Benedict Groeschel, 81, Dies; Priest Aided Poor and Drew a TV Flock
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The Rev. Benedict J. Groeschel, known for his efforts on behalf of the poor, at the St. Francis Center in the Bronx in 2007.CreditAndrea Mohin/The New York Times
The Rev. Benedict J. Groeschel, a Franciscan priest and author known in New York City for his efforts on behalf of the poor and familiar to a worldwide television audience as the bearded friar who denounced modernism and news reporting on sexual abuse by priests, died on Friday in Totowa, N.J. He was 81.
The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, a branch of the Franciscan order he helped found in the South Bronx in 1987 to aid poor and homeless people, announced his death, saying he had had a series of strokes in recent years.
Father Groeschel established a many-sided and sometimes contentious public profile during his career as a beloved street priest, civil rights activist, priests’ psychologist, author of religious self-help books and popular host on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), a quasi-official Catholic broadcast system that says it reaches more than 100 million viewers.
Wearing the coarse-wool hooded habit and rope belt of a medieval mendicant, Father Groeschel wrote and spoke passionately to his audience for decades, condemning what he called the hedonism at the core of contemporary culture; sex outside marriage, including masturbation; and a declining level of doctrinal obedience among the faithful.
At the same time, he cut a benevolent figure in the South Bronx, where he lived and worked for many years as a member of St. Crispin’s Friary, the community established by his Franciscan order. (“As a psychologist, I have to say I have a Santa Claus complex,” he told The New York Times in 2007.) He was a presence on the streets by day and on the lecture circuit at night, earning fees that largely paid for the friary’s homeless shelter, food pantry, after-school drop-in center, drug counseling and holiday gift distribution program.
He helped found a pregnancy crisis center, a home for unwed mothers and a treatment facility for wayward teenagers.Beginning in 1973, Father Groeschel was for decades the director of spiritual development for the Archdiocese of New York, a job that drew him into the sexual abuse scandal of the 2000s as a defender of the priesthood.
Beginning in 2002, when a tide of allegations began to emerge, Father Groeschel described the news reports about them as a “media persecution” of the church whose purpose, he told a Yonkers congregation, was “to destroy whatever public influence the church might have.” Many church officials concurred in that view.
In the same speech he said that working with priests as he did, he had seen a side of the story that the newspapers had missed.
“I’ve met with some of those people,” he said, referring to priests accused of abuse, “and they are among the most penitent people I have met in my life. When you pick up the media, you don’t hear about the penitence.”
In 2012, Father Groeschel provoked outrage when he said in an interview that “youngsters” were often to blame when priests abused them. “A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer,” he told National Catholic Register, a Catholic newspaper owned by EWTN.
A spokesman for the New York Archdiocese immediately denounced the comments as “terribly wrong.”
Father Groeschel soon resigned as host of his weekly program on EWTN, “Sunday Night Prime,” and apologized.
“I did not intend to blame the victim,” he said. “A priest — or anyone else — who abuses a minor is always wrong and is always responsible. My mind and my way of expressing myself are not as clear as they used to be.”
His associates pointed to head injuries he had suffered in a 2004 car accident and the strokes he had had since.
After the accident, he told The Times: “They said I would never live. I lived. They said I would never think. I think. They said I would never walk. I walked. They said I would never dance, but I never danced anyway.”
Benedict Joseph Groeschel was born in Jersey City on July 23, 1933, the eldest of six children of Edward and Marjule Smith Groeschel. He attended Catholic schools and entered the novitiate of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars of the Province of St. Joseph in Huntington, Ind., in 1951. He was ordained a Capuchin, one of the many orders of St. Francis, in 1959, serving first as chaplain at Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
He earned a master’s degree in psychology from Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., in 1964 and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1970. He taught pastoral counseling at Iona College and Fordham University.
In the early 1980s, he was selected to prepare a case for Vatican review in support of the canonization of his onetime superior, Cardinal Terence Cooke, documenting what he said was evidence of miracles Cardinal Cooke had performed.
His survivors include two sisters, Marjule Drury and Robin Groeschel, and a brother, Garry.
In a 2007 interview with The Times, Father Groeschel reflected on the wide span of his thinking — from very conservative in religious matters to very activist on issues of social justice. “I used to be a liberal, if liberal means concern for the other guy,” he said. “Now I consider myself a conservative-liberal-traditional-radical-confused person.”
