O'Brien's long path leads to Baltimore

NEW YORK - In a beige brick Gothic church on an East Bronx thoroughfare, the future archbishop of Baltimore found a home that he never really left.

Our Lady of Solace on Morris Park Avenue became the spiritual center for Edwin F. O'Brien, who prayed here with his parents and brothers, served as an altar boy, studied at its now-shuttered grammar school and received confirmation in the Catholic Church with the saint's name of James 57 years ago.

Though his family would eventually move to the city's northern suburbs and a series of prominent church posts would carry him even farther away, O'Brien returns here each spring to confer the sacrament of confirmation on a new generation of Roman Catholics from his old neighborhood.

"He kept them standing this year, sort of staring them down, but not in a bad way," said the Rev. Robert P. Badillo, the church's pastor. "His point was that they are standing for something, standing for Christ."

On Thursday, the Vatican announced that O'Brien would replace the retiring Cardinal William H. Keeler and lead the Baltimore region's half-million Catholics starting in October. Maryland is the latest - and perhaps final - stop for O'Brien, who has crisscrossed the world from theological studies in Italy to combat zones in Vietnam and Iraq.

But it is his time in New York - in a working-class neighborhood church, in a lush Westchester County seminary, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and in the archdiocesan headquarters in Manhattan - that helped shape the meticulous, courtly, tradition-minded leader, according to interviews with friends and fellow priests.

A lifelong student of church history, O'Brien largely hews to conservative Vatican teachings in his public comments, observers say. But his deep background in the education of priests and his current position as leader of the Catholics in the U.S. military have made noteworthy his critiques of the war in Iraq and his personal opposition to gays wanting to enter the priesthood.

For his supporters here, there was always hope that the 68-year-old prelate might assume the top spot in the Archdiocese of New York.

Close friends interviewed last week describe the archbishop-designate as pleased and excited by his new appointment. Still, some in New York sounded a bit wistful that with O'Brien's advancing age and new job, the chance to see him lead their archdiocese has likely passed.

"To come home would have been great," said the Rev. Joseph G. Fonti, a Brooklyn pastor and O'Brien confidant whom the archbishop mentored at a Rome seminary. "But I know for a fact he's not disappointed with the way things turned out."

If O'Brien harbored ambition for the job, he never revealed those thoughts to his inner circle. Margaret Juliano, whose waterfront home in Ocean City, N.J., has become a regular vacation retreat for O'Brien, recalled how she and her husband would ask the archbishop who he thought would become the next leader in New York.

"He would just raise his eyebrows and say nothing," she said.

Despite speculation in the media that called him a leading candidate for years, the man himself held mixed feelings about the post in his hometown.

"Your life is ended," O'Brien once mused to a Catholic magazine reporter on what might happen if he took over the New York Archdiocese. "The rest of your life is planned. You're scrutinized, videotaped, and scrutinized. I just don't know who would want it."

Fonti joked last week that his friend O'Brien enjoys simple pleasures: a good meat-and-potatoes meal and glass of Scotch while, of course, watching a Yankees baseball game on television.

"He doesn't really like vegetables. But he's starting to eat more fish. Guess he'll have to with your crab cakes, right?" Fonti said with a laugh.

O'Brien talked about his new appointment with almost giddy anticipation last week, reveling in the closely guarded secret:

"I was sitting in my office at 3:35 on Wednesday, July 3, sent everybody home early so that it was quiet. I was getting work done when the phone rang.

"It was a church official from Rome.

"He said, 'Are you alone - can I speak with you?' I said, 'Yes.' And he paused. He said, 'Well, the Holy Father has appointed you the archbishop of Baltimore. It was just a thunderbolt. I didn't know. He said, 'Do you accept?' I said, 'Well, yes.' That's one thing I take from the military, I guess. When you're given an order, you accept.

Related topic galleries: International Military Interventions, Wars and Interventions, Clubs and Associations, Defense, William H. Keeler, Edwin F. O'Brien, Colleges and Universities

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