O'Brien spent past decade ministering to military

He has leapt from military airplanes, served in jungles during the Vietnam War and traveled extensively to current battle zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

From his working-class roots in the Bronx, N.Y., Edwin Frederick O'Brien has steadily risen to the upper echelons of Catholic power - carrying a Christian message of peace and love to some of the world's worst war-torn terrain.

Now, O'Brien, 68, will leave his job as head of one of the nation's largest and most far-flung Roman Catholic archdioceses to lead its oldest as the new archbishop of Baltimore.

O'Brien's official appointment yesterday to lead the Baltimore region's half-million Catholics beginning Oct. 1 is the most recent position in a religious career spanning four decades on several continents.

He has gone from the military front lines as a combat chaplain in 1971 in Vietnam to the cultural front lines as an architect in 2005 of a controversial Vatican document to bar homosexuals from the priesthood. His job as archbishop of military services - governing 1.4 million Catholics in the armed forces - has allowed him to sound moral concerns about the Iraq war.

"He has been outstanding in all of the positions he's held," said Monsignor Peter G. Finn, rector of St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, N.Y., who graduated with O'Brien in 1965.

O'Brien was born April 8, 1939, in the Bronx, one of three children of an accountant father and secretary mother.

"I grew up Bronx Irish Catholic. That's a culture unto itself," O'Brien said yesterday during a news conference. "Everything centered around the parish. ... It was school. It was sports. It was social. The priest, in those days ... was a very important figure, a leading figure. Everyone wanted to get to know ... Father and to be like him."

Including O'Brien.

"There hasn't been a day in my life that I haven't wanted to be a priest and there hasn't been a day I regretted it," he said yesterday.

The balding, trim archbishop said his experiences in New York City would qualify him to continue strengthening interfaith connections that retiring Cardinal William H. Keeler has built in Baltimore - especially with Jews.

"I grew up in the Bronx in an apartment house. I think we were the only Catholics there," he said. "The rest were all Jews in the apartment house. I remember when my dad died, they virtually adopted us, the Jewish families there."

Upon entering St. Joseph's Seminary, O'Brien quickly befriended many of his fellow priests-in-training, say those who graduated with him. They remember an energetic, loyal young man who was a talented scholar with a tireless work ethic, but who liked to unwind by playing baseball and running.

"We're both great Yankee fans," said Finn, his classmate. "The Orioles better not know that."

His friends also note his affable nature.

"He's got a great Irish sense of humor," said Monsignor Walter R. Rossi, rector of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

His sense of humor was evident yesterday when he described how he had to keep his appointment secret since he was told about it on July 3.

"I was with family on the Fourth of July. ... I was kind of bursting, you know," he said. "But I didn't say anything and I was glad no one asked me because going through my mind was the song, 'Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.'"

After receiving a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees from St. Joseph's Seminary, O'Brien was ordained as a priest on May 29, 1965. The church assigned him as a civilian chaplain at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Five years later, at the height of the Vietnam War in 1970, he joined the Army and attained the rank of captain, taking flight training that required him to parachute out of airplanes.

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