or Father Coughlin
born Oct. 25, 1891, Hamilton, Ont., Can.
died Oct. 27, 1979, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., U.S.
Canadian-born U.S. clergyman.
Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1923, he became pastor of a Michigan church. In 1930 he began radio broadcasts of his sermons, into which he gradually injected reactionary political statements and anti-Semitic rhetoric. His sermons attracted one of the first deeply loyal mass audiences in broadcast history. He attacked Herbert Hoover and later turned on Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal . His magazine, Social Justice , targeted Wall Street, communism, and Jews. It was banned from the mails and ceased publication in 1942, the same year the Catholic hierarchy ordered Coughlin to stop broadcasting.