Full of Grace

Chapter One: Wit

W

It was a few years ago, I think, when the National Endowment for the Arts funded a catalogue that described me, the Archbishop of New York, as a "fat cannibal in skirts." I only took exception to being called fat.

?Cardinal O'Connor's Sunday homily, October 3, 1999

He told people he had a "Phildelphia sense of humor," which in itself suggested he was making a joke that only he understood. Cardinal O'Connor was a man of humor -- irreverent humor, aimed at colleagues and at himself. Those who visited his residence or met him at a formal dinner often were rendered speechless by an unexpected aside or a flip remark. Yes, the Cardinal Archbishop, a man of the utmost reverence for God and his faith, had a comedian's sense of timing and an intellectual's appreciation for irony.

On his desk in his law office in West Caldwell, N.J., Thomas Durkin Jr. keeps a replica of a potato. Next to it is a vintage black-and-white photograph taken in 1919 of his father and namesake, wearing the uniform of a Newark police officer. "My father gave me this," he says, pointing to the potato. "He also gave m ... read full excerpt from: Full of Grace: An Oral Biography of John Cardinal O'Connor ebook