. An archdiocesan statement provided to The New York Times said Archbishop Mansell viewed the settlement, reached after two years of negotiation, as “part of a healing process for the persons whose lives have been severely harmed by the evil of sexual abuse and for the Church itself.”
Henry Joseph Mansell was born Oct. 10, 1937, in New York City. He attended Sts. Peter and Paul School in the Bronx and the Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in New York City. He earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph Seminary in Yonkers, New York, in 1959. He attended the Pontifical North American College in Rome and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of New York by the college’s rector, Archbishop Martin O’Connor, on Dec. 19, 1962, in Rome.
Then-Father Mansell earned a licentiate of sacred theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1963, and did postgraduate work at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
After his return to the New York Archdiocese from Washington, he served as a parish priest in various parishes in New York City and Westchester County. He was appointed director of the Office of Parish Councils in 1972, named vice chancellor in 1985 and appointed chancellor in 1988.
St. John Paul II named Father Mansell an auxiliary bishop of New York in November 1992 and ordained him a bishop in Rome Jan. 6, 1993.
Two years later, on April 18, 1995, the pope appointed him bishop of Buffalo, New York, and he was installed on June 12, 1995, at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Buffalo.
During his tenure in Buffalo, Bishop Mansell visited every parish in the diocese, most of them multiple times. As Hartford’s archbishop, he did the same — making visits to all the parishes, most of them many times, a priority.
In Buffalo, he also promoted Catholic education and health care and social service institutes within the diocese. He established the Catholic Health System, bringing together Catholic hospitals, nursing homes and other health care agencies operating within the diocese under one administration.
In 1996, Bishop Mansell instituted the diocese’s vicariate structure, and in 1997 he led the diocese in celebrating its 150th anniversary. He instituted a televised “Daily Mass” celebrated each day at the cathedral.
St. John Paul appointed Bishop Mansell as the fourth archbishop of Hartford on Oct. 20, 2003. He was installed Dec. 18, 2003, succeeding Archbishop Daniel A. Cronin.
On the national level, he was former treasurer of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a member of the USCCB’s Administrative Board and its Executive Committee. He also was a member of several USCCB committees, including the Committee on Catholic Education, and was treasurer of the Catholic Legal Immigrant Network Inc., best known as CLINIC.
Among his many honors, Archbishop Mansell earned honorary doctorate degrees from Niagara University, St. Bonaventure University, Canisius College, Albertus Magnus College, Goodwin College and the University of Hartford.
