to graduate for the first time at the Cathedral alongside white Catholic high school students. Desegregated diocesan schools and hospitals On August 9, 1947, Ritter announced an end to racial segregation in all five St. Louis diocesan high schools before the fall term. He declared, "The cross on top of our schools must mean something," and expressed his belief in "the equality of every soul before Almighty God". Ritter sent a memo to all parish school superintendents, saying they must begin to "accept all children into parish schools without regard to race". In one stroke, Ritter had desegregated the Catholic St. Louis area schools, seven years before the 1954 US Supreme Court's Brown vs Board of Education decision. The parochial schools represented one-quarter of all St. Louis area students. In response to Ritter's desegregation order, a group of over 700 white Catholics from 49 St. Louis area parishes, calling themselves the "Catholic Parents Association of Saint Louis and Saint Louis County", threatened to sue him. The association claimed that his order violated Missouri state law. Association Co-Chair William T. Rone said "We do not want Negro children alongside our children in the schools." Ritter refused to meet with the association leaders, his spokesman saying, "He is the father of the whole flock and must care for all, regardless of race."Ritter then issued a pastoral letter in which he warned of possible excommunication for "interfering with ecclesiastical office authority by having recourse to authority outside of the church". While the association rejected any civil action, it did send a letter of protest to the apostolic delegate to the United States, Amleto Giovanni Cicognani. Cicognani responded to the letter by saying "I am confident that everyone will readily comply with what has been so clearly proposed by the ecclesiastical authority of the Archdiocese".Ritter also desegregated all Catholic hospitals in the St. Louis archdiocese. Fundraising Ritter also developed what is now known as the Annual Catholic Appeal, which remains a primary source of financial support for many archdiocesan educational and charitable activities. Ecumenism On August 24, 1964, at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, Ritter celebrated the world's first authorized Mass in English. Ritter also forbade Catholics to see the 1954 film The French Line under danger of serious sin. The film featured actor Jane Russell dancing in a scanty outfit in what was then considered a sexually-suggestive scene. He declared that Catholic students