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.
"The difficulty was, you're not supposed to tell anybody. Pontifical secret. ... I was kind of bursting, you know?"
As he introduced himself to Baltimore at a Thursday news conference, O'Brien addressed his upbringing and New York connections head-on: "I grew up Bronx Irish Catholic. That's a culture unto itself. Everything centered around the parish. ... It was school. It was sports. It was social."
Rosemary Russo remembers that time well. She grew up in the same neighborhood, serving for the past 53 years as secretary at Our Lady of Solace. With a laugh at the memories, Russo recalled how vibrant and seemingly divided her Morris Park neighborhood was.
"Solace was the Irish Catholic stronghold," she said, adding that she didn't attend its school because she was Italian. "But I checked the records, and it was actually more Italian than I ever thought."
Childhood friend Joe Ormsby, now retired and living in Charlotte, N.C., described the young O'Brien as "always interested in the church and always interested in being the best that he could be, whether it was stickball or getting 100 percent on a test."
Modeled on a church in Ireland, Our Lady of Solace was only 10 years old when O'Brien was born. A history published on the church's 75th anniversary notes the quality - and cost - of its veined, off-white Italian marble altar and elaborate stained glass that left limited funds for statues.
Today, the neighborhood remains working class but also includes Hispanics, Filipinos and Albanians, Badillo said. Despite the demographic changes, Our Lady of Solace continues to take special pride in a favorite son.
"Archbishop O'Brien has been building an immense temple to God on his rock," Badillo told parishioners during Friday morning's Mass celebrated in O'Brien's honor. "From his earliest days, Christ has called on him. And it was his responsibility to cooperate with that call."
One of his brothers, Tom O'Brien, spotted that commitment to his faith early.
"We were walking back from grammar school. All of the sudden, he stopped," the brother told a reporter for Crisis magazine in a July 2000 profile. "He dipped his fingers in a puddle and was blessing something. He was blessing a pigeon that had died. He was giving it last rites."
The family experienced loss early with the death of his father while O'Brien was in the eighth grade. His mother and both of his brothers, including Tom, died in more recent years. Friends say O'Brien remains close to his nephews and nieces.
"Certainly the priesthood was my family, too," O'Brien said last week.
That relationship was formalized at St. Joseph's Seminary in the Dunwoodie section of Yonkers, N.Y., where - known as a thorough planner and quick study -he received a bachelor's degree and two graduate degrees. Cardinal Francis Spellman ordained him a priest in 1965.
Sitting in O'Brien's former office at St. Joseph's last week, the current rector, Monsignor Peter G. Finn, recalled entering the seminary as part of the same class as O'Brien. "The first thing he said to me is, 'Will you play baseball with us this afternoon?'" Finn said.
For an athletic boy raised in the Bronx, the sprawling seminary must have seemed like a country club - a wooded, 42-acre spiritual oasis anchored by a castle-like main building that housed the seminarians. Today the classrooms inside the stone building have the same Formica student desks attached to metal chairs. The gleaming private chapel with a frescoed dome features pews that face each other so two groups of priests-in-training can take turns reciting lines of Scripture to each other.
"Not much has changed," Finn said.
Those who know O'Brien said he holds a special place in his heart for some of the disappearing traditions of the church, including the Latin Mass. Finn called him orthodox in his views on Catholicism. Others pointed out that he is a voracious reader of historical books and daily newspapers but can be wary of any liberal slant in coverage of political issues.
"He's a traditionalist," said Patricia Dillon, the widow of a New York advertising executive, who befriended O'Brien in the early 1980s and remains close to the archbishop. "He's just a true priest. I think he follows the whole church teachings and is very faithful to the Holy Father."
Friends say that O'Brien's focus on developing young people began with his first posting after the seminary - as the civilian chaplain at West Point, where he saw how young men and women were trained to be officers.
Later, he received a commission in the Army himself, training to become a parachutist with the 82nd Airborne Division. "He was in one of our elite groups, and he was a jumper, and he served in some really difficult places in Vietnam," said the Rev. Philip W. Hill, a colonel and chaplain in the Army who has known O'Brien for 40 years.
In 1973, O'Brien left the military and began his doctoral studies at Rome's Angelicum University. He returned to the Archdiocese of New York three years later, serving as vice chancellor for the archdiocese and associate pastor at St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 1979 he coordinated Pope John Paul II's visit to New York and for two years served as communications director for the archdiocese.
During that period, he served as secretary - much like a chief of staff - to two cardinals: the subdued Terrance Cooke and the brash, politically engaging John O'Connor. Friends say O'Brien learned from both leaders but remains his own man.
"He's extremely smart but extremely patient," said Joseph Zwilling, the New York Archdiocese's communications director, hired first by O'Brien a quarter-century ago. "He was always very priestly and known for going the extra mile, especially to see someone in need."
O'Brien, like his mentor O'Connor and his predecessor Keeler, has a strong history of pro-life advocacy. While serving as the spokesman for Cooke, he also spoke out on the equitable treatment of immigrants and other social justice issues.
