Andrew M Greeley was an American Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and popular novelist.
22 Facts About Andrew Greeley
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Andrew Greeley was born into a large Irish Catholic family in Oak Park, Illinois in 1928.
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Andrew Greeley grew up during the Great Depression in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, where he attended St Angela Elementary School, and by the second grade, he knew that he wanted to be a priest.
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From 1954 to 1964, Andrew Greeley served as an assistant pastor at Christ the King parish in Chicago, during which time he studied sociology at the University of Chicago.
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Andrew Greeley received a Master of Arts in 1961 and a PhD in 1962.
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At various times, Andrew Greeley was a professor at the University of Arizona, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago.
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Andrew Greeley was denied tenure by the University of Chicago in 1973, despite having been a faculty member there for a decade and having published dozens of books; he attributed the denial to anti-Catholic prejudice, although a colleague said his cantankerous temperament was more to blame.
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Andrew Greeley studied how religion influenced the political behavior of ethnic Catholics, and he was one of the first scholars to document the sociological effects of the Second Vatican Council's reforms on American Catholics.
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Andrew Greeley completed a two-year survey in 1972, reporting that dissatisfaction among the priests was widespread; but the bishops rejected his findings.
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Andrew Greeley criticized Cody, calling him a "madcap tyrant" when Cody closed a number of inner-city schools.
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Andrew Greeley argued for the continued salience of ethnicity in American life and the distinctiveness of the Catholic religious imagination.
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The National Catholic Register said that Andrew Greeley had "the dirtiest mind ever ordained".
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Andrew Greeley dabbled in science fiction, writing the novels God Game and The Final Planet.
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Andrew Greeley wrote about the spiritual life in his prayer journals "that revealed a man who most of all wanted to love God and let people know that God was a Tremendous Lover who loved them as if He loved them alone and loved everyone as if all of them were one".
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Politically, Greeley was an outspoken critic of the George W Bush administration and the Iraq War, and a strong supporter of immigration reform.
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Andrew Greeley was probably the best-selling priest in history, with an estimated 250,000 readers who would buy almost every novel he published, probably generating at least $110 million in gross income by 1999.
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Andrew Greeley was able to live comfortably in Chicago's John Hancock Center, but he donated most of his earnings to the Church and other charities.
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Andrew Greeley had originally offered the donation to the Archdiocese, but the then Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, had declined the gift without ever publicly offering an explanation.
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In 2008, he donated several thousand dollars to the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, who was then serving as a US Senator representing Illinois, although Andrew Greeley predicted that racism would lead to Obama's defeat.
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Andrew Greeley suffered skull fractures in a fall in 2008 when his clothing got caught on the door of a taxi as it pulled away; he was hospitalized in critical condition.
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Andrew Greeley remained in poor health for the rest of his life and died on May 29,2013, at his Chicago home.
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Andrew Greeley was awarded honorary degrees from the University of Arizona, Bard College and the National University of Ireland, Galway.