Archbishop Philip Hannan dies at 98
Published: Thursday, September 29, 2011, 6:28 AM Updated: Thursday, September 29, 2011, 6:29 AM
Philip Matthew Hannan, the archbishop who built an ever-widening network of services for the poor during nearly a quarter-century as the pastor of nearly a half-million New Orleans’ Catholics, died Thursday at 3 a.m. at Chateau de Notre Dame, the Archdiocese of New Orleans said. He was 98.
Enlarge TED JACKSON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Philip Hannan retired archbishop of New Orleans, center with former President George H. Bush and Saints Garrett Hartley before the start of the NFC Championship between the New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans Sunday, January 24, 2010. Archbishop Philip Hannan throughout the years gallery (40 photos)
At his death, Archbishop Hannan was the senior archbishop or bishop in the American hierarchy, and the third oldest, behind retired Archbishop Peter Gerety of Newark and retired Bishop Joseph McLaughlin of Buffalo, both also 98.
Archbishop Hannan enjoyed a long and robust public retirement well into his 90s. But though free of major chronic illness, he became more frail year by year. Enfeebled by a series of small strokes, he was hospitalized during a dangerous bout with pneumonia in December.
He was able to return home to his cottage in Covington and live there with assistance. But the illness took a toll and initiated a general decline.
In mid-June, Archbishop Hannan moved to Chateau de Notre Dame, an archdiocesan facility built under his tenure.
There followed occasional brief hospitalizations for support and comfort care, most recently fewer than two weeks ago.
Born in Washington, D.C., Archbishop Hannan came to New Orleans at a moment of crisis in October 1965, in the wake of Hurricane Betsy. He spent nearly 25 years at the head of a regional church with nearly 500,000 Catholics.
Moreover, Archbishop Hannan permanently altered the demographic makeup of the New Orleans area. His decision in 1975 to invite to the city first hundreds, then thousands, of Vietnamese families fleeing the fall of Saigon established the Vietnamese presence here.
“He was a theological conservative and a social liberal,” said Bishop Roger Morin of Biloxi, Miss., who previously served as executive director of the New Orleans archdiocese’s Department of Community Services. “He always heard the cry of the poor and was willing to do whatever was necessary to respond to that call.”
Archbishop Hannan could be a difficult man to classify. For instance, he opposed a 1985 New Orleans city ordinance giving equal rights to gay men and lesbians — but less than a year later, the archdiocese quietly opened Project Lazarus, a home for people suffering from AIDS, most of them gay men.
For most of his career he also supported capital punishment, calling it a deterrent. But he frequently wrote prosecutors requesting that individual prisoners be spared.
“He could get things done that another man might not be able to do,” said the Rev. Edgar Bruns, a former president of Notre Dame Seminary. “He was deeply concerned about trying to assist as much as possible.”
In recognition of his work, Archbishop Hannan received The Times-Picayune Loving Cup for 1982.
Active retirementAnd that work continued into his retirement, when he became the first New Orleans archbishop to remain active in the community after stepping aside. Previously, the service of New Orleans archbishops ended only with their death or transfer.
Archbishop Hannan preached and spoke at a wide variety of functions. He was president of WLAE-TV, the nonprofit station the archdiocese founded and later transferred to the Willwood Foundation, and was co-host of a weekly news program, “Focus,” in which he traveled the globe for news stories, concentrating on the religious implications underlying the news.
Archbishop Hannan showed he could still make news even in retirement. In October 1996, a week before Mary Landrieu faced Woody Jenkins in a hotly disputed contest to choose a successor to U.S. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, Archbishop Hannan called a news conference. He told reporters: “If a person actually believes in Catholic doctrine, I don’t see how they can avoid it being a sin” to vote for Landrieu or President Bill Clinton, then running for re-election, because both favored abortion rights.
His pronouncement was front-page news in the days leading up to the election, but exit polls showed it had little effect on the balloting. Landrieu became Louisiana’s senator.
Sex-abuse scandals
Thirteen years after Archbishop Hannan stepped down, the American church was rocked by revelations across the country that for decades bishops, as a matter of unofficial but uniform practice, labored to suppress allegations of priests molesting children.
In 2003, an internal archdiocesan audit found that from 1950 to the late 1980s — Archbishop Hannan’s tenure occupied about half those years — the local hierarchy had credible evidence that 10 of about 1,100 diocesan priests or deacons had molested children.
That figure turned out to be much lower than in many other cities. But even so, none had come to light while Archbishop Hannan was the local Catholic leader. When such allegations quietly arose in New Orleans, “he did not level with the parishioners,” said Jason Berry, who has written extensively about the subject. “He put a blanket over it.”
