NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
on March 09, 2015

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – It wasn’t always easy being Cardinal Edward Egan.

It was almost as if the former archbishop of New York, who died the other day at the age of 82, had one strike against him before he even set about his work for the archdiocese.

Cardinal Egan arrived as the head of the New York Archdiocese in 2000, following the death of Cardinal John O’Connor.

Those were some pretty big shoes to fill, and in the highest-profile archdiocese in the country, no less. …

In that way, Cardinal Egan has much in common with a pontiff who served during part of his tenure, Pope Benedict XVI, who succeeded the larger-than-life Pope John Paul II and who handed the keys to the kingdom to the gentler, more pastoral Pope Francis.

And, like…