On a rainy and cold Wednesday in January 1937, Msgr. John Ryan stood in front of the U.S. Capitol building and gave the benediction for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second inauguration.

It was the first time there had been a public benediction at an inauguration, and it was offered by a Catholic priest from Minnesota. Ryan was not just any priest. He was a professor at Catholic University of America, taught political science at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., and was the president of the Department of Social Action of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. He had also spoken on behalf of Roosevelt’s campaign.

Ryan grew up one of 11 children on a farm in Dakota County. One of his brothers became a priest, and two of his sisters became religious sisters. Ryan went to the seminary in St. Paul three years older than most, supported by his grandfather. He was a successful student in theology, but his real passion was economics. Such courses were not offered, so he studied the topic on his own by reading books, magazines and newspapers.

After Ryan graduated and was ordained a priest in 1898, Archbishop John Ireland assigned him to study moral theology at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., so he could become a seminary professor in the subject in St. Paul. Father Ryan happily did as he was told and audited economics and sociology lectures on the side. After his first degree was completed, Archbishop Ireland forgot to reassign Father Ryan, so Father Ryan took the initiative to start an additional theology degree, staying on at Catholic University for another two years. In 1902, Father Ryan returned to St. Paul to teach moral theology and became well-known for suggesting practical applications.

The result of his second degree was a well-respected book, “A Living Wage.” In the book, and for the rest of his life, Father Ryan argued that both the dignity of families and the economy necessitated a “living wage” that would enable a working man to make enough money to comfortably support his family.

In 1910, he calculated a living wage to be $700 for someone living in a rural area. (That would be like suggesting $100,000 today.) Father Ryan believed that this would drive the economy, shifting money from the pockets of the wealthy, who couldn’t possibly spend all of it, to those who would spend it immediately on things they needed, increasing employment. Higher wages would also help families avoid the sinful use of birth control, another of Father Ryan’s regular topics of conversation.

Father Ryan was a committed capitalist (contrary to the insinuations of conservative opponents) who believed that business owners had a duty to pay their employees a living wage before distributing profits to shareholders. Father Ryan’s work was vindicated twice by Pope Pius XI: once when his encyclical “Quadragesimo Anno” was published in 1931 arguing many of the same points, and once in 1933, when the pope elevated Father Ryan to domestic prelate with the title of Right Reverend Monsignor.

By then, Msgr. Ryan was a nationally known figure and a resident of Washington, D.C., where he lived from 1915 until 1945 and worked as a professor and public theologian. Msgr. Ryan’s death was front page news in Minneapolis and Washington in September 1945. After a funeral by Archbishop John Murray in St. Paul, Msgr. Ryan was buried with his family in Calvary Cemetery, also in St. Paul. His legacy lives on in the name of the John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, which seeks to apply Catholic thought to social concerns.

Luiken is a Catholic and a historian with a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. She loves exploring and sharing the hidden histories that touch our lives every day.