'A Great Man'

Cardinal O'Connor's was a life of service to God's Church and his people

By MARY ANN POUST

People who knew Cardinal O'Connor well were not surprised by the determination and inner resolve he exhibited in his last months of life, even as his physical strength ebbed and the simplest tasks exhausted him.

"That's him," they'd say. "That's the way he is."

He insisted, for instance, on celebrating Christmas Midnight Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral and preaching a full homily--never mind that it was being televised live, or that his speech might be slurred from medication, his gait slow and unsteady.

He was undeterred by two public stumbles during Sunday Mass in the cathedral last fall and, despite the pleadings of aides who said, "enough," he continued celebrating or presiding for as long as he could--until March 5--because the Mass was for so long the highlight of his week. His only concessions: forgoing the pulpit and switching to the high altar at the rear of the sanctuary to avoid the steps to the altar of sacrifice.

For several months after his Aug. 31, 1999, surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumor, which was followed by radiation treatments, he conducted business of the archdiocese from a fully equipped office in his residence, where he could take time out to rest whenever he felt fatigued. But right after New Year's he returned to his 20th-floor office in the New York Catholic Center to work because, he said, "It seemed to be time."

"I have to get started all over again," he said. "I have to...get out there where all the real people are."

Then came the weeklong celebration of his 80th birthday, Jan. 15, a special time for his family, friends and the archdiocese, and a period in which his vigor had returned somewhat.

In that week he traveled to St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie for a Mass with priests of the archdiocese and to the South Bronx for a ceremony naming a College of New Rochelle campus for him.

At an affectionate three-hour birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria he joked about his expected upcoming retirement to the 1,500 guests, including six other U.S. cardinals and the papal nuncio.

Retirement meant he'd be "evicted" from his Madison Avenue residence, he remarked. But, he promised, "I have no intention of fading into the woodwork."

He seemed to have marshaled all of his remaining strength for a final trip to Rome to see Pope John Paul II.

First planned for Feb. 2-5, it was called off at the last minute because it would have been too short a time to accomplish what the cardinal wanted to accomplish and, probably, because he wasn't feeling up to it that week.

Many people thought that was the end of it, that he would never make the journey. But again he confounded observers and, despite efforts to keep his plans quiet, he boarded a flight to Rome on Feb. 8 with a large contingent of New York's press corps at John F. Kennedy International Airport to see him off.

Two days later he met with the pope. If they spoke about his successor, as many believe they did, the cardinal did not say.

What he did say was that he was "deeply moved" by the experience.

Barely a week after returning from Rome, he began to seriously decline. By Sunday, Feb. 27, he was too weak to appear in the cathedral for Mass.

Auxiliary Bishop James F. McCarthy, the cardinal's friend, confidant and former longtime secretary, filled in. From the pulpit where he had watched his mentor speak countless times, Bishop McCarthy told a concerned congregation that the cardinal "has imitated Christ as the shepherd caring for us, has imitated Christ as the teacher guiding us in the truth, and he imitates Christ in his suffering now."

The cardinal looked startlingly frail when he appeared in the cathedral for the last time, presiding but not preaching, at Sunday Mass March 5.

The next day, however, he was rested and upbeat to receive Sen. Charles E. Schumer and Rep. Vito J. Fossella, who presented him with a proclamation awarding him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

They called it "a fitting tribute to a great man."

On St. Patrick's Day March 17, the cardinal's absence left a gaping, inescapable void. It was the first time in his 16 years as archbishop that he did not celebrate the feast day Mass and review the parade--greeting marchers as he stood in front of the cathedral for hours in scarlet cape and biretta, a broad smile on his face, having the time of his life.

Cardinal John J. O'Connor was installed as the eighth Archbishop of New York on March 19, 1984, succeeding the late Cardinal Terence Cooke as spiritual leader of the 2.3 million Catholics in the 10-county archdiocese. The pope elevated him to the rank of cardinal on May 25, 1985, in Rome.

An energetic and disciplined leader with a quick wit and engaging personal style, he was as comfortable and assured wielding the immense influence of his office as he was serving as pastor of his diverse and sprawling flock.

