Meet Bishop Malone
By Jay Tokasz
The surprise in Maine among people who worked closely with Bishop Richard J. Malone was that he hadn’t moved sooner to a larger diocese. Malone is a rising star in the rarefied world of the Catholic hierarchy. Not only can he manage people effectively, he radiates confidence in explaining Catholic beliefs under a media microscope. He has juggled a massive reorganization of parishes in the mostly rural Diocese of Portland, while raising more than $40 million in capital funds. He also played a pivotal role in overturning state legislation that allowed gay couples to marry. Fellow bishops from across the country recognize his talents, too; they elected him chairman of a national committee that is examining ways to bring lapsed Catholics back into the fold. “I think within months of his being here, we knew he wasn’t going to be retiring in Maine,” said Sister Rita-Mae Bissonnette, chancellor of the Portland diocese. “He had too many gifts. He was too well-known.” Malone, 66, spent eight years as Portland’s bishop before being selected by Pope Benedict XVI in May to succeed retiring Bishop Edward U. Kmiec in Buffalo. Malone will be installed Friday in St. Joseph Cathedral in an elaborate, tickets-required ceremony featuring more than two dozen prelates from across the country. In addition to a beloved baby grand piano that’s already been hauled up to the second floor of the bishop’s Oakland Place mansion, Malone will bring a high level of intensity to Buffalo, according to people who worked with him in Portland. “He’s got a phenomenal amount of energy,” said Marc R. Mutty, director of the Portland diocese’s office of public policy. Malone also was described as a quick study and effective planner who listens earnestly to people and acts decisively. “He tells you the truth of the situation,” said Barbara Smith, former superintendent of Catholic schools in the Portland diocese. “That kind of authenticity and sincerity and hard work is very evident to people.” Smith and Bissonnette credited Malone with taking on the unenviable task of reconfiguring parishes, as fewer priests became available to staff churches. The diocese went from 135 parishes when Malone began in 2004 to 57 parishes. “It’s not popular. It’s hard,” said Smith. “He’s able to do the hard stuff.” Malone easily could have shelved a plan addressing the diocese’s unwieldy parish configuration that was developed under his predecessor, added Bissonnette. Instead, she said, “he carried us to the next level.” A native of Salem, Mass., Malone grew up in a typical Irish-Catholic family with devout parents, Sam and Helen, and a younger sister, Harriet, who now teaches art at St. John’s Preparatory in Danvers, Mass., where the bishop attended high school as a teenager. Malone first thought of the possibility of the priesthood in fourth or fifth grade, but back then he also was considering careers as a veterinarian, a teacher and an FBI agent, he said. He enrolled in the seminary after high school and was ordained in 1972 by Cardinal Humberto Medeiros. But just two years into his priesthood, Malone said, he was struggling with the calling that earlier had seemed so certain. In particular, Malone found himself attracted to a young woman in the large parish where he was serving as an associate pastor. “So the question arose for me: Is this is a signal that somehow I have taken the wrong road here, that maybe I’m not called to be a celibate priest, that maybe God has called me to be married and a father and all that stuff?” Malone recalled in a recent interview. It bothered him so much that he asked Medeiros for a leave of absence from the priesthood to think things through. Malone ended up teaching at a Catholic high school for a year. The experience became a turning point in his life. He not only returned to the priesthood fully committed, he began to focus on education. During the late 1970s and 1980s, he was a faculty member at St. John Seminary College in Boston and served as chaplain at Wellesley College and Regis College. He also taught at Emmanuel College. He was appointed Catholic chaplain at Harvard University in 1990 and later served as secretary of education in the Archdiocese of Boston. Pope John Paul II named him an auxiliary bishop in 2000, a post that put him in charge of the Boston archdiocese’s south region. Two years later, the archdiocese was in the throes of the devastating clergy sexual abuse scandal that ended up rippling from Boston across many of the nation’s Catholic dioceses. Malone’s superior, Cardinal Bernard Law, resigned in disgrace over the manner in which the