Cardinal
Edward M. Egan, a stern defender of Roman Catholic orthodoxy who
presided over the Archdiocese of New York for nine years in an era of
troubled finances, changing demographics and an aging, dwindling
priesthood shaken by sexual-abuse scandals, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 82.
Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the cause was cardiac arrest.
Cardinal
Egan’s successor, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, said in a statement that
Cardinal Egan “had a peaceful death, passing away right after lunch” in
his home at the Chapel of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He was
pronounced dead at NYU Langone Medical Center.
As
archbishop of New York from 2000 to 2009 — spiritual head of a realm of
2.7 million parishioners, an archipelago of 368 parishes and a majestic
seat at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan — Cardinal Egan was one of
America’s most visible Catholic leaders, invoking prayers for justice
when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and escorting Pope Benedict
XVI on his historic visit to the city in April 2008.
A year later, the pope appointed Cardinal Dolan, who was the archbishop of Milwaukee at the time, to replace Cardinal Egan,
concluding a tenure that had not been popular with many Catholics but
that had come to grips with hard decisions on church finances and walked
the line of church doctrine against winds of change.
A
month before retiring, however, Cardinal Egan seemed to soften his
stance on the centuries-old requirement of priestly celibacy by
suggesting that the church would someday have to consider allowing
priests to marry — a topic that has been much discussed since the
election of Pope Francis.
“It’s
a perfectly legitimate discussion,” Cardinal Egan said on an Albany
radio station, adding: “I think it has to be looked at. And I am not so
sure it wouldn’t be a good idea to decide on the basis of geography and
culture not to make an across-the-board determination.”
Along
with his elevation to the College of Cardinals in 2001, his appointment
by Pope John Paul II to lead the Archdiocese of New York — to many the
most prominent Catholic pulpit in the nation — crowned a career of more
than five decades in his church. Nearly half of it was spent in Rome as a
student, teacher, canon lawyer and ecclesiastical judge, and much of
the rest in the senior ranks of the church in America.
Aside
from a year as a young priest in a Chicago cathedral, he had always
been on an executive track. He was secretary to Cardinal Albert G. Meyer
of Chicago in the 1950s; a protégé of Cardinal John Patrick Cody of
Chicago in the 1960s; after his extended sojourns in Rome, an auxiliary
bishop in New York; and for 12 years the bishop of Bridgeport, Conn.,
where he was groomed for the New York post.
From
a childhood racked by polio to golden years of study in Rome, from
struggles over failing schools and pedophile priests to his triumphal
investiture at St. Patrick’s, Cardinal Egan climbed to success with an
iron will, unswerving fidelity to Catholic dogmas and extraordinary
skills as an organizer, a fund-raiser and an administrator. Admirers
compared him to a Fortune 500 C.E.O.
He
was strikingly unlike his predecessor as archbishop, Cardinal John J.
O’Connor, a gregarious, earthy and blunt man who enjoyed repartee at
political dinners and the hullabaloo of St. Patrick’s Day parades,
disliked budget details and was loath to close even underused schools
and churches.
Cardinal
Egan was distant, cautious and measured, fluent in Italian, French,
Spanish and Latin, a player of classical piano who read physics, did not
hobnob with politicians more than necessary and could make tough,
unpopular decisions.
His
tenure in New York had mixed reviews. His priority was to restore
financial stability to the deficit-ridden archdiocese, and he did it by
closing or merging parishes and schools and by raising millions from
corporations and wealthy laymen. But he also drew bitter complaints from
affected parishioners and priests. He tried to recruit more priests,
but with little success.
And
as the sexual-abuse scandal widened, he tried to protect the church
from liability. In Bridgeport, he was accused of withholding information
about accused priests and moving some from parish to parish. In New
York, he gave prosecutors files on accused priests, but critics said he
was slow and reluctant to act.
Some
parishioners and priests, many hurt by his decisions, called him chilly
and imperious. In his zeal to close budget gaps, forestall lawsuits or
enforceVatican codas,
they said, he lacked a pastoral touch. Critics said he brooked little
dissent, once even calling the police to oust protesters from a church.
His
fidelity to church teachings led to conflicts with national leaders and
even church institutions. He scolded former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani
of New York for receiving communion during
Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to New York in 2008 because Mr. Giuliani
supported abortion rights, and he later rebuked Fordham University Law
School for giving an award to another abortion-rights supporter, Justice
Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Supreme Court.
In
2004, Cardinal Egan declined to invite the presidential candidates to
the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a charity event
in New York, because the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry of
Massachusetts, a Catholic, supported abortion rights.
