2-378-251 - Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images

Father Charles Coughlin, Canadian-born Catholic priest, late 1930s. Father Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-1979) was a Roman Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. He was one of the first religious leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than forty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s. The subject of his broadcasts was more political and economic than religious. Initially a supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal policies, he later became highly critical of the President. His programmes became increasingly anti-semitic and in some cases justified the policies of Hitler and Mussolini towards the Jews and Bolsheviks. By 1939, the government and broadcasting authorities had brought in restrictions on broadcasting content that eventually forced Coughlin off the air. He continued to express his views via the press, but after the United States entered World War II, his isolationist and Nazi-sympathetic views became much less popular. Eventually, in 1942, the Bishop of Detroit ordered him to refrain from comment on political issues and to restrict himself to his duties as a parish priest, or be defrocked. Coughlin complied with the instruction until his retirement in 1966.