William Henry O'Connell (December 8, 1859 – April 22, 1944) was an American cardinal of the Catholic Church.

He returned to Massachusetts two years later and entered Boston College, from which he graduated in 1881 with gold medals in philosophy, physics, and chemistry.

A pneumonia and bronchial congestion cut short his pursuit of a doctorate in divinity at the Pontifical Urban Athenaeum, forcing him to return to the United States in 1885 without his degree.

He received his episcopal consecration on the following May 19 from Francesco Cardinal Satolli, with Archbishops Edmund Stonor and Rafael Merry del Val, at the Lateran Basilica.

[1] In 1905, in addition to his duties as a diocesan bishop, O'Connell was named papal envoy to Emperor Meiji of Japan; he was also decorated with the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure and made an Assistant at the Pontifical Throne in 1905.

He was viewed as having actively campaigned to become Archbishop of Boston, donating to numerous Vatican causes and publicly expressing his loyalty to the pope.

[3] He arrived late to two papal conclaves in a row, in 1914 and 1922, due to having to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the slower transportation of the day.

O'Connell favored a highly centralized diocesan organization, encompassing schools, hospitals, and asylums in addition to parishes.

If you will listen closely [to crooners' songs] you will discern the basest appeal to sex emotion in the young.

O'Connell was the first American to be given honorary life membership in the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus.

He was buried in the crypt of a small chapel (Immaculate Conception) he had built on the grounds of St. John's Seminary.

In 2004 the Archdiocese sold the property to Boston College and in 2007 announced plans to relocate his remains to Saint Sebastian's School, which O'Connell founded in 1941.

[18] After a protracted lawsuit, O'Connell's relatives, who had opposed any disinterment, agreed that his remains would be removed to a courtyard of the Seminary.

According to one historian, "It was under O'Connell's influence too, that the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Boston assumed a conceptual solidarity and impressive visibility that it had never seen before and would never see again.

Robinson's physical descriptions of Glennon, his massive building program, his arriving late for two papal conclaves and arriving in time for a third, his popular description as "Number One" and many other details of the Glennon character correspond with O'Connell's career and personality.