Cardinal
Egan distrusted the news media and rarely gave interviews. But he
reached out to constituents, visiting parishes, schools, hospitals,
nursing homes, day care centers and other institutions. He wrote columns
for Catholic publications, hosted a weekly satellite radio program on
church affairs, and delivered stentorian lessons from the pulpit on
abortion, contraception, homosexuality, priestly celibacy and other
matters. (It was unclear whether his last remarks on priestly celibacy
represented a crack in discipline or a parting gift to reformers; in any
case, they renewed a spirited debate on an issue central to a dwindling
priesthood.)
And
he believed he accomplished what he had set out to do. “When I came
here, I told everyone what I would do, and quite frankly I did it,” the
cardinal said in a 2007 interview with
The New York Times. “I had to deal with the sex scandal, and I did. I
had to realign, and I did. I wanted peace in my diocese, and it’s
peaceful.”
He smiled — it was more flint than mirth — and added, “It’s all been a colossal success.”
Path to the Priesthood
Edward
Michael Egan was born in Oak Park, Ill., a Chicago suburb, on April 2,
1932, the third of four children of Thomas Egan, a sales manager, and
Genevieve Costello Egan, a former teacher. His sister and two brothers
have all died.
In
1943, when he was 11, Edward contracted polio, which was epidemic in
Chicago. He missed two years at St. Giles, a Catholic school, but still
graduated at the top of his class. His family was devoutly Catholic, and
he prayed during his illness at an altar set up on his dresser. He also
decided early on a priestly vocation.
He
graduated in 1951 from Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in
Chicago, earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at St. Mary of the
Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Ill., and then completed four years of
theological studies at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he
was ordained on Dec. 15, 1957.
Assigned
to Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, he taught conversion classes and was
a hospital chaplain. But he soon became private secretary to Cardinal
Meyer, who abolished racial segregation in Catholic institutions in
Chicago, and was named assistant chancellor of the archdiocese. He was
back in Rome from 1960 to 1964, earning a doctorate in canon law at
Pontifical Gregorian.
From
1964 to 1971, he was in Chicago. He was Cardinal Cody’s secretary and
later co-chancellor of the archdiocese, working on interfaith relations
and social concerns. In 1970 and 1971, he was the pastor of St. Gregory
the Great in Chicago — the only time in his career when he was a parish
priest, a time he cherished, an aide said. From 1971 to 1985, he
returned to Rome, first as a law professor and later as a judge of the
Sacred Roman Rota, part of the Vatican’s court system, dealing with
marriage annulments and other issues. He was one of six lawyers who
reviewed John Paul II’s Code of Canon Law, some 1,750 doctrines
governing the church, which was promulgated in 1983.
In
1985, he was named auxiliary bishop of New York and vicar of education
for the archdiocese under Cardinal O’Connor. The two had a frosty
relationship. Bishop Egan drafted curriculum guidelines and won respect
for his work on Catholic schools, but ruffled feathers by speaking out
on public schools. At a City Council hearing on contraceptives for high
school students, he criticized the city’s sex education program and
urged lessons in abstinence. “Try decency,” he said. “Try chastity. Try
Western civilization.”
In
1988, he was named bishop of Bridgeport, a diocese with a diverse
population of 360,000 Catholics, masses in 20 languages and a reach that
encompassed blighted urban streets, working-class neighborhoods and
affluent suburbs. The diocese was deep in debt, many Catholics had left
the poorer parts of the city, and churches and schools were coping with
dwindling resources. Over the next 12 years, the bishop closed or merged
schools, raised $45 million and stabilized the diocese.
But
he also drew criticism as one of two American bishops who endorsed the
Catholic Alliance, a right-wing group created by Pat Robertson and Ralph
Reed to attract Catholics to the Christian Coalition, their political
lobby. He was also criticized for opposing efforts to minister to gays
and lesbians.
Confronting a Crisis
Bishop
Egan condemned sexual abuse by clergymen, but refused to divulge any
cases and let priests who had undergone counseling continue to work. The
bishop was accused in many lawsuits of shuffling accused priests from
one parish to another. In testimony in 1997 that strained credulity, he
argued that the diocese was not liable because priests were independent
contractors. “Every priest is self-employed,” he contended.
In
depositions given in 1997 and 1999 — testimony sealed by courts at the
behest of the church for more than a decade but disclosed in 2009 as a
result of lawsuits by The Times and other newspapers — Bishop Egan
mounted a combative defense of his policies for handling complaints of
sexual abuse by priests that dated from the 1960s to the mid-’80s, long
before his arrival in Bridgeport.
Sparring
with plaintiffs’ lawyers in often heated exchanges, he sought to
minimize the number and seriousness of the accusations, and said he
believed that most of the accused priests were innocent. But he
acknowledged that his diocese had rarely delved into abuse complaints by
seeking out witnesses or telling accusers about other complaints
against the same priests.
