Bernard J. Quinn was born in Newark, New Jersey, to poor Irish immigrants, Bernard and Sarah Quinn.
He entered St. John's Seminary in 1906. He was ordained on June 12, 1912, and was temporarily assigned to several different churches.[4] He served as a chaplain in the 333rd Machine Gun Infantry Regiment during World War I, and he was gassed in France. Following the war, he resumed his pastoral duties in Brooklyn.
In 1922, Quinn established the first church for Black Catholics in Brooklyn, which he had consecrated to St. Peter Claver, which is still in operation and counts among the graduates of its parochial school the civil rights activist and singer Lena Horne. Quinn also included music as part of his ministry. Hundreds of black children joined the church choir, including Horne and Pearl Bailey.
In 1928, he established the diocese's first orphanage for black children, in Wading River.
His humanitarian work was met with opposition from some groups and individuals. In 1929, John L. Belford had written openly in his newsletter against the growing number of African-Americans in the Catholic Church, which was met with strong disagreement from Quinn. Quinn responded, "No church can exclude anyone and still keep its Christian ideals."
The Little Flower House of Providence was burned twice in one year by the Ku Klux Klan, which prompted Quinn to rebuild once again but this time out of more fireproof material, according to a 1929 article in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle with the headline: “New Fireproof Orphanage Will Defy Incendiary.” It later became the base of operations for the Little Flower Children and Family Services of New York, which continues to provide services such as care for adults with developmental disabilities, for those in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island.
