When Bishop Bevilacqua was announced as the tenth bishop of Pittsburgh, the general reaction here was "Who's he?" We had been spoiled by having Bishop Leonard, born in the Hill District and a lifelong Pittsburgher, as our own shepherd for 15 years. Bevilacqua came from "faraway" Brooklyn, New York, speaking in a funny accent (as if yinzers in the 'Burg had any right to criticize an outsider).
He did not exactly make an immediate positive impact. In public the bishop's natural shyness and caution came across as stiff, formal and off-putting. (True story. One time in St. Mary of Mercy Church I served as his master of ceremony. After the opening song, he went to the presider's chair. I held the sacramentary for him, as I was instructed, open to the first page. He made the sign of the Cross, said, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The people replied, "Amen." And then I turned the page so the bishop could read from the text without looking up, "Peace be with you.")
When Bevilacqua chose a religious order priest as his personal secretary a few weeks after his installation, the Pittsburgh priests were up in arms. What, he couldn't choose one of us to serve in his office? (As it turned out, the religious order priest's Roman contacts did not help him from being horribly disorganized. He moved on to another assignment after six months, and Bevi chose Father Tom Tobin as his secretary. Tom restored order to his office, and later was named our auxiliary bishop.)
And then there was the debacle about "viri" vs. "homines," or for those of you without training in Latin, the great footwashing fiasco. One day prior to Lent Bishop Bevilacqua send a letter stating that only men could have their feet washed in the "mandatum" ceremony, at the Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper. He based this decision on the gospel account that Jesus only washed the feet of his twelve (male) apostles at the Last Supper. This command overturned local custom in our parishes of washing the feet of twelve parishioners, men and women, younger and older. Whether Bevi was currying favor in Rome, or just expressing his opinion, his announcement came out of the blue.
(In response to the outcry, most of the pastors refused to carry out a "male only" mandatum in the liturgy, and just deleted the ceremony. A few pastors washed hands instead. Bevi eventually asked for a clarification on his ruling from the national conference of Catholic bishops's liturgy committee. A year later came the reply: local custom is OK. There is no need to be literal about whose feet are washed. "Homines" [persons] trumped "viri" [males]. Bevi backed down, and after newly-appointed Bishop Wuerl washed the feet of six women and six men at St. Paul Cathedral, we all went back to normal on Holy Thursday.)
Each priest's relationship to his bishop is unique, whether distant or close, warm or cold. The general sense I had in the Diocese of Pittsburgh when Bevi was announced as the 11th archbishop of Philadelphia in fall 1987 was, "That's where he was headed all along. Good riddance." Our provincialism was expressed to me by Father Roy Getty, longtime pastor of St. Sebastian, Ross, when I bumped into him outside a funeral home hours after Bishop Wuerl was announced as Bevi's successor. "At last we got one of our own again."
But despite the negative pubicity and not-very-warm reception by the priests, my limited contacts with Bevi were good.
The biggest one was indirect but significant to me. Not long after Bevi came, he appointed Father John Kozar as pastor of St. Mary of Mercy Church, Downtown. He told John he wanted a more active Catholic presence in the Golden Triangle, with its tens of thousands of workers. In an unheard of move, Bevi gave John carte blanche to pick a parochial vicar to assist him, and to invite any other priests to live with him in the rectory. So in September 1984 I got a call from John, inviting me out to lunch. I barely knew John, and had never had another priest take me to lunch. But I had gone on one of John's annual 17-day mission trips to Peru a year earlier, visiting Father Jules Roos and the maternity hospital in Chimbote. John explained he liked what he saw in me when we were in Peru. He wanted me to join him in ministry Downtown. I was startled, yet very pleased. I readily agreed, with one condition. I had begun my Ph.D. studies at Duquesne University, and I didn't want to end these. John said he wanted me to continue my studies, and in fact he felt the parish would benefit from my studies. John said he also invited his friend Father Ron Lengwin and Father Charles Bober to join us in residence at the rectory. The three of us moved into St. Mary of Mercy Rectory on December 8, 1984. So began six very happy years with a great and convivial group of priests, a unique parish, and most interesting and engaging urban ministry. Along the way I was able to get to know the chancery priests, who ate lunch daily in the rectory lunchroom. These contacts were beneficial when I later served in the diocesan social concerns office. And I was able to complete my doctorate at Duquesne.
During Bevi's tenure I was serving on the Priest Council. The issue of the age of confirmation came up, as the national conference of Catholic bishops had ruled that there would be no national uniform age. Rather, each diocese and bishop had to make a decision, in light of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Bishop Bevilacqua asked me to chair a committee to review the law, theology, liturgy and customs, and to make a recommendation to the Priest Council. I put together a committee, working closely with Father Eric Diskin, then head of the liturgy office.
Our committee debated between the two prevailing theories: "maturing into adult Christians," which argued for an older age, usually junior or senior in high school, and "sacrament of initiation," which argued for a younger age, placing confirmation after baptism but before first Holy Communion. Our committee was persuaded to buck the catechetical leaning to an older age, and on the basis of history and liturgy, we made an unconventional recommendation to have pastors confirm children in the third grade, and then in the same Mass have the children receive their first Holy Communion. Bishops would no longer be the regular minister of Confirmation in this plan. We felt this was consistent with the practice of the sacraments of initiation in the R.C.I.A., and gave greater emphasis to the need for lifelong formation and grounding in the Catholic faith.
Well, our proposal was too novel for the Priest Council to accept. A few months after our presentation Bevi went to Philadelphia. But attentively listening to our proposal that day was Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Bosco. Two years later the pope named him bishop of Greensburg. He remembered our proposal, and began to implement it there. Also, through the intervention of the late Father Frank Sokol, our proposal was included in a 1990 book, When Should We Confirm?, published by Liturgy Training Publications of Chicago. I still believe our conclusion was correct -- just a few decades ahead of its time.
I doubt that any of us in Pittsburgh got to see the "real" Bevi, who was lonely in Pittsburgh, away from his large Italian family (one of 13 children, with loads of nieces and nephews) in New York and elsewhere. As the obituaries have recounted, his 15 years of dedicated service in the archdiocese of Philadelphia will always be overshadowed by what he did, or didn't do, regarding the clergy abuse scandal.
But in my own small way I remember Bevi fondly. One day when I was at St. Mary of Mercy I got a call from the bishop's office. They needed someone to drive him to the Catholic Charities's annual dinner the next evening. (I guess they went through the whole clergy book before coming to me!) I picked him up in the tomb-like garage under the diocesan building, and drove him to the hotel across from Epiphany Church. I was instructed to take him to a room in the hotel, where he would put on his ceremonial robes, before taking him into the banquet hall. As I placed his suitcases on the bed, I felt so awkward. I didn't know the skull-cap from the cassock from the pectoral cross. He saw my embarrassment, showed me how it all went on, and laughed about his "Batman" suit. It was obvious he didn't take himself too seriously.
May you rest in peace, Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, servant of the church and brother in Christ.
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