John Joseph O'Connor (January 15, 1920 – May 3, 2000) was an American Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of New York from 1984 until his death in 2000, and was made a cardinal in 1985.

O'Connor previously served as a U.S. Navy chaplain (1952 to 1979), including four years as chief of chaplains, as an auxiliary bishop of the Military Vicariate of the United States (1979 to 1983), and as Bishop of Scranton from 1983 to 1984.

Biography

Early life John O'Connor was born in Philadelphia on January 15, 1920, the fourth of five children of Thomas J. O'Connor, and Dorothy Magdalene (née Gomple) O'Connor. Thomas was a painter and Dorothy was the daughter of Gustave Gumpel, a kosher butcher and Jewish rabbi. In 2014, it was discovered that Dorothy was baptized a Catholic at age 19 and that the couple wed one year later.

O'Connor attended public schools in Philadelphia until his junior year of high school, when he enrolled in West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys. Having decided to become a priest, he then enrolled at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.

Priesthood After graduating from St. Charles, O'Connor was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on December 15, 1945, in Philadelphia by Auxiliary Bishop Hugh L. Lamb. After his 1945 ordination, the archdiocese assigned O'Connor as a faculty member at St. James High School in Chester, Pennsylvania. During this seven-year period, O'Connor obtained a Master of Arts degree in advanced ethics from Villanova University in Philadelphia and a Master of Arts degree in clinical psychology from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

O'Connor joined the United States Navy Chaplain Corps in 1952 during the Korean War.He was eventually named rear admiral and chief of chaplains of the Navy in 1975.He obtained approval for the establishment of the RP [Religious Program Specialist] Enlisted Rating and oversaw the process of standing up this rating. The RP rating provided chaplains with a dedicated enlisted community. The Vatican named O'Connor an honorary prelate of his holiness on October 27, 1966.

O'Connor received a doctorate in political science from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he studied under future United Nations ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick said of O'Connor that he was "... surely one of the two or three smartest graduate students I've ever had."Rosin, Hanna; McCarthy, Colman (May 4, 2000). "Cardinal John J. O'Connor Dies", The Washington Post.

Auxiliary Bishop of the Military Vicariate US On April 24, 1979, Pope John Paul II appointed O'Connor as an auxiliary bishop of the Military Vicariate for the United States and titular bishop of Cursola. He was consecrated to the episcopate on May 27, 1979, at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome by John Paul himself, with Cardinals Duraisamy Lourdusamy and Eduardo Somalo acting as co-consecrators.

Bishop of Scranton On May 6, 1983, John Paul II named O'Connor as bishop of Scranton; he was installed in that position on June 29, 1983.

Archbishop of New York

On January 26, 1984, after the death of Cardinal Terence Cooke, O'Connor was appointed archbishop of New York and administrator of the Military Vicariate by John Paul II; O'Connor was installed on March 19, 1984.

O'Connor was elevated to cardinal in the May 25, 1985, consistory, with the titular church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Rome (the traditional one for the Archbishop of New York from 1946 to 2009).

On December 10, 1989, 4,500 members of ACT UP and Women's Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM) demonstrated at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan to voice their opposition to O'Connor's positions on HIV/AIDS education, the distribution of condoms in public schools, and abortion rights for women. Police arrested 43 protestors from inside the cathedral.

Throughout his tenure as archbishop of New York, Cardinal O'Connor advocated on behalf of many groups whom he believed to be downtrodden, but there was no group that he advocated for more strongly than the unborn. To that end, O'Connor started a religious order of women known as the Sisters of Life, which still exists today.

O'Connor had a close relationship with Pope John Paul II, and both leaders were very similar in their emphasis, including a focus on the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. When naming O'Connor the Archbishop of New York in 1984, the pope is purported to have said "I want someone like myself in New York". In 1995, for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Pope Saint John Paul II visited New York and while there, O'Connor hosted him at Saint Patrick's Cathedral for a rosary service on October 7, 1995 for which O'Connor appointed Joseph Polchinski as one of the servers.

Illness and death When O'Connor reached the retirement age for bishops of 75 years in January 1995, he submitted his resignation to Pope John Paul II as required by canon law. However the pope did not accept the resignation, and O'Connor continued to serve as Archbishop of New York until his death.

O'Connor was diagnosed in 1999 with a brain tumor, and died in the archbishop's residence in Manhattan on May 3, 2000. He was interred in the crypt beneath the main altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral. His funeral was presided over by Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano. At O'Connor's request, Cardinal Bernard F. Law delivered the homily and Cardinal William W. Baum the eulogy. Attendees at O'Connor's funeral included: Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan US president Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton and Vice President Al Gore Secretary of State Madeleine Albright former president George H. W. Bush and Texas governor George W. Bush New York governor George Pataki New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former New York City mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins.

