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In his nine years as New York’s archbishop, from 2000 to 2009, Cardinal Egan experienced such dramatic, world-shaking events as the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and the election of a new pope, Benedict XVI.
On the local front, he steered the archdiocese through the decidedly unglamorous, and often unpopular, business of shrinking expenses and stabilizing archdiocesan finances, and he was at the helm in New York while the U.S. Church was grappling with the unfolding clergy sexual abuse crisis.
He also took on some sensitive administrative issues, setting in motion a reorganization plan for archdiocesan schools that took effect a few years ago, and another one for parishes, the beginnings of the recently implemented project called Making All Things New.
But it wasn’t all strictly business.
There were celebrations, innovations and special events throughout his years leading the archdiocese.
Cardinal Egan was deeply involved, for instance, in establishing the groundbreaking Catholic Channel, a popular archdiocesan-sponsored offering with nationwide reach on Sirius satellite radio, now Sirius XM.
He was grand marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2002, just months after 9/11, and used the occasion to praise as heroes the firefighters, police and emergency workers who rushed to the scene, many of them laying down their lives to save others and many more staying with the grim recovery duty for months afterward.
Those heroes told the world about the dignity of human life, the cardinal said, and “they told the world what a New Yorker is, too.”
Later in his tenure, Cardinal Egan oversaw a remarkably successful fund-raising campaign and planning for the yearlong commemoration of the Bicentennial of the Archdiocese, which ended in April of 2008, just as Pope Benedict was coincidentally arriving for a visit to New York.
“There could be no more perfect way to conclude our year of Bicentennial celebrations,” a beaming Cardinal Egan said at the time.
A native of Chicago who studied and served a total of 23 years in Rome, Cardinal Egan returned to the United States to serve in New York, first as an auxiliary bishop and later as archbishop, and in the neighboring Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., in between.
He was one month shy of his 83rd birthday when he passed away suddenly and unexpectedly March 5 at his residence in Manhattan. He had retired in good health and good spirits in 2009, becoming the first Archbishop of New York who did not die in office.
In retirement, Cardinal Egan relished his role as Archbishop Emeritus, assisting his successor, Cardinal Dolan, in duties such as administering confirmations and representing the archdiocese at various functions and events.
As a former archdiocesan vicar for education, and a teacher earlier in his life, the schools and the religious education programs still had a special place in his heart.
Indeed, responding to Sister Joan Curtin, C.N.D., director of the archdiocesan Catechetical Office, who had invited him to a Catechetical Office event, the cardinal regretted that he could not attend due to a prior commitment.
In his letter of response, which she received on the day that he died, the cardinal wrote, “Keep me in mind for future such celebrations” because directors and coordinators of religious education “are among my favorite people in the world.”
Cardinal Egan, a tall and handsome man with a deep and sonorous voice, played classical piano and was a devoted fan of opera.
In that regard, one of his proudest appointments as archbishop was that of 32-year-old Dr. Jennifer Pascual, whom he personally recruited in 2003 as music director of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Introducing her to the archdiocese, the cardinal noted that she was the youngest ever to hold the post and the first female.
“We look forward to many years of splendid liturgical music under her direction at our beloved cathedral,” he said in a quote that turned out to be prophetic.
As New York’s ninth archbishop, Cardinal Egan followed the 16-year, high profile tenure of Cardinal John O’Connor, an oft-quoted prelate who weighed in on many topics regarding the Church and society and did not shy away from controversy.
Cardinal Egan, by contrast, did not seek the spotlight and was not comfortable with the media. That, coupled with his no-nonsense administrative style, led to descriptions of him as akin to a corporate executive rather than a pastor.
However, those who knew him, and those who met him on his frequent parish visits, found him to be warm and engaging, with a sense of humor that seemed at odds with his formal demeanor.
Edward Michael Egan grew up in Oak Park, Ill., an upper-middle-class suburb of Chicago, where he suffered from polio’s effects as a child. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1957 in the chapel of Pontifical North American College in Rome after completing studies there for the priesthood. He received a Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1958 and a doctorate in canon law, summa cum laude, in 1964 from the Pontifical Gregorian University, also in Rome.
He excelled in Latin, thanks to his studies, and became fluent in Italian from living in Rome. He learned French earlier in life at his mother’s insistence.
With his studies completed, he returned to Chicago in 1964 where he served as secretary to Cardinal John Cody and later as co-chancellor of the Chicago Archdiocese.
