Dolan forcing city’s elder pastors to retire

By Gary Buiso
New York Post
March 9, 2014

http://nypost.com/2014/03/09/dolan-enforces-age-rule-to-make-citys-elder-pastors-retire/

Rev. Robert O'Connor, pastor at The Church of the Blessed Sacrament, shown inside the church on W. 71st St. He is being forced to retire from his position because of his age.

Some of the city’s most beloved and senior pastors will be forced to leave their flocks under two little-known rules being enforced by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, The Post has learned.

The first edict, taking effect this June, forces priests over age 80 who are administrating parishes to retire, leave their churches and find new digs.

“In order to take on the burdens of being a pastor, which is a very demanding job, we believe that a younger man should take that, and we should not be burdening our senior priests with this kind of responsibility,” New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling told The Post.

Pastors such as Monsignor Robert O’Connor, of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament on the Upper West Side, will have to hit the bricks.

“I’ve been here 29 years, which is a long time, and it becomes like a family,” O’Connor said. “In an ideal world, it would be great to be able to stay here.”

Instead, he’ll soon be hunting for a new gig as an assistant priest.

“I’ll be going around with my résumé . . . I’m an 83-year-old priest!” he said.

Octogenarian priests will still be able to say Mass, hear confessions and perform other sacramental duties.

“They can continue to look for places to live and to work, but it will not be as the administrator of a parish,” said Zwilling, adding the archdiocese will help retired priests find housing in such places as the Cardinal O’Connor Residence in Riverdale.

Parishioners at the Holy Trinity on the Upper West Side — slated to lose Monsignor Thomas Leonard — were aghast.

“It is mind-boggling that the diocese would push out such a wonderful and inspiring leader given the shortage of new, strong, qualified priests. And how hypocritical for a church with such a history of looking the other way for infractions far greater than simply exceeding an arbitrary age limit,” said one parishioner who had been with the church for a decade.

“Should monsignor be pushed out, my family and, I’m sure, many others may need to look elsewhere for a place to worship.”

Leonard, 86, is hoping to land a new job.

“I don’t necessarily want to leave, but I understand. Younger priests feel that older men are holding up their chance to be pastors,” the priest said.

The second rule, quietly executed over the past year by Dolan, reinstates term limits for pastors. They can spend no more than two consecutive six-year tenures at one parish.

The rule was largely ignored by Dolan’s predecessors, John Cardinal O’Connor and Edward Cardinal Egan.

“It helps both the parish and the priest from becoming stale,” Zwilling said, adding the archdiocese is in the middle of “intense” planning for possible changes to all 368 parishes.

“Change is always hard,” he said. “But we would hope [parishioners] would come to understand that this is being done for the benefit of the entire archdiocese and for the priests themselves.”

Additional reporting by Susan Edelman