Cardinal Timothy Dolan reacts to Pope Francis’s death at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, New York.
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00:00Good morning everybody, have a nice day.
00:30Happy Easter.
00:32Thanks for showing up.
00:34Oh, there they are.
00:36Happy Easter, everybody.
00:37Good morning.
00:39Thank you for showing up.
00:40This gives me the chance to express publicly the sadness that we all feel at the passing
00:46of our beloved Holy Father, Pope Francis.
00:49And yet, also to try to give some expression to the hope that was crystallized yesterday
00:55morning, Easter morning, the hope of the resurrection.
00:59And to express gratitude to all of you and to this community that already is beginning
01:06to express sympathy and condolences to the Catholic family.
01:10So thank you.
01:12Can I just, look, I'm not much if I'm not a preacher.
01:16So here's the scoop.
01:18Get this.
01:19I get up.
01:21Joe Zwilling, my faithful communications man, wakes me up a little after four to tell me the
01:28somber news that the Holy Father had gone to the Lord.
01:31And so I turn to the Bible.
01:36We priests and bishops make a promise that every day we say what we call our divine office.
01:41And listen, here's the reading for today.
01:44It comes from St. Peter, whom we Catholics cherished as the first pope, the first bishop of Rome, named
01:53by Jesus when he said, you are Peter.
01:55And on this rock, I will build my church and I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
02:00Listen what Peter writes.
02:02Praise be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us new birth,
02:09a birth unto hope which draws its life from the resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
02:15a birth to an imperishable inheritance, incapable of fading or defilement, which is kept in heaven for you.
02:22Is that not providential, Joe?
02:24Is that not providential?
02:26That would be the passage from the Holy Bible that we would contemplate on this Easter Monday.
02:33And it says it all.
02:35This is, you know, in Italy, they call this la festa degli angeli, lunati degli angeli, the Monday of the angels, the day after Easter,
02:47because this is the day that the angels, we remember the angels announcing the resurrection.
02:52And remember what the angels said to the women.
02:54Why are you looking for the living among the dead?
02:57We're convinced that even though Pope Francis has passed over, passed over from this life to the next, he still lives.
03:06He still lives.
03:07Even though we have rock solid confidence in the mercy of Jesus, we never take it for granted.
03:13So we ask mercy upon his noble, eternal soul.
03:17You bet we do.
03:18He'd want us to.
03:19He was such an eloquent preacher in divine mercy.
03:22But we also offer gratitude to God for the gift, the gift that he was.
03:27We don't call him Holy Father for nothing.
03:30He's the father of our family.
03:32And there's a death in the family.
03:34And we're saddened.
03:36We use a Latin phrase these days, starting about five hours ago.
03:42Sede Bacante, the chair is empty.
03:47The empty chair.
03:49The chair of Peter is empty.
03:52Sede Bacante.
03:54All right.
03:55That's the chair he sat in when he visited New York.
03:59That's his portrait, obviously.
04:01That's the cross he carried.
04:03The chalice, the chalice that he gave me.
04:06Remember at Madison Square Garden?
04:08That's the chalice he gave me.
04:09So we have vivid, grateful memories of him.
04:12And I'm just so happy that you all are here.
04:15We couldn't, we can never choreograph our own birth or death, can we?
04:21That's always in God's hands.
04:23But if you could choreograph it, you couldn't choreograph it any better.
04:28Than what happened.
04:30The last time we saw him, Easter Sunday.
04:33The last words of blessed Easter, as he gave us his blessing.
04:38You couldn't, the day that we believe Jesus rose from the dead and shares that victory with us.
04:44In which we trust by divine mercy.
04:46Pope Francis now shares an abundance.
04:49You couldn't have choreographed it better.
04:51And we thank him for that.
04:53The way he lived and the way he died, he was a great teacher.
04:57A great teacher, a great teacher, which the Pope is always called to be.
05:02Thank you again for being here.
05:03Stick with me in the coming days if I can be of any service to you.
05:07Because I just appreciate you and the possibility of speaking to the wider community.
05:12Thank you, everybody.
05:13Joe, what do you do now?
05:15Question or two?
05:16Yes.
05:17Hi, Juliet.
05:18How you been?
05:19I'm okay.
05:20How are you?
05:21Likewise.
05:22Thank you very much.
05:23Happy Passover.
05:24Happy Easter.
05:25If you could talk about his stewardship and what he meant to Catholics and what he brought
05:31to the papacy.
05:32I love that word stewardship.
05:34Thanks for using it.
05:35Stewardship means we're aware, gratefully aware of the gifts that God has given us.
05:39Humbly aware.
05:40And we try to use it to the best of our ability.
05:43And he was a wonderful steward of the gifts that God gave him.
05:49I remember right after I was there in 2013 at the conclave and we elected him.
05:54And when we all left after we had blessed the crowd and we went over the Doma Santa Marta
05:59for lunch, and obviously he did the opening prayer, but before he's looking out at all
06:05of us and he says, God forgive you for what you did.
