What is the common link between St. Elizabeth Seton, Mount St. Mary’s College and the Academy Award-nominated film "Gangs of New York"? John Joseph Hughes, "Dagger John," the first archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York.

A little over an hour's ride from the building where this newspaper is printed stands an enormous statue of the Blessed Mother behind the buildings of Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Set on a hillside, the grounds behind Mount St. Mary's have been turned into a park where a weary traveler or pilgrim in search of solace can walk among the Catholic statuary and beautiful gardens and leave the stress of the world behind.

At the entrance to the park sits a small cabin that was once inhabited by an impoverished young Irish Catholic immigrant from County Tyrone in Ireland, young John Hughes. Hughes emigrated from Ireland with his family in 1817, when he was 20. The young immigrant eventually found work at Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary as a gardener and stonemason. The tiny cabin was his living quarters. Like so many immigrants of the time, Hughes' family left Ireland for the promise of, in Hughes' own words, "a country in which no stigma of inferiority would be impressed on my brow, simply because I professed one creed or another."

Hughes had grown up in a land where the predominantly Catholic population were second-class citizens. Ireland, at the time, was nothing better than a colony of the British Empire, ruled by Protestant overlords who looked upon the native Irish Catholic population as inferior beings, and who imposed laws designed to keep them that way. In the Ireland of John Hughes' youth a Catholic could not own a horse worth more than five pounds, or join the army or navy, or give his children a Catholic education.

They could not even bury their dead properly. When he was 15, the future bishop's younger sister died. She was to be interred at a local cemetery. But British law prevented the Catholic priest, who would preside over the burial and consecrate the ground in which she would be buried, from entering the cemetery. All he could do was bless a handful of dirt and give it to young Hughes to sprinkle over the grave. The event was a defining moment for the teenager.

John Hughes desired not only to wash away the "stigma of inferiority," he also wanted to be a priest -- which is one reason why he sought employment at Mount St. Mary's. While working there, he applied to the rector of the seminary, Father John Dubois, for admission. Father Dubois, seeing only an ignorant Irish immigrant, rejected the application.

Not far from the tiny cabin in the park behind Mount St. Mary's, at the end of a tree-shaded path now marked by giant rhododendron and the stations of the cross, is a very large rock where Mother Elizabeth Seton, our first American saint, contemplated, prayed, and taught. No doubt she encountered the eager young Irishman as he went about his chores, and saw in him something missed by Father Dubois. Mother Seton, who could be very persuasive, interceded with the rector on the young gardener's behalf, and by so doing set in motion a catalyst that would change the City of New York and this country in ways then unimaginable.

John Hughes was admitted to the seminary in 1820 and was ordained a priest in 1826. His first assignment was in Philadelphia. The "city of brotherly love" was, unfortunately, not all that lovely in its treatment of its Catholic population. The United States was still very much a Protestant country in the 1800s, and anti-Catholic bigotry, long a staple of American Protestantism, was leveled at the unskilled and uneducated Irish Catholic immigrants who became, as in Ireland, second-class citizens.

But the ground rules in America were different than in Ireland -- and Father Hughes understood that. Here you could voice your opinions without being imprisoned. He wrote frequently to newspapers, insisting that America was for all people, not just Protestants and the educated. The Irish he was defending came to love this priest, and his stature grew when he publicly debated a prominent Protestant clergyman. The notoriety brought him to the attention of the Vatican, which saw Father Hughes as the best candidate to assist Bishop John Dubois, the former rector at Mount St. Mary's, in the growing Diocese of New York.

In 1838, at the age of 41 and only 11 years after his ordination as a priest, the fiery advocate for Catholic equality was ordained coadjutor bishop for the New York Diocese. In 1842, upon the death of Bishop Dubois, John Hughes was consecrated the fourth bishop of New York. His ascendance to power in New York in the 1840s coincided with events across the Atlantic Ocean that would radically change the demographics of the city of New York, Boston, and other eastern cities.

A potato blight that began in the northeastern United States would find its way to the Emerald Isle and destroy, for several years in a row, the potato crops upon which the Irish Catholic population derived not only sustenance but income. One million Irish Catholics would die of starvation and disease. At least two million would emigrate in "coffin ships" to North America, many to New York City -- and Bishop Hughes.

By 1850 New York City had become the largest city in the United States. In recognition of the city's size and importance, Pope Pius IX made it an archdiocese, and John Hughes its first archbishop. By then Bishop Hughes was known to his enemies as "Dagger John," a reference not only to the shape of the cross that followed his signature, but also the tenacity with which he fought for his immigrant flock.

Among his enemies were not only the Protestant establishment -- with whom he battled most notably for the non-Protestant education of Catholics -- but also the nativist "gangs of New York," depicted in last year’s hit movie of the same name. The era described in the movie was the era during which John Hughes presided in New York. Against the bigots, both high class and low, Bishop Hughes was a formidable foe.

In 1844 anti-Catholic "nativist" rioters in Philadelphia planned to come to New York for an anti-Catholic rally. They had already done considerable damage in Philadelphia, burning two Catholic churches and killing 12 people. In response to this threat, Hughes put armed guards (members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians) around New York's Catholic churches. He warned New York’s mayor that "if a single Catholic Church were burned in New York, the city would become a second Moscow." During the Napoleonic wars the city of Moscow had been burned to the ground by its own citizens to prevent Napoleon from using the city as winter quarters for his army. The mayor and the city's Protestant establishment understood the reference to Moscow, and took the bishop's warning seriously. The city forced the nativists to cancel their rally.

John Hughes served as bishop of New York until his death in 1864. During his 22-year tenure, the uneducated Irish gardener from Mount St. Mary's established agencies to find work for unemployed immigrants, built Catholic churches, hospitals, orphanages, and especially schools. He knew that the key to success and first-class citizenship in this new land was education. By the time of his death, he had founded 100 Catholic schools -- among them St. John's College (later Fordham University) -- and he was known as "the father of Catholic education in America."