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We’ll never know for certain this side of Heaven how Cardinal Egan would have regarded the funeral arrangements made for him as his body lay in state at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Monday, March 9.
But crowds of Catholic New Yorkers and others who came to pay tribute to him and to pray at the public visitation and the Vigil Mass that day came away elevated by the holy and moving rites.
The cardinal, a stickler for detail, no doubt would have been pleased that an honor guard composed of New York City policemen, firefighters and members of the Orders of Malta and of the Holy Sepulchre solemnly stood at the four corners of his red casket, laid out on the steps of the sanctuary. He also would have been pleased with the reverence with which the steady stream of mourners approached his casket throughout the afternoon and into the evening to silently pay their respects to the man who led the Archdiocese of New York from 2000 to 2009.
“I just wanted to pay my respects to Cardinal Egan. I know he was a great man of the Church,” said Aileen Shah who lives in the St. Patrick’s neighborhood and visits the cathedral regularly.
“He had a devotion for the whole Catholic community and he loved God.”
Sure to have brought a smile to his face too were the hymns selected for his Vigil Mass in the packed Cathedral that evening, his family’s presence in the pews and his brother priests gathered on the altar and in the pews. Cardinal Dolan, who concelebrated the Mass with Cardinal Justin Rigali, retired Archbishop of Philadelphia, and with other bishops, including many of whom had served with Cardinal Egan, welcomed all.
The well-crafted homily delivered by Bishop Dennis Sullivan of Camden, who had served as Cardinal Egan’s vicar general before his appointment to the New Jersey diocese in 2013, would have drawn his praise.
“Always the priest, always the gentleman, even when he was angry he was a gentleman, always impeccable in his speech and dress and attention to detail,” Bishop Sullivan recalled fondly. “Detail is respect he would say to me. And the detail was in every memo he wrote and in every report we wrote. And why the detail? This is what he said: ‘God’s people deserve that from us.’ And those that worked with him knew he certainly expected that from us.”
Bishop Sullivan movingly outlined the priestly ministry of Cardinal Egan from when he first began to discern his vocation as a boy suffering from polio while he was growing up Oak Park, Ill., and visited by his parish priest, through his time as a young priest in Chicago to his time in Rome and then Bridgeport, Conn., and finally as Cardinal Archbishop of New York.
“From the Windy City to the Eternal City, to the City on the Sound to the City that never sleeps. In each of them Edward Egan, Father Egan, Bishop Egan and Cardinal Egan played a role, found a home and left a mark,” Bishop Sullivan said.
He noted Cardinal Egan’s fierce devotion to education as a “ministry of justice for all, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.”
“Teach all nations said the Lord. And so he supported the schools by begging wherever he had to,” said Bishop Sullivan who also recalled Cardinal Egan’s support of the growing Spanish-speaking and Asian communities in the changing archdiocese and of the healing and unifying role he played in the fraught days following the terrorists attacks of 9/11.
“On 9/11 and the month after he showed the guts, the stamina, the heart and the everyday and night presence of the parish priest in numerous funerals in this cathedral and elsewhere,” Bishop Sullivan recalled.
In each of the places that the cardinal served, the bishop said, “Edward Egan did what a good parish priest does. He rolled up his sleeves and worked. Put your two feet under the desk he would say to you. And don’t move until you get that report done. Priestly ministry by which he led his people to God, to our God, who he knew as we know by faith, and now he knows by sight. To our God in whose peace he now rests from his labors awaiting the day of resurrection.
“Rest in peace, Eminence. Rest in a well-deserved peace and permit me to end this way, Your Eminence, and to use about you one of your favorite words, splendid. It was a splendid run from the Windy City to the Eternal City to the City on the Sound to the City that Never Sleeps and now to the Heavenly City rest in peace.”