In 1971, he returned to Rome to begin service as a judge of the Tribunal of the Sacred Roman Rota (a Vatican court), and would remain in residence there for the next 14 years. He also was a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University and professor of civil and criminal procedure at the law school of the Rota. In 1982, he caught the attention of Pope John Paul II as one of six canonists who reviewed the new Code of Canon Law with the pope.
Cardinal Egan was consecrated a bishop in 1985 in Rome and given his first assignment, as an auxiliary to Cardinal O’Connor in New York, where he was made vicar for education.
As education vicar, he oversaw the sprawling Catholic school system in the archdiocese, where his challenges included negotiating a new contract with teachers’ unions and developing a plan to eventually form regional clusters of schools rather than have them run by individual parishes; he also started a teacher volunteer program for college graduates to give a year of service at inner-city Catholic high schools.
More broadly, he was at the forefront of Catholic opposition to a 1986 New York City Board of Education proposal to distribute contraceptives to students in public high schools without their parents’ knowledge.
He called the policy “dangerous to healthy family values and to an atmosphere of openness and trust between parents and educators, and parents and children.”
Then-Bishop Egan’s interest in catechetics also was apparent. He was deeply involved with a team that wrote the first edition of the Guidelines for Catechesis in the archdiocese and undertook numerous other catechetical initiatives.
In 1988, the future cardinal was appointed Bishop of Bridgeport, where he refined his leadership style and began various administrative programs that he would later institute when he became the spiritual leader in New York. For instance, he established the school regionalization plan that he had begun to formulate in New York and instituted a Hispanic Ministry office.
With the death of Cardinal O’Connor in May 2000, Pope John Paul II appointed the Bridgeport bishop to lead the New York Archdiocese, with its 2.4 million Catholics in a 10-county area.
On the day of the announcement May 11, 2000, a smiling Archbishop-elect Egan made his first public declaration, telling the assembled media at archdiocesan headquarters: “I know no place in the world that’s quicker to accept someone who wants to be a New Yorker—and I guess officially I am one.”
Later, in an interview with CNY about his plans for the archdiocese, he said, “My purpose here is to pursue the glory of God and the salvation of souls. That’s the formula.”
He was officially installed as Archbishop of New York at a June 19 Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Less than a year later, on Feb. 21, 2001, Pope John Paul II elevated him to the College of Cardinals at a consistory at the Vatican.
Commenting on the honor in a CNY interview, he said he accepted that he’d have expanded responsibilities in the universal Church along with his duties as spiritual leader of the archdiocese.
In particular, he said, participating in the selection of a new pope is the most important duty that may come his way as a cardinal. Helping to choose “a successor of St. Peter, that’s the most important element to me.”
That opportunity came after the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005, when Cardinal Egan was one of 117 cardinals from around the world to vote in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.
Immediately after his appointment to lead the archdiocese, the new-Archbishop Egan embarked on a tour of the 18 regional vicariates in the sprawling archdiocese.
He took the first steps toward the ongoing realignment of parishes to accommodate changing population patterns and a shortage of priests. He moved to strengthen the Catholic school system, establishing and expanding scholarship programs, encouraging the formation of a cluster system and lobbying intensively for state assistance in the form of tax credits, tax deductions and vouchers.
He streamlined the archdiocesan bureaucracy and stabilized its finances through an array of budget tightening moves and successful fundraising campaigns.
Most dramatically, in 2001 Cardinal Egan shared with all New Yorkers and the nation the devastating trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, witnessing the collapse of the second World Trade Center tower from outside St. Vincent’s Hospital where he was waiting to minister to victims, and leading his flock through the long and painful healing process that followed.
It was a day that stretched into weeks and then months as the cardinal responded to the disaster—ministering to the injured and anointing the dead at St. Vincent’s Hospital and at Ground Zero itself, chairing committees and planning a center for victims’ families at the New School and an interfaith service at Yankee Stadium, and offering Masses at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the immediate aftermath and funerals there and around the archdiocese for months.
Cardinal Egan did not talk much about 9/11 in the years that followed, but as its 10th anniversary approached he agreed to give a series of interviews, including one with CNY in which he reflected on his role as head of the archdiocese and the role that was played by the Church.
He spoke of the tremendous self-sacrifice of the first responders and the rescue and recovery workers “who put themselves in danger day after day and asked only to help those in need.”
“They were, and always will be, an inspiration for me, an inspiration that I shall never forget,” he said.
“Even though for years I preferred not to talk about 9/11, I prayed about it over and over. My prayers were for the victims and their loved ones, of course, but also for those who taught New York and the nation lessons of deep-down goodness and genuine virtue, lessons that must never be forgotten.”
