Chicago Years

Back in Chicago after four years of seminary study in Rome, newly ordained Father Edward M. Egan got his first assignment in the fall of 1958: ninth curate at Holy Name Cathedral.

It was a busy time of adjustment to the priesthood and readjustment to the United States, but he plunged right in and within a few weeks had presided at his first funeral--of a Catholic Charities client with no known relatives or friends.

Four nights a week he conducted inquiry classes for people who were interested in becoming Catholic. Mornings, carrying a Communion set that was a gift from his younger brother James, he walked four blocks to Wesley Memorial Hospital where he was chaplain to patients on four floors.

He lived at the rectory and participated in the parish life of the cathedral, celebrating daily and Sunday Masses, counseling parishioners and conducting weddings and baptisms.

It wasn't long, however, before he was moved to the residence of Cardinal Albert Meyer as his secretary and assistant chancellor of the archdiocese.

A vigorous supporter of social justice efforts to benefit blacks, Cardinal Meyer ended segregation in all Catholic institutions in Chicago and embarked on a major expansion program that included the creation of 30 new parishes.

Personally, however, he was a quiet and somber prelate and his new priest-secretary quickly learned not to initiate unnecessary conversation. But one Thanksgiving morning, in an unusually expansive and cheerful mood, the cardinal surprised him with a gift of two small cloth-bound books written by Father Raoul Plus, S.J., "How to Pray Well" and "How to Pray Always."

As the young priest was preparing to take a subway to his parents' house for dinner, the cardinal told him, "You will enjoy these wonderful little volumes. They are filled with spiritual wisdom."

The future archbishop was to stay in Chicago less than two years before returning to Rome in 1960 as assistant vice rector and repetitor of moral theology and canon law at the North American College. At the same time, he began canon law studies at Gregorian University and received his doctorate in 1964.

This time, his assignment back home in Chicago was first secretary to Cardinal John Cody.

With the Church in the midst of the Second Vatican Council and a civil rights revolution in full swing at home, it was an era of upheaval, and racial tensions were running high.

Like his predecessor, Cardinal Cody was a staunch supporter of civil rights for blacks. In 1968--in one of many controversies that would plague his tenure--he announced a plan to bus black students from crowded inner-city Catholic schools to less-crowded schools in white neighborhoods of the city and the suburbs. He also supported a controversial plan to desegregate public schools by busing.

"I saw Cardinal Cody take a lot of heat for good causes," Archbishop Egan told CNY some years ago.

"He was admired in the black community, and they were tough years," he said. "The Chicago Conference on Religion and Race was built under his leadership. He was an inspiring man, certainly in the area of social concerns. He stood for what was right."

In 1968, Cardinal Cody appointed his trusted secretary to an important new post: co-chancellor for human relations and ecumenism, with the mission of implementing in the archdiocese the Vatican Council's decree on ecumenism.

For the archdiocese, Father Egan developed a set of guidelines which remains the basic format for ecumenical relations in Chicago and the other dioceses in Illinois, and helped establish ecumenical committees in many parishes.

Father Thomas A. Baima, a theology professor who served in the ecumenical relations post from 1992 to 1996, said Archbishop Egan told him a few years ago that "what he felt the proudest of during his time as ecumenical officer wasn't the guidelines, but the fact that he'd been able to establish parish ecumenical commissions."

"Some were just on paper, but others became quite active," Father Baima said. "He said he felt the best about the parish commissions because it was getting the message down to the grass roots.

"The goal was to acquaint the laity with Vatican II teachings, then offer practical ways to act on it," he said, explaining that practices usually involved joint activities with other churches on projects such as a Thanksgiving service or food pantry.

In 1971, after a brief assignment as administrator of St. Leo's parish in Chicago to fill in for a pastor who had died, the future archbishop returned to Rome for his longest assignment as a judge of the Sacred Roman Rota. He remained there until 1985, when he was ordained a bishop and assigned as an auxiliary to Cardinal O'Connor in New York.