Roman Catholics: The Pastor-Executive

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If any one aspires to the office of bishop, he desires a noble task.

—1 Timothy 3

The Roman Catholic Church has 2,500 bishops, and they perform their tasks in almost that many different ways. Some are brilliant theologians, some skillful spiritual teachers, some church politicians, some Jeep-riding missionaries, some discreet bureaucrats. But in the U.S., the dominant mold is the pastoral executive: the brick-and-mortar man whose memorial is a building program and whose theological concern takes second place to pragmatic interest in shepherding his people.

Such a man is Francis Cardinal Spellman, who this month is celebrating his 75th birthday and his 25th anniversary as Archbishop of New York. Last week nearly 4,000 guests crowded into four ballrooms of the Waldorf-Astoria for a banquet in his honor, and piles of gifts, letters and telegrams spilled across his office desks at 452 Madison Avenue. In part, the tributes came because Spellman is a genuinely warm and kindly man, a gregarious and sociable prelate whose gentle smile and sly Irish wit can charm Presidents as well as plumbers. But there was also the respect paid to an administrative genius whose record can be measured in construction bills and concrete growth.

"Cardinal Moneybags." When Pope Pius XII named Spellman as its archbishop in 1939, New York was probably the richest see in the U.S.; it is now the richest in the world. Spellman's spiritual empire, running from Staten Island to the Catskills of Ulster County, has almost doubled in size, to 1,782,000 faithful. To serve his growing congregation, Spellman has built 37 new churches, 130 schools and five hospitals (including the New York Foundling Hospital, his favorite charity); almost every year he is responsible for $90 million worth of construction. Much of this he managed by consolidating all parish building programs into his own hands, thereby getting better interest rates from bankers.

Spellman's influence, however, goes well beyond his diocese. As the Pope's Military Vicar in charge of the nation's 920 Catholic chaplains, he is bishop of the Catholics in the armed forces. He also bears a major responsibility for the church's largest charity, Catholic Relief Services, a $176 million foreign aid program that sends food and clothing to 79 countries around the world, from Moslem Algeria to Catholic Peru. In grudging tribute to his financial power and financial skill, Rome sometimes calls him "Cardinal Moneybags."

Admiration & Criticism. It also respects him as the second most powerful man in the church. One reason has been his close personal friendship with Pope Pius XII and now with Pope Paul. Another is his unique ability to help out the church in useful ways that seldom get into print. After World War II, he convinced Pius of the need to internationalize the Vatican's Italy-centered investments. Later, they say in Rome, he donated more than $1,000,000 to help the Holy See pay for the Ecumenical Council. Spellman would never be so indiscreet as to interfere in another bishop's diocese—yet the Vatican seldom takes any action affecting the U.S. church without an inquiry first to the "powerhouse" in Manhattan.