Cardinal Edmund Szoka arriving at a Mass in 2005.CreditAlessandro Bianchi/Reuters
Edmund Szoka, an American cardinal who served as governor and financial administrator of the Vatican and was a confidant of Pope John Paul II, died on Wednesday in Novi, Mich. He was 86.
The Archdiocese of Detroit announced his death.
Appointed a cardinal in 1988 by John Paul, Cardinal Szoka became president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See two years later. The office audits Vatican accounts, approves budgets and handles major financial transactions, such as the buying and selling of property.
As governor of Vatican City, Cardinal Szoka held executive and legislative power. He managed annual budgets and oversaw Vatican buildings and artworks.
Cardinal Szoka grew close to the pope, prayed for him at his deathbed and led a rosary in St. Peter’s Square the night he died.
John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, accepted Cardinal Szoka’s resignation a day after his 79th birthday, in 2006.
Edmund Casimir Szoka was born on Sept. 14, 1927, in Grand Rapids, Mich. His parents were Polish immigrants. His first assignment as a priest, in 1954, was as associate pastor of a parish in the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
After his retirement from active ministry, Cardinal Szoka lived in Northville, Mich., a suburb of Detroit.
Basil A. Paterson, 87, a Power in Harlem With Statewide Reach, Dies
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Basil A. Paterson, then a state senator, with his wife, Portia, and son David in 1970 after winning the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in New York.CreditLarry Morris/The New York Times
Basil A. Paterson, one of the old-guard Democratic leaders who for decades dominated politics in Harlem and influenced black political power in New York City and the state into the 21st century, when he saw his son David A. Paterson rise to the governor’s office, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 87.
His family confirmed his death, at Mt. Sinai Hospital, in a statement released on Thursday. Mr. Paterson lived in Harlem.
Mr. Paterson, a lawyer, labor negotiator and federal mediator who also served as a state senator, a deputy mayor and New York’s secretary of state, got into politics in Harlem in the 1950s and became part of the group of powerful clubhouse leaders known, sometimes derisively and at other times enviously, as the Gang of Four.
The other three were David N. Dinkins, who became the city’s first black mayor; Representative Charles B. Rangel, the dean of the New York State congressional delegation; and Percy E. Sutton, a civil rights leader and longtime Manhattan borough president, who died in 2009.
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Mr. Paterson in 1978, then a deputy mayor.CreditNeal Boenzi/The New York Times
In the 1970s and ’80s, they were kingmakers, selecting and helping to elect many black candidates for legislative and executive offices once deemed beyond the reach of African-Americans, and paving the way for other black aspirants in the nation. The group also dispensed patronage, exercised legislative influence, forged alliances with state and national Democrats, and reaped the rewards of a Harlem political dynasty.
Although Mr. Paterson was one of the savviest veterans of New York’s political wars, he never held high elective office. In the late 1960s he was the state senator for much of Harlem and northern Manhattan, and in 1970 was New York’s first major-party black candidate for lieutenant governor, running on a Democratic ticket headed by Arthur J. Goldberg, the former United States Supreme Court associate justice. They lost to the Republican incumbents, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Lt. Gov. Malcolm Wilson.
Mr. Paterson was Mayor Edward I. Koch’s deputy mayor for labor relations in 1978 and led pivotal contract negotiations with municipal unions in the first year of the Koch administration. He also was Gov. Hugh L. Carey’s secretary of state, largely keeping records of incorporation and licensing, from 1979 to 1982.
After mediating an end to a 46-day strike against scores of private nonprofit hospitals and nursing homes in the city in 1984 — a task that kept him in the headlines for weeks — he flirted with a mayoral race as a consensus candidate put forward by blacks and white liberals opposed to a third term for Mr. Koch. But he withdrew before the primary elections.
In the 1990s, the influence of Mr. Paterson and his old-guard allies waned as blacks left Harlem. While he had promoted the careers of many black officials, he was known to be ambivalent about the political ambitions of his son David, with whom he had always been close. Legally blind from childhood, David Paterson became a lawyer, a state senator, the lieutenant governor and New York’s first black governor in 2008, when Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal.
Associates attributed Basil Paterson’s ambivalence to a father’s instincts to protect a handicapped son from rough politics. But after years of keeping a distance from his son’s political life, Mr. Paterson became his closest confidant after the new governor became entangled in controversies, including domestic abuse charges against a senior aide and perjury accusations in an ethics case involving Yankees tickets.