With conviction and compassion, he was a strong voice for the poor, the sick and the homeless, for unborn babies, for immigrants and racial minorities and for the union movement. He was committed to promoting interfaith relations and made special efforts to reach out to Jews.

He traveled the length and breadth of the archdiocese in the service of its people, and he traveled the world in the service of the universal Church--on speaking engagements, on fact-finding and pastoral visits to charitable programs under his stewardship and, at times, as a papal representative at Vatican-sponsored events.

His firmly orthodox approach to Church teachings, his tireless crusade against abortion and his willingness to speak out on local and world issues made him a hero to those who agreed with him and a target for some who did not.

Yet even many who strongly differed with his views came to respect him as a person and as a leader for his steadfast and often courageous commitment to the Catholic principles and beliefs that guided his life.

When he turned 75 in 1995 and the prospect of retirement loomed, he said he would like New Yorkers to remember him simply as a priest. He said, "Whatever mistakes I made as archbishop, I tried to be a good priest."

The cardinal took the helm of an archdiocese in transition from a Church serving mainly the descendants of Irish, Italian and German immigrants to one serving large numbers of Hispanic newcomers from Latin America.

It also was an intensely secular period in U.S. society, as religious faiths found themselves increasingly competing with the ideas and values of a nation in which money was plentiful yet abortion--and crime--rates were soaring and family ties had loosened along with sexual mores.

His appointment was seen as a signal that Pope John Paul II wanted a leader up to the challenge of bucking that trend to promote the teachings of the Church. The pope reportedly told intimates, "I want somebody like me in New York."

A native of Philadelphia, the cardinal was ordained to the priesthood there Dec. 15, 1945, and was a teacher and parish priest for seven years until entering the military chaplaincy service in 1952.

He spent the next 27 years as a U.S. Navy and Marine Corps chaplain, rising to Navy Chief of Chaplains with the rank of rear admiral.

On retiring from the military service in 1979, he was ordained an auxiliary bishop for the armed forces of the United States serving under Cardinal Cooke, who was head of what was then called the Military Ordinariate.

In June 1983 he was installed as Bishop of Scranton, Pa., an assignment that was to last only eight months and was likely a "warm-up" for his appointment--announced Jan. 31, 1984--as Archbishop of New York.

The credentials he brought were imposing: his admiralcy in the Navy, his three graduate degrees including a doctorate in political science, and his swift emergence as a national Church leader for his role on the draft committee of the U.S. bishops' 1983 pastoral on war and nuclear deterence.

He built on that leadership as head of the complex and influential New York Archdiocese, using his highly visible platform to insist that the voice of the Church be heard in the public debate.

With an outspoken directness known to be appreciated in Rome, he "became, quite simply, the pre-eminent voice of religion in the city--and, to a very large extent, the voice of Catholicism in the nation," wrote Father Richard John Neuhaus in his journal First Things.

At ease in the spotlight, the cardinal did not hesitate to conduct his campaign to promote the Church and its teachings in the media--something seen as a defining trait of his tenure by Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, a Church historian at Fordham University and historian of the archdiocese.

"In the media capital of the country, and in a very secular city, he made the Church's presence known," Msgr. Shelley said.

His Sunday Mass homilies in the cathedral, where he often entwined themes from Scripture with issues of the day, were closely monitored by the press, as were his weekly From My Viewpoint columns in Catholic New York--the topics of which could range from a lengthy series on the sacrament of matrimony or a warm reminiscence from his childhood, to a sharp denunciation of partial-birth abortion or the state's strict drug sentencing laws.

The cardinal did not design these platforms simply as front-page fodder, however. He saw them as a way to impart his teachings, and the teachings of the Church, to the widest possible audience. That, he felt, was his most critical responsibility as archbishop.

Less well known to the general public, but also of critical importance in his eyes, were his visits to parishes, schools and hospitals, as a pastor relishing his role--listening to his flock and making their concerns his concerns on large issues and small.

He prayed the Rosary and joined an anti-drug march through Bronx streets in 1993, for example, with parishioners of Our Lady of Refuge parish, declaring, "No one has the right to sell drugs to another human being--no one."

