On April 15 at 2:34 p.m., Timothy M. Dolan, 59, was officially installed as New York’s 10th Archbishop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Dolan replaces Cardinal Edward M. Egan, 77.
“The installation was a wonderful event,” said Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the New York Archdiocese. “Archbishop Dolan received such a warm welcome and New York got a real sense of the kind of Archbishop he is and will be– warm, genuine, human, caring. It could not have gone better,” he said.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg attended the ceremony, as did Gov. David Paterson and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, according to the New York Times. Several thousand “worshipers and onlookers, Catholic and non-Catholic alike,” also attended, the Times reported.
The “characteristically jolly” Dolan joked throughout the proceedings. He also, according to the New York Times, acknowledged “great priestly heroes of the Archdiocese’s history,” including Fordham’s own former Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., who passed away last December.
The New York Times reported that Dolan addressed the issue of abortion in the middle of his speech. He “spoke of the church’s mandate to ‘protect the dignity of every human person, the sanctity of human life…the tiny baby in the womb.’”
“Archbishop Dolan seems like a friendly, out-going guy; should go over big in New York City,” said Margaret Steinfels, co-director of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture. “I loved the picture on the front of the Times [Thursday] morning. He’s leaning out over the pew smiling, and perhaps waving, while his fellow-prelates look like something serious is going on. Reminds me of the kid in grammar school who was always doing what everyone else was NOT doing.”