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Three members of the Gang of Four, from left, Mr. Paterson, Charles Rangel and Percy Sutton, outside City Hall in 1970.CreditNeal Boenzi/The New York Times
Governor Paterson paid a fine in the ethics case, but accusations that he had improperly intervened in the domestic abuse matter lingered even after the aide pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Amid reports of an extramarital affair and other hints of scandal, the governor resisted calls for his resignation. But after a tumultuous two years in office, he decided not to run in 2010 for a full term.
“It’s been very difficult for Basil to watch this happen to his son,” Harold Ickes, a political consultant who had known the Patersons for years, told The New York Times. “David has enormous talents and strengths and also has some weaknesses. Basil is one of the singularly most talented, sophisticated, subtle people I know, and is very wise to the world generally and to the political world in particular.”
Basil Alexander Paterson was born in Manhattan on April 27, 1926, to Caribbean immigrants, Leonard and Evangeline Rondon Paterson. (His father was from the Grenadines, his mother from Jamaica.) He grew up in Harlem, graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1942 and enrolled at St. John’s University. After two years in the Army in World War II, he returned to St. John’s and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1948 and a law degree in 1951.
In 1953, he married Portia Hairston. She survives him, as do David; another son, Daniel; and five grandchildren.
The young lawyer practiced in Harlem, joined civic and community organizations and plunged into Democratic politics. By the early 1960s, he was a rising clubhouse leader along with Mr. Dinkins, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Sutton. His 1964 election as president of the N.A.A.C.P. in Harlem was regarded as the prelude to a political career.
In 1965, he was elected to the State Senate, where he supported special education, divorce reform and other progressive measures. Despite his Roman Catholicism, he was an early supporter of liberalized abortion laws. He was re-elected, but gave up his seat in 1970 to become Mr. Goldberg’s running mate in the race for governor. While his ticket lost, he won an overwhelming primary vote, showing promise as a statewide candidate.
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Mr. Paterson served as a state senator, a deputy mayor and New York’s secretary of state.CreditDon Hogan Charles/The New York Times
But Mr. Paterson was never again on a ballot for public office. He became increasingly involved in labor relations in the 1970s and ’80s, mediating dozens of disputes and representing transit and hospital workers, teachers and others. After serving in the Koch and Carey administrations, he joined the law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, whose clients include scores of labor unions.
Mr. Paterson cited “pressing family problems” in declining to run for mayor in 1984. Months later, his son David quit his job as a prosecutor in Queens to work on Mr. Dinkins’s successful 1985 campaign for the Manhattan borough presidency. That fall, with the backing of Mr. Dinkins and Mr. Sutton, David won the State Senate seat his father had attained 20 years earlier.
In part to avoid conflicts of interest, Basil Paterson for more than 20 years kept a respectful distance from his son’s rising political career, especially after David became lieutenant governor in 2006 on the winning Spitzer ticket.
On March 10, 2008, as a prostitution scandal broke over Mr. Spitzer and it became clear that David would soon be governor, his first call went to his father, who offered simple advice.
“Well,” Basil said, “you say a prayer.”
“I’ve already said a prayer for Eliot,” David replied.
“That’s good. Now you’d better say one for yourself.”
***
Basil Alexander Paterson (April 27, 1926 – April 16, 2014), a labor lawyer, was a longtime political leader in New York and Harlem and the father of the 55th Governor of New York, David Paterson. His mother was Jamaican, and his father was Carriacouan (a person from Carriacou, the largest island of the Grenadine archipelago).
Paterson was born in Harlem on April 27, 1926, the son of Leonard James and Evangeline Alicia (Rondon) Paterson. His father was born on the island of Carriacou in the Grenadines and arrived in the United States aboard the S.S. Vestris on May 16, 1917 in New York City. His mother was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and arrived in the United States on September 9, 1919 aboard the S.S. Vestnorge in Philadelphia with a final destination of New York City. A stenographer by profession, the former Miss Rondon once served as a secretary for Marcus Garvey.
