Cardinal Virtues
As usual, there were many amusing and moving story lines at the recent consistory for the creation of 23 new cardinals, all of which got ample play elsewhere. Most poignant had to be the elevation of the Chaldean patriarch in Baghdad, Cardinal Emmanuel-Karim Delly. The personal favorite for the media had to be the elevation of Cardinal John Foley, longtime head of the Vatican Council on Social Communications. Cardinal Foley is a very pastoral man, and very approachable and very funny–virtues not always associated with hierarchs in the Curia, were Foley has served for more than two decades. Little did I know that he may have owed some of his humor to, of all people, his old school chum comedian Henry Gibson (no relation, no way, no how), as this CNS story recounts.
Cardinal Foley has also been a journalist, among his various incarnations, hence his interest and interaction with the media. But until CNS wrote it up, I’d never heard this story (I’m probably the only one who hasn’t), recounted by Foley’s former colleague Joe Ryan, currently the assistant editor at the diocesan newspaper of Wilmington, Del. It’s about a trip Foley, then a young priest and editor of the Philadelphia archdiocesan paper, took to the Holy Land with Cardinal Krol:
Philadelphia’s Cardinal John Krol was touring the Holy Land in the early 1970s when he went to Egypt and visited the pyramids at Giza. Like many tourists there, the distinguished prelate was invited by a persistent hawker to ride a camel.
The cardinal asked the editor of his newspaper, The Catholic Standard and Times, if he thought he should get on the camel.
“No, your eminence,” said Msgr. John P. Foley. “I would advise you not to get on that camel.”
Cardinal Krol, caught between a beckoning Bedouin and his dubious priest-editor, decided his opportunities in life to ride a camel would be limited, so up he climbed.
Msgr. Foley promptly took his boss’s picture, which ran in Catholic newspapers around the world. It showed the Archbishop of Philadelphia, ungainly in the camel’s saddle, looking more like the former butcher from Cleveland he had been than Lawrence of Arabia.
“You told me not to get on the camel; why did you take my picture?” the cardinal asked the editor.
“As your loyal priest, your eminence, I gave you my best advice,” Msgr. Foley said. “As the editor of your newspaper, I took your picture.”
I’ve always considered religious life and journalism as profoundly analogous callings, but vocations which could not coexist within the same soul. Perhaps that’s not quite true.
on November 27th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Does anybody have the picture?
on November 27th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Alas, I can’t find it. Perhaps Krol had all copies burned?
on November 27th, 2007 at 11:13 am
I take it never appeared the Philadelphia newspapers.
on November 27th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Just in the archdiocesan papers, as far as know. Philly papers were probably to scared to run it!
on November 27th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Here’s another part of Joe Ryan’s piece in the Wilmington diocesan newspaper:
Pope John Paul II once observed after a dinner that Archbishop Foley, who calls himself a nondrinking Irishman, was enjoying a cake soaked in liquor. The Holy Father asked the archbishop what he would call someone who doesn’t drink but enjoys a rum cake.
“A hypocrite,” said Archbishop Foley, finishing his plate.
on November 27th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Yes, an apt story illustrating the challenges and perils of being a cleric and a journalist in the church today. (Cf: Thomas J. Reese, S.J.)
John Cardinal Foley is a wonderful man, and, mercifully, far less imperious than the redoubtable John Cardinal Krol. (By the way, I hope the CS&T will have by now figured out the right use of the word “dubious.”) When Cardinal Krol confirmed me in suburban Philadelphia in 1969, the church’s rite still called for the presiding bishop to smack the young boy or girl across the face lightly, to signify the need for “fear of the Lord.” Or at least that’s what they taught us in CCD at Epiphany of Our Lord Catholic Church. When Krol, who processed into our church wearing a scarlet capa magna, smacked me “lightly” he knocked me into the girl kneeling next to me. Then he proceeded to knock her into the boy kneeling next to her.
I can’t imagine the gentle Foley doing the same.
On the other hand, it’s the only thing I remember from my confirmation.
on November 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
John Allen also has a nice article in NCR about Cardinal Foley:
http://ncrcafe.org/node/1453
on November 27th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Foley seems to good to be true. Only the Holy Spirit could have kept him sane all these years. Or laughter. Or both.