In 1996 he directed that a small chapel beloved by about 100 families in Katonah be rebuilt after a fire, overruling archdiocesan finance officials who said it would cost too much and serve too few and telling the parishioners who appealed to him for help, "I'm delighted that you persevered."

He visited the sick and suffering often, and was well-known to the staff of Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for his frequent visits to patients long before he checked in for the tests that led to his own surgery.

In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, he approved the opening of a specialized AIDS unit in St. Clare's Hospital in Manhattan, the first of its kind in the state. To familiarize himself with the new and dreaded disease, he spent many hours there as a visitor and serving as a hands-on volunteer who did not hesitate to take on the humbling task of emptying bedpans.

The cardinal's commitment to the pro-life cause, especially his campaign against abortion, was another of his defining traits. Returning to his regularly scheduled Masses in the cathedral last fall after his surgery, he vowed on Respect Life Sunday Oct. 3 to defend the cause of life "until my last breath."

In 1984, in his first official statement on his appointment as archbishop, he pledged to devote himself unceasingly to "efforts to defend human life, especially the life of the unborn."

"Such efforts will constitute my number-one priority and will permeate everything I attempt to do," he said.

He backed up his pledge within the year with a promise on Oct. 15, 1984, repeated many times, that any pregnant woman in crisis, regardless of background or religion, could contact him and receive free medical care, assistance in keeping her baby, adoption services and legal help if needed.

He preached about abortion often, wrote about it often and refused to look the other way when "pro-choice" Catholic politicians tried to defend their stances. Two that he took on early in his tenure were vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and then-Gov. Mario M. Cuomo.

In 1992 he took to the streets for a procession and prayer vigil in front of Manhattan's busiest abortion clinic and took a leadership role in the nationwide attempt to ban partial-birth abortion. Every January, except when sidelined by illness in 2000, he traveled to Washington, D.C., for the annual March for Life on the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

On a chilly, drizzly morning Oct. 7, 1995, in Central Park, he beamed as he watched Pope John Paul II speak to 130,000 people at an outdoor Mass, telling them, "You are called to work and pray against abortion, against violence of all kinds."

As archbishop, the cardinal was an efficient administrator of a vast and diverse archdiocese with 412 parishes, 293 schools, more than 35 hospitals and nursing homes, as well as child care agencies and programs for immigrants and the homeless.

He set overall policy, directing, for instance, that financially struggling Catholic schools be kept open, especially those that serve poor children. Or, in another example, that hospitals and child care agencies abide by Catholic doctrine in providing services--or in refusing to provide them if, say, a government regulation required that abortions be offered.

But he generally did not micromanage. He allowed the department heads he appointed much independence in day-to-day operations, requiring regular reports from them at the staff meetings he held weekly until March 7, when he became too frail to continue. The staff meetings continued, though, conducted by a vicar general or other close aide.

"He was the CEO and demanded a lot--and had the right to demand," said Betty Herkenham, a secretary in the cardinal's office in the New York Catholic Center.

"But the humanness of the man became apparent to everybody, and after a while he was a friend," she said. "He took an interest in the things of our lives."

As the chief executive officer of the archdiocese, the cardinal sought much input and advice, and consulted regularly with advisory groups such as the Priests' Council and the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council. The 18th Archdiocesan Synod, which he convened in 1988 with 234 delegates, offered important guidance in charting the direction of the archdiocese into the next century.

His liturgical and devotional initiatives included the reintroduction of Corpus Christi processions, which he led each June in the streets around the cathedral, and special Masses at the cathedral for specific groups such as high school seniors, the elderly and union members.

Every Sunday morning from September through June, he celebrated the 10:15 a.m. Mass and preached in the cathedral, skipping it only when he was required to be in Rome for a special event such as a synod of bishops.

At the time of his appointment to New York, he was chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Social Development and World Peace. Since 1984 he was president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, headquartered in Manhattan.

As chairman of the bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities in 1989-92, he inaugurated a $5 million public information campaign to improve American understanding of the Church's teachings on abortion.

After he was made a cardinal in 1985 he was appointed to the Congregation for Bishops, the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications and what was then the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church.

The following year he was made a member of the Pontifical Commission for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers. He also served on the Council of Cardinals and Bishops of the Secretariat of State, the Congregation for Eastern-Rite Churches, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers.

