NEW YORK
The Province (Canada)
By Rachel Zoll, The Associated Press
March 3, 2013
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Challenging a White House mandate for birth control coverage in health insurance, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan sounded like a general rallying the troops.
“The only thing we’re certainly not prepared to do is give in,” Dolan said at a national bishops’ meeting last November. “We’re not violating our consciences.”
Weeks earlier, he had appeared in a far less formal setting, at New York’s Fordham University with comedian Stephen Colbert. From the 3,000 cheering audience members, one student considering the priesthood asked whether he should date. Dolan said it could help decide the right path, then quipped, “By the way, let me give you the phone numbers of my nieces.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: As the Roman Catholic Church prepares to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, The Associated Press is profiling key cardinals seen as “papabili” — contenders to the throne. In the secretive world of the Vatican, there is no way to know who is in the running, and history has yielded plenty of surprises. But these are the names that have come up time and again in speculation. Today: Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
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Catholic News Service calls him a happy warrior for evangelization. Kean University historian Christopher Bellitto calls him the bear-hug bishop. Dolan, 63, is an upbeat, affable defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and a well-known religious figure in the United States.
He holds a job Pope John Paul II once called “archbishop of the capital of the world.” His colleagues broke with protocol in 2010 and made him president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, instead of elevating the sitting vice-president as expected. And during the 2012 presidential election, Republicans and Democrats competed over which national political convention the cardinal would bless. He did both.
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