When the pounds began to show, he turned them into a laugh line. Patting his midsection, he told audiences, “New York has grown on me.” And when the calorie-counting Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg scolded him ”” bluntly advising him to lose weight because “we’d like to keep you around for a while,” in Archbishop Dolan’s telling ”” the prelate burst into laughter and hugged him.
“Call me Timothy,” he said.
But Archbishop Dolan has some less palatable duties ahead of him. The recession has worsened a chronic budget squeeze in the archdiocese, increased demand for its frayed web of social service programs and added urgency to a long-planned realignment of resources.
The parishes and schools of the archdiocese needed an added $30 million infusion from headquarters in fiscal 2009 to meet expenses, officials said.
Whatever else it does, the good will he sows now among the archdiocese’s 2.5 million Catholics will help stem resentments when some of those places are closed, said Msgr. Thomas J. Bergin, a former vicar of archdiocesan education. “People have warmed to him,” he said. “He will need that.”
In interviews, Catholic leaders, scholars and lay people praised the friendly, politically moderate tone that Archbishop Dolan set in his first year….
An aside: I couldn’t help but notice that this article says that the NY archdiocese claims only 2.5 million Catholics these days, versus the almost 5 million in the archdiocese of Los Angeles today. What a change from the old days when the cardinal archbishop of NY was the most prominent prelate in the country (such as Francis Spellman, the influential archbishop of NY from 1949 to his death in 1967).
I wish ++Timothy Dolan all the best as he struggles to deal with the extremely heavy burdens of his office, especially during such a bad economy.
David Handy+