By Mark Zimmermann
Catholic News Service
(From the issue of 10/28/04)

"In the name of the priests, deacons, religious and laity of the Diocese of Arlington and in my own name, I offer to His Eminence Theodore Cardinal McCarrick and to all the members of the Church of Washington our heart-felt sympathy on the human loss which they are experiencing in the death of His Eminence James Cardinal Hickey," said Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde.

"Cardinal Hickey was a good and faithful shepherd, integrating in his life and ministry a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the truth with a compassionate and understanding heart," the bishop said.

"In every place in which he served both here in the United States and in Rome, he truly resembled the Good Shepherd. May the Lord Jesus now give him fullness of peace and life in that eternal home to which all of us are journeying, inspired and strengthened by the witness of this devoted and faithful shepherd, a true man of the Church."

In other messages of condolence, New York Cardinal Edward M. Egan called Cardinal Hickey "a devoted pastor of souls whose learning and wisdom did immense good throughout his years as priest and bishop."

Vincentian Father David M. O'Connell, president of The Catholic University of America, said Cardinal Hickey was always a "good shepherd" and noted that as chancellor of the university, a post he automatically held as Washington's archbishop, the cardinal helped strengthen the "bishops' university (as it) entered the new millennium."

Supreme Knight Carl Anderson noted the late prelate belonged to the Knights of Columbus for nearly 50 years, adding that he was "a man of extraordinary faith and ability whose enthusiasm in the service of God was an inspiration to all who had the privilege of knowing him."

Outwardly he was a quiet, soft-spoken man of faith, but behind the scenes Cardinal Hickey was a tireless worker and skilled administrator who built networks of church and community partnerships to serve the poor and to provide better educational opportunities for children.

When he was named Washington's archbishop in 1980, succeeding Cardinal William Baum, challenges that then-Archbishop Hickey would face — and develop outreach for — in the years ahead included rising homelessness, a growing elderly population and a need for new parishes and schools as the area's increasingly diverse population grew steadily in outer regions of the metropolitan area.

Washington also was seeing a tide of Spanish-speaking immigrants coming into the area as they fled war, poverty and instability in Central America.

The archdiocese's tie with that region became even stronger when in December of that year, laywoman Jean Donovan and Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel — whom then-Bishop Hickey of Cleveland had commissioned to serve as missionaries in El Salvador — were murdered along with two other American churchwomen in that war-torn land.

In his small chapel, the Washington prelate always kept photos of his murdered friends as a reminder of how they gave their lives to serve the poor.

A man who grew up in the small town of Midland, Mich., became a force for change in the nation's capital, a man who befriended presidents and diplomats but who felt most at home bringing the sacraments to people at parish Masses and visiting Catholic schoolchildren in their classrooms.

Washington's archbishop, who was made a cardinal in 1988, oversaw the establishment of 16 new parishes or missions; food and shelter programs for the homeless; homes for the frail elderly and residences for active seniors; and numerous educational, medical and legal services for immigrants and the working poor.

"I was always convinced that to be a good priest you had to be concerned for the poor and forgotten. People in those conditions need respect, they need love," the cardinal once said.

As a boy, he had seen how his father, a Depression-era dentist, provided free care for the poor. As archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Hickey convened a group of doctors in his living room to start the Archdiocesan Health Care Network.

By his retirement in 2000, that network of volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists, with participating local hospitals, provided $2 million in free health care to more than 3,000 clients annually.

To deal with major financial challenges confronting Catholic schools he raised $25 million, mostly for scholarship assistance, through a capital campaign in the 1980s. He started a Faith in the City program which had revitalization of the city's Catholic schools as a central focus, and he oversaw the establishment of new schools and expansion of existing ones across the archdiocese.

"We didn't leave the city," the cardinal said. "We consider the city and its children very precious. ... To me, Catholic education is the most valuable gift we can share."

In 1986, in his role as chancellor of Catholic University, he announced the Vatican ruling that Father Charles E. Curran, a professor in the theology department, could no longer teach as a Catholic theologian because of his dissent from church teachings.

In the mid-1980s, under his leadership, the Archdiocese of Washington established one of the first and most comprehensive child protection programs in the country to address the problem of child abuse.

Another hallmark of Cardinal Hickey's tenure was his promotion of vocations.

He once described his own vocation as "the story of a happy, happy priest who simply wants to tell the whole world that the priesthood of our church is a truly important way to serve God, and a way of life on which our Catholic people — and indeed our world — depend so much."

A Michigan native, James Aloysius Hickey was born on Oct. 11, 1920, in Midland. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Saginaw, Mich., on June 15, 1946, and served there as a pastor, vocations director and seminary rector.

He became an auxiliary bishop of Saginaw in 1967. From 1969 to 1974 he was rector of the North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome. In 1974 he was named bishop of Cleveland.

Cardinal Hickey held doctorates in canon law from the Lateran University in Rome and in theology from the Angelicum, also in Rome. He received honorary degrees from nine U.S. colleges and universities.

For the Holy See, Cardinal Hickey served on the Pontifical Council for the Family and on four congregations: for sainthood causes, clergy, Catholic education and institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life.

His death leaves the College of Cardinals with 187 members, of whom 122 are under 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave.