Richard Phelan was born on January 1, 1828 in Sralee, near Ballyragget, County Kilkenny, Ireland, to Michael and Mary Keoghan Phelan. Of their nine children, four entered religious life. He was educated by private tutors, and at St Kieran's College, Kilkenny. In 1850, as a seminarian, he volunteered to accompany Bishop Michael O'Connor of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, to the United States. He continued his studies at the Seminary of St. Michael and after two years entered St. Mary's Theological Seminary, Baltimore, Maryland. He was ordained priest in Pittsburgh on May 4, 1854. Father was assigned to a mission in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, but returned to Pittsburgh later that year to assist during a cholera epidemic. He served in the Pittsburgh area based out of Saint Paul Cathedral. One parish he visited was St. Michael the Archangel in Elizabeth. After three years he was sent to Freeport, Pennsylvania, and in 1868, became pastor of St. Peter's Catholic Church in Allegheny City. He built a new church at a cost of more than $150,000. In 1876, this church became the pro-cathedral of the new diocese of Allegheny. He also completed the schools that his predecessor had begun. During the absence of Bishop John Tuigg in 1881 he was appointed administrator of the dioceses of Pittsburgh and Allegheny, and he was subsequently made vicar-general.
Bishop
Bishop Tuigg suffered a series of strokes. In 1885 Phelan was nominated coadjutor to the two sees, with right of succession, and on August 2 was consecrated bishop of Cebeyra in partibus infidelium by Archbishop Patrick John Ryan. At that point, he handled the actual administration of the diocese, but continued to reside in Allegheny. On 1 July, 1889, the See of Allegheny was totally suppressed, and the Diocese of Pittsburg was declared to embrace the territory of what had been the two dioceses, as though no division had ever taken place. The administration of Bishop Phelan was a remarkably successful one. He was a man of prudent zeal and extraordinary business ability. The people of many nationalities who were coming in large numbers to find work in the mines and mills of Western Pennsylvania were formed into regular congregations, supplied with pastors who could speak their own languages. In May, 1901, the counties of Cambria, Blair, Bedford, Huntingdon, and Somerset were taken from the Diocese of Pittsburg to form, with several counties taken from the Diocese of Harrisburg, the new Diocese of Altoona. Phelan became Bishop of Pittsburgh and Allegheny upon the death of Bishop Tuigg on December 7, 1889. The administration of Bishop Phelan saw the growth and development of the iron, steel, coal, and coke industries, in the western portion of the state. The sudden advent of immense Catholic populations with strange tongues and strange customs, and all of them impoverished, gave rise to problems that would have taxed the ablest men. But the difficulties that arose were either solved or the way for their solution was prepared. Phelan died on December 20, 1904 at St. Paul's Orphan Asylum, in Idlewood, Pennsylvania, and was buried in St. Mary Cemetery in the city's Lawrenceville neighborhood.
