Mitty

Msgr. Edward J. Mitty

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Msgr. Edward J. Mitty, a longtime pastor of Our Lady of Victory parish in the financial district, died Nov. 2 at St. Patrick’s Home in the Bronx. He was 86.

He also served as director and assistant director of the archdiocesan cemeteries office for 20 years, where he became known for his skills in managing the department’s finances while also ministering to families in grief. He also was an assistant chancellor of the archdiocese.

Archbishop Dolan offered the Funeral Mass Nov. 6 at St. Margaret of Cortona Church in the Bronx. Msgr. Desmond J. Vella, a judge of the Metropolitan Tribunal, delivered the homily.

As pastor of Our Lady of Victory, located at Pine and William streets in the shadow of the New York Stock Exchange, Msgr. Mitty served the Wall Street community on a daily basis—from entry-level office workers to leaders of the financial world.

He was appointed pastor in 1983 and served until his retirement in March 2004.

“It was a unique kind of ministry,” Msgr. Vella said in an interview. “It was a parish where people worked, and came together to worship on weekdays for Masses, confessions, Communion and spiritual guidance. It wasn’t a place where families lived.”

Msgr. Mitty counted many Wall Street movers and shakers as friends, and was as comfortable with them as they were with him. “They didn’t have to be stuffed shirts when they were with him,” Msgr. Vella said. “They could be completely themselves.”

During a 1987 insider trading scandal that rocked Wall Street, Msgr. Mitty told the New York Times that the scandals were an “embarrassment to the stock market,” but not an indictment of its ethics code. However, he said he would continue to preach the importance of ethical corporate behavior.

He said, “All of us do, from time to time, need a reminder of our ethical bearings and an inspiration to stick by them.”

Msgr. Mitty was born in the Bronx. He studied for the priesthood at Cathedral College and St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie.

He was ordained at Dunwoodie in 1950 by his uncle, Archbishop John J. Mitty, who was archbishop of San Francisco at the time and who was the first alumnus of St. Joseph’s Seminary to be made a bishop. (Archbishop Mitty was appointed Bishop of Salt Lake City in 1924 at age 42.)

After ordination, he served for three years at St. Mary of the Assumption in Katonah, followed by four years at St. Joseph’s, Yorkville, in Manhattan. In 1957, he was named chaplain at Harlem Valley State Hospital in Wingdale, where he planned and completed the chapel of Our Lady of Solace.

During the 1950s he also taught theology at Misericordia School of Nursing in the Bronx and ethical standards in psychiatry at Harlem Valley School of Nursing. He served briefly at St. John’s in West Hurley and at Assumption in Maybrook before his assignment to the cemeteries office as assistant director in September 1963. He was appointed director in December 1964.

He was made a monsignor in 1962; in November 1965 he also was named an assistant chancellor of the archdiocese, in addition to his post in the cemeteries office.

Msgr. Vella, remembering Msgr. Mitty, said his service at the cemeteries office came to define his ministry from that point on. “He went into it with the dedication of a priest, that this (position) was a corporal work of mercy, a ministry of the Church.”

In that role, Msgr. Mitty dealt with “people under great stress and sorrow and was able to soothe them because of his own faith and his own love of them…He brought a sense of the resurrection of Jesus” to families at a very sensitive time, Msgr. Vella said.

He said that the cemeteries office also oversaw much property representing “a great deal of money,” and that Msgr. Mitty “was a master at managing the office’s funds.”

At the cemeteries office, Msgr. Mitty planned and completed the St. Francis of Assisi Chapel and Garden Crypt Mausoleum at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla, a complex that included an office building, an interment chapel and 3,457 crypts. His office also served as adviser to pastors operating parish cemeteries.

Msgr. Mitty is survived by a sister, Margaret M. Conroy, who is a former president of the Ladies of Charity in the archdiocese. Burial was in Gate of Heaven Cemetery.

Msgr. Edward J. Mitty