Eagan To Become A Cardinal,

 Lori Tapped For Bridgeport Diocese

Archbishop Edward Michael Egan, the spiritual leader of New York’s 2.4 million Catholics and former bishop of the Bridgeport diocese, was named a cardinal last Sunday.  On Tuesday, Monsignor William E. Lori, an auxiliary bishop from Washington, D.C., was selected to head the Bridgeport diocese.

Archbishop Egan and Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, a Fordham University professor, were among 37 cardinals named by Pope John Paul II. 

Archbishop Egan, 68, took over the New York Archdiocese in June, a month after his predecessor, Cardinal John O’Connor, died. It has become traditional for New York’s archbishop to be elevated to cardinal.

Avery Dulles, the son of John Foster Dulles, US secretary of state during the Cold War years, is 82, too old to vote for a pope.

The ceremony to install them as cardinals will be held on February 21.

Archbishop Egan came to New York from Connecticut, where he had led the Bridgeport diocese for 12 years. He is a veteran educator who spent two decades in Rome and is considered a strict adherent of Catholic doctrine, including the church’s staunch opposition to abortion, homosexual acts, and contraception.

Archbishop Egan was born in Oak Park, Ill., and ordained in Rome in 1957. He spent 22 years there as a professor of canon law at the Gregorian University and as a judge in the Sacred Roman Rota, a church tribunal. He also served as secretary to Cardinal John Cody, in Chicago, and later as the co-chancellor of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In 1985, Cardinal O’Connor appointed Egan auxiliary bishop and vicar for education for the Archdiocese of New York after receiving a personal request from the pope.

While in Bridgeport, Bishop Egan had to defend the diocese against more than two dozen lawsuits alleging that priests molested children from the 1960s through the early 1990s. All but one lawsuit focused on events that allegedly took place before he became bishop. But he has faced embarrassing questions about whether abuse was covered up and has been criticized for failing to offer counseling or any apology to the alleged victims.

But he earned high praise for regionalizing the diocese schools, bringing local men into the priesthood and raising millions for church causes.

Bishop Lori is a 1982 graduate of DC’s Catholic University, and served eight years as theological adviser to Cardinal James Hickey, who was then archbishop of Washington. He was ordained a bishop in 1995.

The Diocese of Bridgeport serves about 363,000 Catholics in 87 parishes. The diocese spans all of Fairfield County, which is among the fastest-growing and wealthiest in the nation, but is centered in the poor city of Bridgeport.

Bishop Lori was outspoken when the DC Council tried last year to enact a law requiring employers in the District to pay for contraceptives as part of their health plans. That bill later died when Mayor Tony Williams pocket vetoed it. Bishop Lori also took Northern Virginia Congressman Jim Moran to task when Moran criticized the church’s stand on homosexuality.

The date for Bishop Lori’s installation has not yet been chosen, church officials said.

(From Associated Press dispatches.)