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.
A profile written about him for Crisis Magazine and republished on a Web site called catholicmil.org - dedicated to Catholics in the armed services - quoted him as saying: "In June we would be marrying cadets every half-hour, and within a year, we were burying them."
From 1971 to 1972 he served a tour of duty in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 1st Calvary Brigade, according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
"From a base of operations in the middle of a jungle, he and a Protestant minister flew by helicopter to defensive outposts where they would provide for the spiritual needs of the soldiers," an archdiocese statement about O'Brien says.
His friends were proud of his willingness to serve on such a dangerous mission in a war that was widely unpopular.
"Some of the guys, from a political point of view, thought he was crazy for being involved in what was a very unpopular endeavor, especially to put his life on the line," said Monsignor James Vaughey, another classmate and pastor of St. Theresa Church in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. "We respected his view of things. Not that he was right. But his zeal - you couldn't help but admire it."
He pursued a doctoral degree in Rome and returned to New York, where he would spend the bulk of his career from 1976 to 1997. During his time there he coordinated the New York visit of Pope John Paul II and, as secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke, had to endure the painful job of attending to the ailing head of the New York archdiocese.
"He never speaks about it publicly, but he was there through those days when Cardinal Cooke was dying. A very painful time," said Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the New York archdiocese, who was hired by O'Brien.
O'Brien was also praised for his ability to increase recruitment to the priesthood. He twice served as rector of St. Joseph's Seminary, and he held a similar job for the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
In January 1997, O'Brien spearheaded the streamlined ordination of Eugene Hamilton, a seminary student who was dying of cancer. O'Brien pushed and got approval to make the young man a priest before he died.
"That shows his compassion," Zwilling said.
Later that year, O'Brien was named archbishop of military services, a job that took him to Washington and to manage and visit chaplains stationed with the military throughout the world.
O'Brien was visibly upset yesterday when he talked about having to leave the job he has held for a decade.
"I would have been surprised if he was not emotionally distressed to leave that," said Vaughey. "He's been involved with the military for a long time."
During his tenure he has spoken out against elements of the military. In 1998 he said that U.S. bombing of Iraq should "cause serious moral concern for all Americans." His remarks drew some criticism for not going far enough, according to a National Catholic Reporter article.
And in a March 2003 letter to the military chaplains, O'Brien wrote, "It is altogether appropriate for members of our armed forces to presume the integrity of our leadership and its judgments and therefore to carry out their military duties in good conscience."
His most controversial position came while he was coordinator of the Vatican's committee to investigate Roman Catholic seminaries in the U.S. for "evidence of homosexuality" and other issues. The seminaries were under review as a result of the sexual abuse scandals in the priesthood, according to a 2005 New York Times article.
The article quoted O'Brien as saying that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations" should not be admitted to the seminary.
"I have been in seminary work for 12 years and I think that is a wise precept," he said yesterday. "There are theological reasons. There are some very practical reasons."
doug.donovan@baltsun.com nicole.fuller@baltsun.com
Edwin F. O'Brien
April 8, 1939: Edwin F. O'Brien is born in the Bronx, N.Y.
1953: He graduates from Our Lady of Solace Grammar School in the Bronx.
1957: He graduates from St. Mary's High School in Katonah, N.Y.
1961: O'Brien graduates from St. Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie.
May 29, 1965: O'Brien is ordained as a priest in the Archdiocese of New York.
1965-1970: He serves as a parish priest at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
1970: He becomes an Army chaplain and serves with the 82nd Airborne Division, including 1971-1972 in Vietnam.
1976: O'Brien completes his doctoral dissertation. He studied moral theology at the Pontifical North American College.
1979: As communications director for the New York Archdiocese, he coordinates former Pope John Paul II's trip to New York.
1986: He is elevated to monsignor.
1990-1994: O'Brien serves as rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
Feb. 6, 1996: O'Brien is named auxiliary bishop of New York.
Aug. 12, 1997: He is appointed archbishop of military services.
July 12, 2007: O'Brien is named the archbishop of Baltimore.
[Source: Archdiocese of Baltimore]