In the one controversial case of Hannan’s tenure, the archdiocese discovered in 1988 that the Rev. Dino Cinel, then a faculty member at Tulane University, owned a cache of sexually explicit material, and videotapes of himself having sex with young men in his rectory at St. Rita parish in New Orleans.
Archbishop Hannan notified state prosecutors and also called Cinel, who was vacationing in Rome. He fired Cinel and suggested he stay in Italy.
When the case exploded publicly early in Archbishop Hannan’s retirement, he said he had acted decisively in defense of the church and community. But, particularly because he was already in consultation with the district attorney’s office, others interpreted the move as part of an arrangement with the state to protect Cinel and smother a potentially embarrassing scandal.
Cinel eventually returned to New Orleans and left the priesthood. After the case became public, he was prosecuted and acquitted of criminal charges of possessing child pornography. He now lives in Italy.
The Jumping Padre
Archbishop Hannan was born in Washington on May 20, 1913, the fourth of Frank and Lillian Hannan’s eight children. His father was an Irish immigrant with a third-grade education who prospered as a plumbing contractor.
Young Phil Hannan chose the priesthood over careers in the military, architecture and law. He studied at seminaries in Maryland and Washington, and received a master’s degree from Catholic University in Washington before setting off in 1936 to the North American College in Rome, where he was ordained on Dec. 8, 1939.
By the time he returned to the United States, war was raging in Europe. Father Hannan enlisted in the Army in 1941. He became known as the Jumping Padre of the 82nd Airborne, a paratrooper priest who found shrapnel in his clothes and saw an 88 mm shell explode at his feet.
His experiences in Europe gave him years of stories, an appreciation of the power of military might, and a glimpse of the Russians’ operating style that shaped his world view. Nearly four decades later, it led him to join eight other American bishops in opposing a 1983 pastoral letter that took a stand against nuclear weapons.
Father Hannan returned to Washington in 1946 and was named an auxiliary bishop 10 years later. In a gesture that could be seen as a foreshadowing of his work in New Orleans, he took as his motto, “Charity is the bond of perfection.”
Bond with the Kennedys
In Washington, he met John F. Kennedy, a young member of Congress from Massachusetts, and they became friends. In his memoir, “The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots,” Archbishop Hannan described Kennedy as a “cultural” Catholic whose faith was nonetheless politically problematic at the time. He said Kennedy frequently consulted him — always discreetly — about what the church’s response might be to various policies.
After the president was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, Bishop Hannan was Jacqueline Kennedy’s choice to deliver Kennedy’s eulogy in St. Matthew’s Cathedral. He stood next to her during the graveside service at Arlington National Cemetery. A few weeks later he joined her again in a private second ceremony to re-inter the bodies of a stillborn daughter and an infant son next to her husband.
Slightly more than 30 years later, he presided at her burial at the same Arlington gravesite.
He also was asked to deliver a eulogy for U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in Los Angeles in June 1968 during his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Championed social services
On Sept. 29, 1965, while Bishop Hannan was attending the Second Vatican Council, he was appointed New Orleans’ 11th archbishop, succeeding John Patrick Cody, who had been named Chicago’s prelate.
Archbishop Hannan’s tenure in New Orleans is variously given as 23 or 24 years. The discrepancy rises from the fact that under church law his tenure ended on the day his successor was named in 1988, yet he remained functionally in charge until Archbishop Francis Schulte’s arrival in 1989.
When Archbishop Hannan was installed Oct. 13, 1965, at St. Louis Cathedral, the New Orleans area was still reeling from the damage Hurricane Betsy had inflicted a month earlier.
Archbishop Hannan decided early on that the church should serve the poor. Some programs that are results of his stewardship include:
- Second Harvest, a food bank for nonprofit agencies that distributes food to 41,000 people each week.
- Christopher Homes Inc., a housing agency that provides 1,300 apartments for elderly and low-income residents.
- A greatly expanded Catholic Charities, a collection of 42 ministries that last year distributed $84 million in aid to the poor, elderly and handicapped.
Archbishop Hannan always had explanations for such apparent inconsistencies. His reasoning was well thought-out, Morin said, and once he had reached a decision, he moved on to the next topic.
“He was absolutely decisive,” Morin said, “and would not have doubts about the decisions that he made.”
While he worked long hours — he once described himself as “a drudge by necessity, not preference” — Archbishop Hannan took to New Orleans traditions with a vengeance. He displayed a Zulu coconut and a second-line umbrella on a table just inside his front door, and people sent him all sorts of gifts.
And invitations.
“Year after year, the more he was accepted and became an integral part of the community, everybody would invite him, and he would go,” Morin said. “It became all-consuming because his automatic reaction was to say yes if his calendar allowed the time.”
Survivors include a brother, Jerry Hannan of Washington, and nieces and nephews.
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