Elevated to monsignor in 1986, he served two terms as rector of St. Joseph's Seminary in the late 1980s and mid-1990s. In the interim, he served as the head of the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
"He is a very good listener, but he also expects people to be as well-prepared as he always is," said Monsignor Joseph R. Giandurco, who worked as an admissions dean for O'Brien when O'Brien headed up St. Joseph's Seminary.
In 1996, he was named auxiliary bishop of New York, consecrated by Cardinal O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The next year, he became archbishop for the Archdiocese for the Military Services, serving about 1.5 million Catholics in uniform.
Recently, O'Brien served as the administrator of a review of American seminaries by a Vatican panel to ensure that the institutions did not admit men with "deep-seated" gay tendencies into the priesthood. A final report from Rome on the issue has yet to be issued.
Hill, the Army chaplain, said O'Brien has built on his experiences to become a savvy diplomat. "He knows the church system. He knows the military system," the chaplain said. "He's a very studied fellow, a very holy man, and he listens - even though it pains him sometimes to listen. He's very good at sorting things out, at finding the problems and solving them."
With a far-flung flock of military personnel around the globe, O'Brien's love of travel has been an asset. Friends say he's known for an ability to go almost anywhere for any length of time without checking luggage.
But the future archbishop of Baltimore is hardly technologically savvy. Surfing the Internet or logging onto e-mail remain foreign concepts to O'Brien.
"It's like golf. I never got to golf either," he said.
He still runs, though on a treadmill, and has to double his efforts while he's at home because he can't exercise while traveling. When he's sitting outside at the Juliano beach house, he chooses shade over sun.
So his pleasures remain simple; often he's content with his own company and rarely grabbing the spotlight in a social setting.
"If I'm in Paris, I'll be at the Louvre," Fonti said. "He might be taking a walk or reading a book."
When O'Brien became archbishop of the military services, his combat experience gave him credibility with the troops, associates said. "People in the Army identified with him real easily because of his membership in their own club," Hill said.
But O'Brien was concerned with more than just the servicemen and -women. He was particularly sensitive to military families and the strain that war places on spouses and children. "The youth get left behind, and no one talks to them about their anxieties with their father or mother being deployed," said the Most Rev. Joseph W. Estabrook, an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese for the Military Services.
He said O'Brien is on the road about 80 percent of the time, including visits to bases in or near war zones during the holidays. Those who know him say his suitcase is rarely unpacked for long.
"Whenever I feel tired and worn out, I look at his schedule, and it's always worse than mine," said Estabrook, who, at 63, is five years O'Brien's junior. "I've never seen a guy with such energy. He's unstoppable."
Steward of the military's Catholics during a difficult and stressful war, O'Brien has raised questions about the U.S. involvement in Iraq in light of Catholic "just-war" theory even as he assured Catholics of their moral duty to serve in the military.
O'Brien posed a series of questions in a 2002 statement as the Bush administration was pressing toward an invasion of Iraq. Has every other means to eliminate that danger been exhausted? What will be the cost in lives and money of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the impact on stability in the Middle East? And on what terms will U.S. forces exit from Iraq?
The archbishop noted his "profound respect" for Bush and his advisers but wrote, "Americans, our allies and the world community expect more [answers] if military action must ultimately be taken as a last resort."
The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, said a lot of the objections to the Bush administration's war policies raised at the time from the religious community were sweeping and sometimes ill-informed - unlike O'Brien's pointed, perceptive thoughts.
O'Brien "certainly raised the right questions before the invasion of Iraq, and I think he did it in the appropriate way - he asked the questions; he didn't give the answers," Reese said.
Despite his apparent misgivings about the war, O'Brien has urged American youth to join the military. In a November 2005 statement aimed at the anti-war movement and particularly at "far too many Catholic high schools" barring recruiters from their schools, he said the catechism of the Catholic Church - while it states that "every possible means" should be used to avoid war - also declares that "public authority can rightly oblige its citizens to take part in national defense."
More recently, however, he has called for "an honorable and morally responsible end to our military involvement in Iraq." The "unleashing of sectarian violence with hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed, wounded or displaced seems to confirm the initial fears that this conflict would have significant adverse consequences for the people of Iraq," he wrote in a May 29 Memorial Day message to Catholics serving in the military.
Despite the peripatetic life of an on-the-go bishop serving Catholics in uniform, friends in New York said that O'Brien usually comes back to the city about once a month. In the Bronx, Tracy Bacigalupo, one of the religious education coordinators for Our Lady of Solace, said, "somehow it feels like he never left."
Russo, the longtime secretary, added that the parishioners revere one of the church's pre-eminent leaders who has never forgotten his humble roots.
"Sometimes he flies in and out the same day," she said. "So you know he's here just for us."
matthew.dolan@baltsun.com
Sun reporters Liz F. Kay, Stephen Kiehl and David Wood contributed to this article.