Our Sunday Visitor announced the archbishop's death in the Aug. 12, 1956, issue with the headline "The voice is stilled." The following week's issue, OSV published the homily given by Cardinal Samuel Stritch of Chicago at Archbishop Noll's funeral Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, Ind. The homily read, in part:
"Archbishop Noll will be remembered for his gigantic work in the Apostolate of the Catholic Press. When he was a young priest, he was distressed when he saw the calumnies uttered and printed by the enemies of the Church. Spontaneously he took up his pen, not so much with the thought that he could convert the propagators of these falsehoods as to protect the ignorant and the exposed. While he despised falsehoods, he was always willing to face a difficulty and find a solution of it. However, his great understanding saw the opportunity of the press to spread a knowledge of the Church and present to men the whole wonderful synthesis of Revealed Truth.
"Our Sunday Visitor grew. It met a need. It required rare talent to guide its growth. Sometimes distinctions were necessary to define its place in the Apostolate of the Catholic Press ... It was a work which was for him indeed precious."
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| Archbishop Noll's grave at Victory Noll in Huntington, Ind. |
Archbishop Noll chose to be buried on the grounds of his beloved Victory Noll, motherhouse of the Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters, rather than in the crypt of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, which is the traditional resting place for the bishops of Fort Wayne. He apparently had quipped to a sister that he figured he'd get more prayers there with the sisters than he would at the cathedral.
