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	Pope Names New Archbishop for Baltimore By Debbi Wilgoren Washington Post July 12, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/12/AR2007071200721.html Cardinal William H. Keeler, the longtime archbishop of Baltimore, will retire and be replaced by Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, a former military chaplain who for the last decade headed the Washington-based Archdiocese for Military Services, church officials said. O'Brien was to appear at a news conference this morning at the Baltimore Basilica. He will be the 15th archbishop of Baltimore, a heavily Catholic city rich in church history. John Carroll became the first bishop in the United States when he was appointed bishop of Baltimore in 1789, according to an online history of the Catholic Church's roots in America. That same year, Baltimore was designated the country's first Catholic diocese. Keeler has led the archdiocese, which spans the northern half of Maryland and includes Howard and Anne Arundel counties, since 1989. When he turned 75 years old in March, 2006, Keeler submitted a letter of resignation to Pope Benedict XVI as required by canon law. The pope waited until now to accept the resignation, according to the Web site for the Baltimore archdiocese. As head of the archdiocese, which includes more than 480,000 Catholics, Keeler was an outspoken advocate for people who were sexually abused by members of the clergy. In 2005, he led a dozen other priests in kneeling before 100 people in a Maryland church, including some victims, to recite the confiteor, the traditional Catholic confession of sin. Keeler also published a list of all known priest abusers in the Baltimore archdiocese, which helped break the silence surrounding sexual abuse. At the same time, he and other church leaders lobbied vigorously against proposals to ease the statute of limitations in Maryland for abuse victims to file suit. Keeler was badly injured last October in a car accident in Italy, shattering his ankle. Another passenger in the car, a priest from Harrisburg, Pa., died when their car was hit in the town of Terni. Despite months of recovery and physical therapy, Keeler's gait did not returned to normal. Doctors diagnosed him this spring with normal-pressure hydrocephalus, or pressure caused by fluid in a cavity of his brain. The condition is most common in the elderly and can follow head trauma. Keeler underwent surgery in May to alleviate the problem. O'Brien, 68, was born in the Bronx and educated in Catholic schools there and at St. Joseph's Seminary and College in Yonkers, NY. After he was ordained, he was assigned to West Point Military Academy as a parish priest and military chaplain in 1965. "I was blessing new cadets in May and burying them by December," O'Brien recalls in a biography posted on the Web site of the military archdiocese. "I thought it my duty to be more identified with them." He enlisted in the military for a tour of duty that included time in Vietnam, "where he lived out of helicopters, trying to bring healing to troops tired of the fighting, demoralized by war protests at home, and tempted by easily available drugs," the Web site biography says. When his enlistment ended, O'Brien studied in Rome and spent 20 years in the Archdiocese of New York, before moving to Washington to head the military archdiocese in 1997, the Web site says. On Memorial Day, he attended a military ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, and issued a pastoral message about the Iraq war. The United States "must honestly assess what is achievable in Iraq using the traditional just war principle of 'probability of success,' including the probability of contributing to a responsible transition," he said, according to a June 8 article by the National Catholic Reporter. He said the U.S. and its allies "have a grave responsibility, even at a high cost, to help Iraqis secure and rebuild their nation [unless] . . . a responsible transition is not achievable."
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