Legacy

The John Cardinal O'Connor Pavilion in the Bronx, a residence for retired priests, opened in 2003. The John Cardinal O'Connor School in Irvington, New York, for students with learning differences, opened in 2009. The Cardinal O'Connor Conference on Life is held annually at Georgetown University.

The New York Times called O'Connor "a familiar and towering presence, a leader whose views and personality were forcefully injected into the great civic debates of his time, a man who considered himself a conciliator, but who never hesitated to be a combatant", and one of the Catholic Church's "most powerful symbols on moral and political issues."

Awards

Jackie Robinson Empire State Medal of Freedom – December 21, 2000 Congressional Gold Medal – March 7, 2000

Viewpoints

Human life O'Connor was a forceful opponent of abortion, human cloning, capital punishment, human trafficking, and unjust war.

O'Connor in 1996 assailed what he called the "horror of euthanasia", asking rhetorically, "What makes us think that permitted lawful suicide will not become obligated suicide?" In 2000, O'Connor called for a "major overhaul" of the punitive Rockefeller drug laws in New York State, which he believed produced "grave injustices".

US foreign policy

In the 1980s, O'Connor condemned US support for counterrevolutionary guerrilla forces in Central America, opposed the U.S. mining of the waters off Nicaragua, questioned government spending on new weapons systems, and preached caution in regard to American military actions abroad. In 1998, O'Connor questioned whether the United States' cruise missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan were morally justifiable. In 1999, during the Kosovo War, O'Connor repeatedly challenged the morality of NATO's bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, suggesting that it did not meet the Catholic Church's criteria for a just war. At one point, he asked, "Does the relentless bombing of Yugoslavia prove the power of the Western world or its weakness?" In 1998. O'Connor insisted that the traditional just war principles must be applied to evaluate the morality of military responses to unconventional warfare and terrorism.

Organized labor In 1984, SEIU 1199, the largest health care workers union in New York City, went on strike against the League of Voluntary Hospitals, of which the archdiocesan hospitals were members. O'Connor strongly criticized the League for threatening to fire striking union members. He called it "strikebreaking" and vowed that no Catholic hospital would participate in such an action. After a year of stalled negotiations, O'Connor threatened to make a separate agreement with the SEIU 1199 "that gives justice to the workers". In a Labor Day homily at St. Patrick's in 1986, O'Connor said:"[S]o many of our freedoms in this country, so much of the building up of society, is precisely attributable to the union movement, a movement that I personally will defend despite the weakness of some of its members, despite the corruption with which we are all familiar that pervades all society, a movement that I personally will defend with my life."In 1987, the television broadcast employees' union went on strike against the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). At one point, a non-union crew from NBC appeared at O'Connor's residence to cover a press conference. O'Connor declined to admit them, directing his secretary to "tell them they're not invited."

Following O'Connor's death in 2002, SEIU 1199 called him "the patron saint of working people". It described his support for low-wage and other workers, his efforts in helping the limousine drivers unionize, his help in mediating a labor strike at The Daily News, and his pushing for fringe benefits for minimum-wage home health care workers.

Relations with Jewish community

In 1987, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel called O'Connor, "a good Christian" and a man "who understands our pain." O'Connor in 1996 strongly denounced anti-Semitism, declaring that one "cannot be a faithful Christian and an anti-Semite. They are incompatible, because anti-Semitism is a sin." He wrote an apology to Jewish leaders in New York City for past harm committed by the Catholic Church to the Jewish community. In 1998, O'Connor criticized the failure of Swiss banks to compensate Jewish Holocaust victims whose stolen assets had been deposited in Switzerland during World War II by German Nazi leaders. He called it "a human rights issue, an issue of the human race." Even when disagreeing with him over political questions, Jewish leaders acknowledged that O'Connor was "a friend, a powerful voice against anti-Semitism". The Jewish Council for Public Affairs in 2000 called O'Connor "a true friend and champion of Catholic–Jewish relations, [and] a humanitarian who used the power of his pulpit to advocate for disadvantaged people throughout the world and in his own community."

Relations with the LGBT community

HIV/AIDS In the early 1980s, O'Connor opened a specialized HIV/AIDS medical unit in St. Clare's Hospital in Manhattan, the first of its kind in the state. ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) protested in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1987, holding placards such as "Cardinal O'Connor Loves Gay People ... If They Are Dying of AIDS."

O'Connor made an effort to minister to 1,000 people dying of HIV/AIDS and their families, following up on other HIV/AIDS patients. He visited Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center, where he cleaned the sores and emptied the bedpans of more than 1,100 patients. According to reports, O'Connor was popular with the Saint Vincent's patients, many of whom did not know he was the archbishop, and was supportive of other priests who ministered to gay men and others with HIV/AIDS.