Cardinal Foley, ‘patriarch of American Catholic press,’ dies

Cardinal John P. Foley, an internationally respected priest-journalist who led the Catholic Church’s social communications council for more than two decades, died Dec. 11 in his native Philadelphia. The 76-year-old cardinal had been battling leukemia.

Cardinal Foley was assistant editor of The Catholic Standard & Times in Philadelphia in the 1960s, completing graduate studies in philosophy in Rome, where he also worked as a reporter. He became editor of the Philadelphia newspaper in 1970 and served in that post until Pope John Paul II named him an archbishop and appointed him head of the social communications council in 1984.

Pope Benedict XVI named him grand master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in 2007, elevating him to the rank of cardinal.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, who succeeded Cardinal Foley in leading the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, called Cardinal Foley the “patriarch of the American Catholic press.”

Archbishop O’Brien first met the future cardinal when the priest interviewed him for a story at the West Point Military Academy, where Archbishop O’Brien was serving as a chaplain. They became friends from that moment on, Archbishop O’Brien said.

“He was very gentle, very sensitive in his interviewing,” Archbishop O’Brien recalled, “but pretty thorough, too. He was a gentleman to begin with and everything built on that. I don’t think he ever intimidated anybody. He was a good reporter as a result.”

Archbishop O’Brien will offer Cardinal Foley’s Dec. 16 funeral at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia. New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan will be the homilist.

During the four years Cardinal Foley led the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, Archbishop O’Brien said, the order grew significantly in lieutenancies and numbers throughout the world – “largely due to his devoted commitment to the Church in the Holy Land and his constant travel.”

Joseph Kirk Ryan, editor of The Dialog in Wilmington and a former managing editor of The Catholic Review, worked as the news editor under Cardinal Foley in Philadelphia. Ryan recalled that his boss was committed to journalistic integrity. When the ACLU was campaigning against city plans to build an altar for a papal Mass in Philadelphia, Cardinal Foley encouraged Ryan to include quotes from the ACLU in his coverage of the issue.

“We ran what the opposition was saying – that the city shouldn’t be spending this money,” Ryan said. “The head of the ACLU later wrote me a letter and she seemed edified that we told both sides of the story.”

Over the last several months, Ryan had been meeting on Saturdays with Cardinal Foley to interview him for a book about his life. Ryan saw his friend’s health deteriorate, but not his spirit.

“He was very at peace,” Ryan said. “He was dying, but he made our meetings a spiritual retreat for me. Even when he was dying, he was happy.”

Christopher Gunty, associate publisher/editor of The Catholic Review, knew Cardinal Foley through the Catholic Press Association. Even after the cardinal went to Rome, he always returned to the United States for the annual CPA convention, Gunty said.

“He always told us how we don’t need to be afraid about being bold in our mission,” Gunty said. “We had a cheerleader for us.”

Gunty remembered recently asking Cardinal Foley to pray for Gunty’s mother-in-law. The cardinal offered the prayers on the spot.

“That was something he said he learned from Pope John Paul II,” Gunty said.

Cardinal Foley’s media-friendly style and quick sense of humor shone in person and throughout the numerous speeches and homilies he delivered around the world. He often spoke of the joys of working for the church, telling his audiences that while the pay often is not great “the benefits are out of this world.”

Addressing the 2010 Synod of Bishops on the Middle East, he said he was convinced that “the continued tension between the Israelis and the Palestinians has contributed greatly to the turmoil in all of the Middle East and also to the growth of Islamic fundamentalism.”

To many, the cardinal was the voice they heard giving commentary during the pope’s Christmas midnight Mass. For 25 years, beginning in 1984, his voice was heard not only in North America, but also Asia, Africa, Europe and, for many years, Australia.

As head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications from 1984 to 2007, the cardinal took the lead in articulating Catholic policy with regard to the media. Under his leadership, the council issued separate documents on ethical standards in advertising, communications and the Internet. It also produced a document denouncing pornography.

The graduate of the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York helped launch the first Catholic program bank for Catholic broadcasters and encouraged efforts to narrow the “digital divide” separating countries where there is widespread access to the Internet and where there is almost none either because of poverty or government efforts to restrict citizens’ access to information.

Catholic News Service contributed to this article.