A
week after Cardinal O’Connor died, on May 3, 2000, the Vatican
announced that Bishop Egan had been chosen as the ninth archbishop of
New York. Many Catholics wondered whether a man who had spent 22 of his
43 years as a priest in Rome might be out of touch with the church in
America. But it soon became clear that he was firmly in charge.
In
his first six months, he surveyed churches, schools, hospitals and
other institutions in the archdiocese, which encompassed the Bronx,
Manhattan and Staten Island in New York City, and seven counties to the
north: Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and
Westchester. He later closed 23 schools and 10 churches and merged 11
parishes with others while creating five new parishes to accord with
population shifts.
He
also consolidated seminary facilities, closed offices and raised
millions from corporate and wealthy donors. By his own account, he
eliminated a $25 million deficit in a $70 million operating budget
within a year and began retiring $48 million in long-term debt. The
cardinal discussed the finances with church officials and even with
reporters, but it was not possible to confirm the figures because he had
never opened the books.
The archdiocese said in a statement on Thursday
that under Cardinal Egan “the number of registered parishioners
increased by 204,000, the budget of Catholic Charities more than
doubled, enrollment of Catholic elementary and secondary schools grew by
15,400, the archdiocesan newspaper became the largest in the nation and
the archdiocese and its various agencies were made debt-free.”
Cardinal
Egan also established a home for retired priests in the Riverdale
section of the Bronx and organized programs to recruit priests. But in
2008 only six were ordained and in 2009 only three were added in the
archdiocese, where the number of active priests had declined to 470 from
nearly 600 at the turn of the century, and the average age of priests
was over 60. The decline in the number of priests has continued.
However,
the most contentious issue of the cardinal’s tenure was the scandal of
priests accused of molesting children. Like bishops across the nation,
he set up a lay review board to evaluate accusations and make
recommendations. The cardinal suspended more than a dozen priests and
gave their files to prosecutors, who generally found the cases too old
to be prosecuted.
The
archdiocese made no public disclosures, infuriating abuse victims and
their advocates, who said the cardinal was protecting abusers. Scores of
priests also accused him of failing to support accused colleagues. The
contretemps underscored a problem faced by many church leaders who were
trying to address the scandal while protecting priests’ privacy.
Apology and a Retraction
In
2002, amid a public outcry over the sexual-abuse scandal, Cardinal Egan
seemed to step back from his hard-line approach, offering an apology
about the church’s handling of cases in New York and Bridgeport.
“It
is clear that today we have a much better understanding of this
problem,” he wrote in a letter read at Masses. “If in hindsight we also
discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of
priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.”
A decade later, the Cardinal, in retirement, took back his apology in an interview published
online by Connecticut magazine in February 2012. “I never should have
said that, and I don’t think we did anything wrong,” he was quoted as
saying.
In
other comments, some seemingly at odds with the facts, the cardinal
said the church had no obligation to report sexual-abuse accusations to
the authorities, even though a law on the books since the 1970s dictates
otherwise. He also described the Bridgeport diocese’s handling of
sexual-abuse cases as “incredibly good,” and contended that throughout
his tenure in Bridgeport and New York, “I never had one of these
sex-abuse cases.”
During
Bishop Egan’s tenure in Bridgeport, from 1988 to 2000, dozens of people
came forward with claims of sexual abuse by priests, and many
complaints were filed with the authorities during his time in New York.
Victims
in abuse cases and their lawyers responded to the cardinal’s comments
with disbelief and denunciation, accusing him of opening old wounds. But
Archbishop Dolan, soon to become a cardinal himself, declined to
comment, except to say that Cardinal Egan had always “responded
appropriately and with rigor” to cases of sexual abuse.
In
2007, Cardinal Egan initiated a $177 million restoration and
rehabilitation project at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, an edifice whose
foundations were laid before the Civil War and whose spires were
completed in 1888. The last full-scale renovation took place in the
1940s. Work on the present restoration began in 2012 and is expected to
be completed by 2016.
It
was also in 2007 that he turned 75 and submitted to the pope his
resignation as archbishop, in accordance with church law. It had not
been accepted a year later when Pope Benedict visited New York, where
the cardinal escorted him to ground zero and helped him celebrate Mass
at Yankee Stadium.
But
it was accepted in 2009 with the investiture of Archbishop Dolan.
Cardinal Egan remained in New York in retirement, occasionally filling
in for Cardinal Dolan at official events. Mr. Zwilling, the archdiocese
spokesman, said Cardinal Egan was the first archbishop in the 200-year
history of the archdiocese to retire; all the others died in office.
In retrospect, admirers said, his finest hour perhaps came in the wake of the Sept. 11
attacks. As the nation seethed with anger, the cardinal urged
levelheaded caution. “I am sure,” he said, “that we will seek justice in
this tragedy as citizens of a nation under God, in which hatred and
desires for revenge must never have a part.”
No comments:
Post a Comment