John Cardinal O'Connor who died on May 3rd aged 80, was almost stereotypically New York in style, though hardly in his doctrinally conservative substance. Gregarious, direct, even blunt, he was also given to so much genuinely self-deprecating humour it enabled him find affection in some unlikely hearts.
At his installation as Archbishop of New York in March 1984, he put on a Mets baseball cap; placed his bishop's mitre on the head of a 10-year-old altar boy, also called John O'Connor, and then mimicked the then city's Mayor Koch catch phrase, "How'm I doing?" Later, priests in his archdiocese would joke, as his penchant for spontaneous confrontation got into its stride, that his motto was "Ready, Fire, Aim." Meanwhile, it is said they also deeply appreciated his ready availability when they needed him.
In that most liberal of cities he was regularly in the middle of controversy because of his uncompromising support for traditional Catholic doctrine on sexuality. He was passionate in his opposition to abortion. He vigorously upheld church teaching on homosexuality, and opposed the ordination of women.
When Geraldine Ferraro, a Catholic who was chosen as the Democratic Party candidate for vice-president in 1984, said there was "a diversity of Catholic opinion" on abortion, he accused her of misrepresenting Catholic teaching. In the same campaign he praised Ronald Reagan as "a friend of the unborn". He said he could not see in good conscience how a Catholic could vote for a candidate who supported abortion, and refused to rule out the possibility that he might excommunicate New York Governor, Mario Cuomo, for doing so.
He challenged city authorities on access to contraception information and abortion in the church's child-care agencies and successfully opposed an executive order barring discrimination against gay people by employers, including the church.
In 1989 gay rights activists chained themselves to the pews of St Patrick's Cathedral during a St Patrick's Day parade as a protest against his support for their exclusion from the parade. But while maintaining this tough-guy exterior he was pastorally very active in the area of care for AIDS patients and set up a hospice for them as early as 1986. In 1998, after the Swissair jet crashed into the sea off Nova Scotia, killing 219 people, he told their families candidly "you have suffered in a way no one can understand." His work with retarded children was a lifelong passion.
"Are you a simple parish priest?" he was asked once by reporter, echoing a description his predecessor, Cardinal Cooke, had given of himself. "I'm a priest. How simple I don't know," was Cardinal O'Connor's reply.
Observers have said he had many of the reflective traits of an intellectual who could do equal justice to opposing sides in any argument. But this, it seems, was for him not incompatible with spontaneous comment, the off-the-top-of-the-head decision, which seemed random. Even facile.
He could be a smiling, quipping common man and yet a soft-spoken, stern, prince of the church who forcefully asserted an unpopular position. This latter trait meant he was one of the most denounced public figures in the US. Francis Kissling, president of Catholics for Free Choice, which supports legalised abortion, said he was "the kind of man who, if the church still had the power to burn people at the stake, would be right there lighting a fire."
He was also strong in his views on the Irish question. In his biography Dr Garret FitzGerald writes of a meeting they had in May 1985: "I think it was probably the most contentious meeting I had with anyone outside Ireland during the course of my years as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Taoiseach, and one of our officials who accompanied me remarked later that he had never previously attended a meeting like it." The word around New York was that the Cardinal had given the Taoiseach a dressing-down for his views on Irish nationalism. Cardinal O'Connor was very interested in Northern Ireland and visited there in 1984 and 1988. Among his frequent other visits to this country was a trip in 1990 when he attended a gathering of the O'Connor clan at Clonalis House near Castlerea, Co Roscommon. John Joseph O'Connor was born in a working-class area of Philadelphia in January 1920. His father, Thomas, was born in the city in 1883, the only member of that family to have been born in the US. His mother, Dorothy, was of Bavarian-German stock. Her piety greatly influenced her son.
From his father he inherited strong pro-union views, something he prided himself on all his life. After ordination in 1945 he went to Georgetown University in Washington to study clinical psychology and political science. He graduated with a Ph.D and a reputation as one of the college's brightest alumni.
He chose to serve with the US navy in 1952, in response to a call for more chaplains during the Korean war, and retired after 27 years with the rank of rear admiral. He was made Bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1983. His military experience left him moderate on foreign policy issues: among his targets was the Reagan administration's burgeoning defence spending and its clandestine support for anti-government forces in central America. To the surprise of many, he was chosen to succeed Cardinal Terence Cooke in New York. It is said Pope John Paul had remarked at the time "I want a man like me in New York." In 1985 he became a cardinal.
He soon adapted to New York's in-your-face approach to life, establishing a weekly news conference after his Sunday morning Mass to expound his views on current issues. That continued until 1990.
Towards the end of his life he had begun to wonder whether his readiness to engage in controversy had really served a purpose. He commented in an interview: "Time after time, I have to ask myself if the church would be better off if I had just become a silent servant of the people."
Cardinal O'Connor is survived by a brother and two sisters.
John Cardinal O'Connor: born 1920; died May, 2000