He attended a summit meeting of top Vatican officials and the U.S. archbishops in 1989, where he delivered a paper on "The Bishop as Teacher of the Faith." He also participated in the 1997 Synod of Bishops for America and was a papally appointed co-president of the 1994 World Synod of Bishops on Consecrated Life.

From the start of his New York tenure, the cardinal was pegged by many as a "conservative" because of his strong emphasis on Church teachings about abortion and other pro-life issues and on questions of personal and sexual morality.

He had a stormy relationship with New York's large homosexual community that began shortly after his installation, when he initiated an archdiocesan challenge to then-Mayor Edward I. Koch's Executive Order 50, an affirmative action program for homosexuals. His objections later to condom distribution in public schools as an anti-AIDS measure and disagreements on other issues widened the breach--although some activist groups say that in recent years the relationship had improved.

Since 1995, for instance, he was holding a quiet dialogue twice a year in his office with members of Dignity, an organization of homosexual Catholics which disagrees with Church teachings on sexual matters.

"We acknowledged that we had theological disagreements, so we tried to talk about areas where we thought we had some common ground--such as violence against gay people," said Jeff Stone, a spokesman for Dignity, who added, "We are saddened by his death."

And despite the back-and-forth lawsuits with New York City over Executive Order 50, the cardinal and Koch developed a close and caring friendship that continued until the cardinal's death. In 1989 the two even wrote a book together, "His Eminence and Hizzoner," in which each gave his views on particular issues in easy-to-read essays.

The "conservative" label attached to the cardinal soon blurred as well, as he demonstrated a marked "liberal" sensibility on social issues involving the poor, the sick and those marginalized in society, on labor and immigration matters and, especially in his later years, on issues of war and peace--finding it ever more difficult to justify armed conflict waged by the United States or anyone else.

One of his last official acts as archbishop, in fact, was to introduce the sainthood cause of the Catholic pacifist Dorothy Day. He also introduced the cause of Cardinal Cooke; reactivated that of Pierre Toussaint, a Haitian-born former slave known for his charitable works in 19th-century New York, and urged that Mother Teresa--a friend whom he loved and admired--be canonized "at the earliest possible moment."

Cardinal O'Connor's commitment to the Church's social teachings was summed up in the episcopal motto he chose on his ordination as a bishop: "There can be no love without justice."

Carrying that out in his first year as archbishop, he established an archdiocesan Office of Homeless and Hungry to assist parishes with food and shelter programs and to develop new programs, and he set up a $1 million leverage fund to develop affordable housing in low-income communities.

A more ambitious housing initiative came in 1988 when he announced plans for an archdiocesan-sponsored 750-unit program of housing renovation in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.

His interest in ministering to young people with disabilities began when he was a young priest considering a career as a teacher of retarded children. He fostered that interest in the Navy, when he founded a religious education program for disabled children of military personnel attached to the Marine Corps school in Quantico, Va. In the archdiocese, he celebrated annual Masses in the cathedral for people with disabilities, administered confirmation to them during Mass on Pentecost Sundays and oversaw the expansion of Catholic special education in the archdiocese including establishment of a high school.

An avowed friend of the labor movement, he appeared at many rallies and intervened when asked in a number of union-management disputes, although he had several run-ins with a militant union representing Catholic high school teachers. More typical was his role in a bitter 1994 dispute at Mercy Community Hospital, a Catholic facility in Port Jervis, where he promised striking nurses they would not lose their jobs despite hospital attempts to replace them.

"Cardinal O'Connor grew up in a union household, and it showed," said John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, who noted that the cardinal's father was "a painter of churches and a proud union member."

The cardinal's "insistence that labor be honored in all the dealings of the New York Archdiocese reflected the values he learned as a child," Sweeney said.

The cardinal paid careful attention to the needs of minority communities over the years. In 1999, with a major interfaith prayer service and a series of meetings, he took the lead in New York in an effort to reconcile a city split along racial lines over the Amadou Diallo police shootings that left an unarmed black man dead in a hail of gunfire from four white officers.

With more than 1,600 people listening at the service, he prayed for "the beginning of a new look at racial injustice in our society," and that all would recognize "the sacredness of every human person."

