1906 – 1945 (June 13)
John Edward Glennon, son of Thomas Glennon and Marie Morgan, was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, on March 20, 1906. He received his education in Pope Leo XIII Elementary School there, and at Boston College High School. Upon graduation from Boston College in 1930, he entered Boston’s Saint John Seminary and completed his theological education at Saint Bonaventure. He entered the novitiate at New Hamburg, New York in September, 1935, and made his simple profession on September 10, 1936. He did graduate work also at the Preachers’ Institute of Catholic University. He was ordained to the priesthood in the chapel of Augustinian College in Washington, DC, on September 29, 1938. Two of his brothers, James G., and Charles F., Glennon, became priests in the Archdiocese of Boston.
After ordination, Father Glennon was assigned in October, 1938, to Saint Rita High School in Chicago, IL. The following year he became a member of the Province Mission Band with his residence at Saint Laurence Community, Lawrence, Ma. From May, 1943, until his death he was an assistant pastor at Our Mother of Consolation Parish in Chestnut Hill, PA.
Father Glennon died in his sleep at the age of 39, while visiting his parents in Boston on June 13, 1945, just hours before his brother, Chaplain Charles Glennon, was to return home from a German prison camp. It was Father Charles who celebrated the Requiem Mass at Saint Thomas Aquinas Church in Jamaica Plain on June 16th, in the presence of Archbishop Richard Cushing who presided and gave the absolution, Bishop Louis Kelleher, auxiliary bishop of Boston, Father Mortimer Sullivan, O.S.A., Prior Provincial and many Augustinians and Diocesan Priests. Father George Walker, O.S.A. preached the sermon. Father John was buried in his family’s plot in Saint Joseph’s Cemetery in Roxbury, MA. Two days later a Requiem Mass was also celebrated at Our Mother of Consolation in Chestnut Hill.
