Thomas Grady, 87; Catholic Bishop Led National Shrine

Bishop Thomas J. Grady, 87, who oversaw the completion of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., in 1959, died of a kidney ailment Sunday at his home in Altamonte Springs, Fla.

Grady served as director of the shrine, the largest Catholic church in the Americas, from 1956 to 1967.

The building of the mammoth Romanesque and Byzantine-style shrine began in the 1920s with a massive underground Crypt Church, but construction had been on a two-decade hiatus when then-Msgr. Grady took over as director.

Born in Chicago, Grady was ordained in 1938 and received a master’s degree in English from Loyola University in Chicago. He taught at a Chicago prep school and served as a senior administrator at the Mundelein seminary before becoming director of the shrine.

He left that post after being elevated to auxiliary bishop in 1967. He served in the Chicago Archdiocese until 1973, when he was named the second bishop of Orlando, Fla. He retired in 1990.