hierarchy had handled abuse complaints. Questions arose, too, about Law’s inner circle and what role its members might have played in shuffling abusive priests. Early on in Portland, Malone was peppered with questions about whether he was complicit in the cover-ups. But Malone maintained that he was not in a chancery post where he was responsible for making decisions about clergy placement. Moreover, as auxiliary bishop, he lived and worked in the south region, away from the chancery offices. “I could have made a bad error, too,” he said, “but I just wasn’t in those situations.” Malone’s explanations haven’t convinced his harshest critic, Paul Kendrick, a Catholic parishioner who has spent years advocating on behalf of sexual abuse victims. Almost from the moment of Malone’s arrival in Portland, Kendrick has been a thorn in the bishop’s side, sending emails and contacting reporters to criticize Malone for living alone in a large city mansion, for not being more forthright about abuse by priests in the Portland diocese and for refusing to meet with Kendrick and sex abuse victims. Kendrick said he wants the bishop to be more responsive to victims and to focus the church’s attention on helping the impoverished, instead of acting “like any corporate climber.” “He always looks good on paper,” Kendrick said. “He’s a smart and cunning politician. But he’s not a spiritual leader in my mind.” Malone said he’s been subjected to a “constant barrage of harassment” from Kendrick, whom he also accused of telling “blatant and vicious lies about me.” The dispute got to the point where Portland police served Kendrick with a no-trespass order and a cease-harassment notice. “He will make the claim that because I worked under Cardinal Law that somehow I knew about secret stuff,” said Malone. “Basically he accuses me of guilt by association with Cardinal Law.” “I don’t know what he’s all about, but he’s a real cross for me,” said Malone. “It’s been very painful. It’s not a good feeling, to be lied about.” Even as he takes the reins of the much larger Buffalo diocese, Malone will remain active in Maine, where another referendum vote on same-sex marriage is slated for November. In a highly unusual move, the pope named Malone as apostolic administrator for the Portland diocese, while the Vatican searches for a new bishop there. Typically, a group of priests known as the college of consultors elects a temporary administrator. Vatican officials likely decided that Malone’s political skills were necessary in Maine until the election, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on the Catholic hierarchy. “It shows how seriously the bishops and the Vatican are taking this gay marriage issue,” Reese said. Unlike some bishops, Malone doesn’t shy from the media glare. This past March, he appeared on CNN to defend the church’s position on marriage. In June, he wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times clarifying the church’s new tack in fighting the latest same-sex marriage referendum. In 2009, the Portland diocese poured significant resources into the campaign against gay marriage, which included Malone lending Mutty to Stand for Marriage Maine, a faith-based coalition of same-sex marriage opponents. Mutty recalled his initial discussions with Malone about what level of involvement the diocese would have in opposing gay marriage. “I knew what kind of battle was ahead,” said Mutty, who has been with the diocese in a public policy or communications role for 30 years. “He said, ‘We need to be true to who we are, and we need to defend the rightful place of marriage and carry the burden whatever it may be.’ “I was emboldened by his courage.” Malone received criticism from some Catholics because of the diocese’s prominent role in the 2009 campaign. This time around, the Catholic Church appears to be a less visible presence, but Mutty said the diocese simply moved its efforts in a different direction, trying to better educate Catholic parishioners, who will be a considerable presence at the polls. “One of the concerns [Malone] had was that a lot of the direction the television ads went was more aggressive and confrontational on this issue than the church should be taking,” said Mutty. Malone wanted a more nuanced approach. So, with the help of some priests, he wrote a 24-page pastoral letter proclaiming marriage as a unique, male-female relationship. The document, aimed at Catholics, is in step with Malone’s personality as a teacher, Mutty said. “That’s certainly where his comfort zone is,” he said. Contact: jtokasz@buffnews.com
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