NEW JERSEY
The Record
MARCH 24, 2014
BY ALFRED P. DOBLIN
THE RECORD
NEWARK Coadjutor Archbishop Bernard Hebda is loyal. Unfortunately, his loyalty is misplaced.
In an opinion piece published in The Record last Tuesday, Hebda takes Record Staff Writer Jeff Green to task for reporting on the different lifestyle choices made by Hebda and Newark Archbishop John Myers. Hebda is living in three rooms at Seton Hall University, while Myers is adding 3,000 square feet to a 4,500-square-foot home he intends to use as his residence in retirement.
Hebda wrote that Myers has saved the archdiocese much money by choosing to live for 13 years in the cathedral rectory with other priests. According to Hebda, Myers has only two rooms he can call his own and, he said, “they are in a ZIP code that few would consider enviable.”
There was great hope that Hebda, who has been mainly silent during his first six months in the Newark archdiocese, would be a breath of spring after more than a decade of winters of discontent under Myers. The frosty chill induced by Hebda’s opinion piece is palpable.
Myers is the archbishop of Newark. If living within Newark’s city limits is such a sacrifice to either Myers or Hebda, they should leave for more desirable locales. Bishops should be men of God, not men of gold.
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