06:09So there was a humility and a sense of humor there from the beginning.
06:14Those were gifts that he had.
06:16He'd be the first to admit, you know, when you think of the towering intellects of John
06:21Paul II and Benedict XVI.
06:24He'd be the first to admit that perhaps the abundant gifts that God had given him were
06:29evident elsewhere in his simplicity, in his humility, in his easy going-ness.
06:35These were, these were, boy, these were gifts that he stewarded so well.
06:43But yet here's a, here's a biggie too.
06:46He taught us, he taught us at the end by allowing us to watch him die.
06:52He taught us that, he taught us that who we are is more important than what we can do.
07:01He couldn't do much.
07:02He could barely raise his hand yesterday.
07:04Did you see?
07:05He could barely speak.
07:07He couldn't do much.
07:08But what he was as a child of God created in God's image and likeness, destined for all eternity,
07:16given the high office of the successor of Peter, what he was was so much more important than what he could do.
07:24All right.
07:25He did a lot, believe me.
07:27But in those final months, I think that's when he had the most eloquent pulpit ever.
07:31So, thanks.
07:33All right.
07:34Good question.
07:35Yeah, thank you.
07:36What's the next step for you?
07:37When do you go to Rome?
07:39The next step for me is to pack.
07:41All right.
07:42So, this is interesting because I was to leave for Rome tomorrow anyway with about 200 pilgrims
07:49from the Archdiocese of New York at the invitation of Pope Francis.
07:53This is the Jubilee year, 2025.
07:55Pope Francis had invited people from all over the world to visit the city of Peter and Paul.
08:00So, I said, let's go.
08:02Let's take the invitation of Pope Francis seriously.
08:04So, we start our pilgrimage.
08:06I'm leaving tomorrow on that pilgrimage.
08:08So, kind of providential, kind of opportune.
08:12Is there any schedule yet for conflict?
08:15No.
08:16No.
08:17We got a text.
08:18See how modern, we used to get telegrams.
08:21We got a text announcing to the College of Cardinals that the Holy Father had passed
08:26over.
08:27But we haven't gotten any other further information on the protocol.
08:31The protocol is pretty well set down, as you know.
08:33There will be some days of mourning.
08:35The funeral continued days of mourning.
08:38The Cardinals would then meet in what they call the congregational meetings every day.
08:42And the conclave would then begin.
08:44So, thank you everybody.
08:46Stick with me.
08:47Anybody bring donuts or anything?
08:50Cardinal Dolan, can I ask you a question?
08:52If you can just share a personal memory that you had.
08:55Your face sort of lit up when you talked about the chalice that he gave you.
08:58Yeah, see.
08:59What do you fondly remember?
09:00We've heard you talk about him as the head of the church, right?
09:03But what about you on a personal level?
09:05I remember when he called me when my mom died.
09:09I remember when he called me during COVID to find out how God's people here in New York were doing.
09:17I remember when I was in Rome on October 7th after the vicious attack on the people of Israel.
09:26When he called me when we were there together, he called me up at the Senate and he said,
09:32How is the Jewish community in New York?
09:36And give them my love and my solidarity.
09:39These are, I remember when I first was over in Rome after he was Pope,
09:45when I told him about my brother-in-law, Fred, who was dying of cancer.
09:50And he said, I will write him a note.
09:53Tell me what to write him in English.
09:55I remember that note being near Fred's casket when he died.
09:59Those are those touching moments.
10:01He was a real father, see?
10:02Yeah.
10:03He's a successor of Peter, but he's also our Holy Father.
10:06Thanks for asking.
10:09All right.
10:10Any other, just one more question?
10:12Was she the dean or what?
10:13You're like Helen Thomas at the greenhouse or something.
10:16I'll take that.
10:18Any recollections that you have of his visit to New York?
10:21What that was like?
10:22Yeah, you know, see, he had never been to New York before.
10:24Right.
10:25And he was, he was overwhelmed.
10:27He was overwhelmed just by the size of the city.
10:30And he, I remember when I was jammed into the back of that little Fiat,
10:34he, he said, what are all those buildings?
10:36They said, Holy Father, that's where people live.
10:38And he was just looking right.
10:40He was also, he was also amazed at the enthusiastic reception that he got.
10:46He said, I remember as we got out of the Popemobile in front of St. Patrick's after that tumultuous drive down Fifth Avenue.
10:55He said, I thought Americans didn't like religion.
10:58That was the caricature that we have.
11:00We know how different.
11:02That's not true at all.
11:03He was overwhelmed by the warmth and the embrace of the city.
11:06And some personal memories.
11:08I'll be thinking of a lot of them.
11:10All right.
11:11Thank you very much.
11:13All right.
11:43That's amazing.
11:44I heard you.
11:45I got a movement.
11:49What you get?
11:50I appreciate it.
11:53You're welcome.
11:54I appreciate it.
11:56Oh my God, no.
12:00Yeah, sure.
12:02I hope I wasn't in the way.