His parents were George Hillenbrand and Eleanor Schmidt and members of Saint Michael’s parish in Chicago’s Old Town.
[7] In 1931, Cardinal George Mundelein named Hillenbrand, age 31, rector of Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary.
[7] Named a monsignor, Hillenbrand's three-part approach of faithfully presenting papal teaching, calling lay apostles, and bringing laity through the Catholic liturgy to social action, helped form US Catholic leadership prior to the Second Vatican Council, which his innovations during the liturgical reforms of Pope Pius XII anticipated.
[8] Hillenbrand also championed the causes of labor and race relations, and brought the first women speakers, Dorothy Day, and later Baroness Catherine de Hueck Doherty, to the University of St. Mary of the Lake, his alma mater, where he served as rector from 1936-1944.
[9] Several of Hillenbrand's seminary students, including Alfred Leo Abramowicz, Romeo Roy Blanchette, Daniel Cantwell, Michael R. P. Dempsey, John Joseph Egan, Thomas Joseph Grady, George G. Higgins, Timothy Joseph Lyne, Eugene F. Lyons, Edward A. Marciniak, John L. May, Paul Casimir Marcinkus, Cletus F. O'Donnell, William J. Quinn, and James A. Voss, became influential in social action and/or in both pre- and post-Vatican II American Catholic affairs.