He was a friend to the Jewish community, making special efforts to foster better Christian-Jewish relations and understanding and playing a major role in the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel. As guest speaker addressing New York rabbis at the installation of a new Board of Rabbis president in March 1998, he said, "It's so very important to remind ourselves, especially on an occasion of this sort, that God...is the God of the universe, the God of all peoples."

John Joseph O'Connor was born Jan. 15, 1920, to Dorothy M. Gomple O'Connor and Thomas J. O'Connor, a gold leafer who was active in union affairs. Growing up in a small row house in southwest Philadelphia, the cardinal was the fourth in a family of five children, three boys and two girls.

His younger sister, Mary Therese Ward of Ridley Park, Pa., with whom he had a very close relationship, was at his bedside when he died. Also surviving is another sister, Dorothy Hamilton of St. Petersburg, Fla., and a brother, Thomas, of Sea Isle City, N.J.

"We had an uneventful kind of childhood in a very happy home," the cardinal once told an interviewer. "It was the kind of place where on Sunday nights you'd gather around the player piano, have a few people in and everyone would have a good time."

He attended public and Catholic elementary schools and West Catholic High School for Boys, where he was taught by the De La Salle Christian Brothers, whose role in his spiritual development was a key influence in his decision to enter St. Charles Borromeo Seminary at Overbrook, Pa., where he studied for the priesthood.

As a chaplain, he served at posts around the world at sea and ashore and received numerous decorations, including three Legion of Merit awards. In 1965 he was with the first Marine ground forces to arrive in Vietnam, where he served tours as a regimental chaplain and, later, as a divisional chaplain.

Returning to the United States he became chief of chaplains at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., then was named Navy Chief of Chaplains worldwide in 1975.

He traveled widely in his years with the Navy, visiting troops in such remote places as the Aleutian Islands and Antarctica.

In his many travels as archbishop, he cradled dying malnourished infants in his arms on a 1985 visit to the parched plains of Ethiopia, where he inspected famine-relief efforts. A few weeks later he joined a delegation of bishops to Nicaragua and El Salvador. He made a perilous visit to Lebanon in June 1989, when it was an anarchic no-man's-land racked by civil war, and he was later credited by some as having brokered the release of kidnapped Father Lawrence Jenco, head of the Catholic Relief Services Beirut office, who spent 18 months in captivity.

In September 1992 the cardinal and his secretary, then-Msgr. James F. McCarthy, flew in the freezing hold of a cargo plane carrying relief supplies to the battlefields of Bosnia- Herzegovina.

When he visited Israel in January 1992--his second visit to that country as archbishop--he became the first high-level Catholic Church official to meet with Israeli government officials in their Jerusalem offices. The visit laid the groundwork for the 1993 Vatican-Israel accord.

His 1988 trip to Cuba, where he had a marathon late-night meeting with President Fidel Castro, laid the initial groundwork for the pope's historic visit 10 years later. Accompanying the pope, the cardinal attended the numerous Masses, ceremonies and high-level receptions that are part of a papal trip.

But he also took the time, on his own, to offer Mass for seven contemplative Carmelite nuns and visit with them in their Havana cloister. He had quietly been a benefactor of the nuns since the early 1980s, when they wrote to him asking for help for a sister who could not walk because of knee problems. The cardinal had arranged for her to come to New York for surgery, and after that he arranged for eyeglasses, religious articles and other things the nuns needed, including a machine to make Communion wafers.

His concern for the Cuban Carmelites reflected a deep admiration for women and men religious and his support for their work and communities. With his encouragement and under his jurisdiction, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal were established in 1990, and both are now flourishing.

In the early 1990s he founded the Sisters of Life, which Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V., superior general, says will be "a lasting testament to his holiness and his response to the signs of the times."

She was among the original members who responded to the cardinal's 1989 "help wanted" column in CNY proposing the formation of a community of women consecrated to the support of human life in all its stages. The Sisters of Life now have 45 members, including four who are fully professed and 24 in first vows.

He remained especially close to the sisters, and they were among the few people outside of his family and close associates who visited him during his final weeks. They prayed with him when he was able, prayed for him always.