Joseph Henry Leo Schlarman


Joseph Henry Leo Schlarman was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Peoria from 1930 until his death in 1951. In 1951 before his death, he had been given the personal title of Archbishop.

Biography

One of ten children, Joseph Schlarman was born in Breese, Illinois, to Bernard and Philomena Schlarman. His mother was born in Germany, and his paternal grandparents were from the city of Hanover. As a young boy he walked two miles to school every morning and attended daily Mass. For three years after graduating from grade school, he worked the fields in the summer and went to school in the fall, studying until the corn planting season arrived the next spring. With the intention of entering medicine, he studied at Quincy College for four years.
He later decided to join the priesthood and studied theology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, from where he earned a doctorate in canon law in 1907. Schlarman was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Belleville on June 29, 1904. He served as a curate at St. Peter's Cathedral from 1907 until 1909, when he became chancellor of the diocese.
On April 19, 1930, Schlarman was appointed the third Bishop of Peoria by Pope Pius XI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following June 17 from Cardinal George Mundelein, with Bishops Henry J. Althoff and Edward Francis Hoban serving as co-consecrators, at St. Peter's Cathedral. From 1936 to 1937, he was chairman of Governor Henry Horner's Commission for Study of Prison Problems. A noted historian, he wrote From Quebec to New Orleans, The Story of the French in America and Mexico, Land of Volcanoes. He was given the personal title of Archbishop by Pope Pius XII on June 17, 1951. He long suffered from poor health, undergoing fifteen operations and being administered Extreme Unction six times. He died from a heart attack at age 72, and is buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Peoria.
His grand-nephew is Stanley Girard Schlarman, who served as Bishop of Dodge City, Kansas, from 1983 to 1998.