CNA Staff, Apr 5, 2024 / 15:30 pm
Thomas Gumbleton, a vocal peace activist and critic of war and nuclear weapons who served as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Detroit, died on Thursday at age 94.
Born in Detroit in 1930, Gumbleton studied at both St. John’s Provincial Seminary in Plymouth, Michigan, and the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, the latter at which he earned a doctorate in canon law. He was ordained in the Archdiocese of Detroit in 1956 and made an auxiliary bishop there in 1968, becoming the youngest U.S. bishop at the time.
His long tenure as a bishop was marked by several controversies, including his arrest in 1987 in connection with a protest at a Nevada nuclear testing site as well as another arrest at the White House in 1999 while protesting the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
The bishop was arrested a third time in 2003 during a protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq that took place in Lafayette Square across from the White House.