Cardinal Dolan on meeting with Pope Francis, U.S. reaction to new Pope
(Vatican Radio) New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan says last week’s shipwreck off the
Italian island of Lampedusa in which hundreds of African migrants died, continues
to bring tears to the eyes of Pope Francis. The Pope has repeatedly spoken of the
tragedy with obvious pain since it happened last Thursday. Listen to Tracey McClure's
brief conversation with Cardinal Dolan:
President
of the United States Catholic Bishops Conference, Cardinal Dolan and Vice President
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz led a small delegation of the USCCB leadership to Rome this
week as part of their annual visits to the Vatican to exchange information with the
Prefects of different Pontifical Congregations about developments in the U.S. Church
and other churches around the world. Cardinal Dolan described their meeting with
Pope Francis in the Vatican Monday as the “highlight” of their visit.
“The
highlight of course, is going to see the Pope. So we got to do that, we got to see
Pope Francis which for us was exciting,” Cardinal Dolan said. “I hadn’t seen him
since the conclave and …Archbishop Joe Kurtz, the Archbishop of Louisville who’s the
Vice President of the USCCB…I don’t think he had met the Holy Father. So this was
very exciting and it was really just kind of a friendly conversation. It wasn’t so
much that we had business – because traditionally when you go to see the Pope, it’s
kind of a meeting of brothers. And that’s what it was for us. With the other ones,
like when we see a prefect of a congregation, we’ll have an agenda: these are items,
these are business things that we know that you’re interested in, that you’ve asked
us to follow up on. With the Holy Father of course, no. …”
In their half hour
meeting with the Pope, Cardinal Dolan said “we conveyed to him the love and the admiration
and the esteem and gratitude of the Catholic people of the United States, and indeed
of the people of the United States and especially the bishops. We had spoken about
a beautiful new sense of a freshness and creativity within the Church that's thanks
to his providential leadership.”
Cardinal Dolan said Pope Francis displayed
a “healthy curiosity” and interest in the issues that the bishops’ conference is working
on. “We spoke to him about immigration for instance, and thanked him for his heroic
visit to Lampedusa and then of course…that almost led to him crying over the current
tragedy. He told us by the way, and I hadn’t heard this: he said, by the way, I’ve
sent my ‘elemosiner’ – the papal almoner – in other words, the man who gives out the
charity (donations) of the Pope. He’d sent him as his personal delegate to Lampedusa
to be with the families and to try to help the survivors and see that this tragedy
would never reoccur….He asked us about our Catholic schools, he asked about vocations,
he asked about the Latino population. So you could tell he had a very healthy curiosity
about the Catholic Church in the United States.”
Pope Francis’ recent lengthy
interview published in the Jesuit-run America Magazine received mixed reaction in
some quarters of the U.S. Catholic population. Asked to comment on this, and on general
reaction to the new pope, Cardinal Dolan described the interview as “exhilarating
and inspirational” but admitted that parts of it may have been misinterpreted:
“I
could only tell you in general, when I walk the streets of New York, as I try to do
a lot, (the Pope has received) universal acclaim. People who are obviously practicing
Catholics, Catholics who have fallen away, people who aren’t of any religion at all,
or religions that are not Catholic, will say to me, ‘boy do we ever love Pope Francis’
and I told (the Pope) that. No, I think most committed Catholics, they’re nuanced
enough to know what the Holy Father meant. And they know that there’s perhaps some
misinterpretations. But I don’t think they…you know, when you’ve got a long interview
that is so exhilarating and inspirational, and some people take a dozen words out
of context – that’s not the right thing to do, is it? So but no, they love him and
they loved Pope Benedict too and they loved Pope John Paul II. But there seems to
be almost like a fresh romance with Pope Francis.”