CONNECTICUT
CT Post
Michael P. Mayko
Updated 8:38 pm, Thursday, March 5, 2015
For a dozen years, he served as the face of 460,000 Fairfield County Catholics and brought their presence to Rome.
Cardinal Edward Egan strived to bring more men into the priesthood by establishing the St. John Fisher pre-seminary residence in Trumbull and later Stamford, took control of diminishing diocesan finances by raising $40 million through the Faith in the Future campaign, created the Catherine Dennis Keefe Queen of the Clergy Retired Priests’ residence in Stamford and built St. Catherine Academy, the only private school for special needs children in the state.
He reorganized and expanded Catholic Charities and created outreach programs such as soup kitchens, clinics and housing for AIDS patients. He opened Malta House, a home for pregnant mothers and reorganized the area’s Catholic School system.
But his image was forever bruised by his failure to halt a growing scandal of pedophile priests who invaded the Diocese of Bridgeport, which includes Stamford, Greenwich and Danbury. …
“May he rest in peace,” said John Marshall Lee, a leader in the Voice of the Faithful, Bridgeport chapter. “He was unable to reconcile the tension of his political vision of being a church man with that of being one of the people of God.”
Lee said Egan, as the leader of the Greater Bridgeport Catholic Diocese from 1988-2000, was in a position to halt the pedophile priest scandal that cost the diocese nearly $40 million in damages.
“He missed that opportunity,” Lee said.
And Christopher Caruso, a former state representative, mayoral candidate and staunch Catholic, said there will always be a scar on Egan’s legacy.
“No one can ever question his love for the Church, his defense of the Church,” said Caruso, who attended Egan’s installation as archbishop of New York in 2000. “But his not being more aggressive in acknowledging and correcting the problem was inexcusable.”
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