In 1942, at the age of 16, Paterson graduated from De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx.He was shaped by his experiences with racism early on. "I got out of high school when I was 16," Paterson told New York Timescolumnist Bob Herbert,"and the first real job I had was with a wholesale house in the old Port Authority building, down on 18th Street. We'd pack and load these trucks that went up and down in huge elevators. Every year there would be a Christmas party for the employees at some local hotel. Those of us who worked in the shipping department were black. We got paid not to go to the party."He attended college at St. John's University, but his studies were interrupted by a two-year stint in the U.S. Army during World War II.After serving honorably, he returned to St. John's to complete his undergraduate studies. While there he was very active in social and community service organizations, including among others the Kappa Alpha Psifraternity, where he joined the ranks of the Omicron chapter of New York (now at Columbia University)in 1947. Paterson graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in biology in 1948. He was later admitted to St. John's Law School, where he received a Juris Doctordegree in 1951. Paterson became involved in Democratic politics in Harlem in the 1950s and 1960s. A member of the "Gang of Four", along with, former New York Mayor David Dinkins; the late Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton; and Congressman Charles Rangel,Paterson was a leader of the "Harlem Clubhouse", which dominated Harlem politics during and after the 1960s. In 1965, Paterson was elected to the New York State Senaterepresenting the Upper West Sideof New York City and Harlem.He gave up his Senate seat in 1970 to run for Lieutenant Governor of New York,as the running mate of former United States Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.The Goldberg/Paterson ticket lost to the Republican ticket of incumbent Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Lieutenant Governor Malcolm Wilson.In 1978, Paterson was appointed Deputy Mayor of New York City by then Mayor Ed Koch.He stepped down as deputy mayor in 1979 to become Secretary of State for the State of New York, thereby becoming the first African American person to have held the post. He served as Secretary of State until the end of the Hugh Carey administration in 1982. Despite having briefly served in the Koch Administration, Paterson made moves to run for Mayor against Koch as the latter sought a third term, but ultimately chose not to run.Paterson became a member of the law firm of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, P. C., where he was co-chair of the firm'slabor law practice. Paterson was the father of former New York Governor David Paterson, who was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2006 on a ticket with Governor Eliot Spitzer.David Paterson succeeded to the governor's office upon Spitzer's resignation on March 17, 2008. Basil Paterson died April 16, 2014.He was 87.
Josephine "Joe" Obiajulu Okei-Odumakin is a Nigerian women's rights activist. She is the president of the rights groups Women Arise for Change Initiative and the Campaign for Democracy.
Odumakin was born in Zaria, Kaduna, on July 4, 1966. She grew up in a Roman Catholic household. She received a bachelor's degree in English Education in 1987, followed by a master's in Guidance and Counseling and a doctorate in History and Policy of Education from the University of Ilorin. She has frequently been arrested for her activism, especially during the military rule of Ibrahim Babangida, and she met her future husband, Yinak Odumakin, while in prison.
In 2013, Odumakin was presented an International Women of Courage Award from the United States Department of State.
*Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, was born around this year.
Saint David (Welsh: Dewi Sant; c. 500 – c. 589) was a Welsh bishop of Menevia during the 6th century; he was later regarded as a saint and as the patron saint of Wales. David was a native of Wales, and a relatively large amount of information is known about his life. However, his birth date is still uncertain, as suggestions range from 462 to 512. The Welsh annals place his death 569 years after the birth of Christ, but Phillimore's dating revised this to 601.
Many of the traditional tales about David are found in the Buchedd Dewi, a hagiography written by Rhygyfarch in the late 11th century. Rhygyfarch claimed it was based on documents found in the cathedral archives. Modern historians are sceptical of some of its claims: one of Rhygyfarch's aims was to establish some independence for the Welsh church, which had refused the Roman rite until the 8th century and now sought a metropolitan status equal to that of Canterbury. (This may apply to the supposed pilgrimage to Jerusalem where he was anointed as an archbishop by the patriarch).
He became renowned as a teacher and preacher, founding monastic settlements and churches in Wales, Dumnonia, and Brittany. St David's Cathedral stands on the site of the monastery he founded in the Glyn Rhosyn valley of Pembrokeshire. He rose to a bishopric and presided over two synods against Pelagianism: the first at Brefi around 560 and the second at Caerleon (the "Synod of Victory") around 569.
His best-known miracle is said to have taken place when he was preaching in the middle of a large crowd at the Synod of Brefi: the village of Llanddewi Brefi stands on the spot where the ground on which he stood is reputed to have risen up to form a small hill. A white dove, which became his emblem, was seen settling on his shoulder. David is said to have denounced Pelagianism during this incident and he was declared archbishop by popular acclaim according to Rhygyfarch, bringing about the retirement of Dubricius. David's metropolitan status as an archbishopric was later supported by Bernard, Bishop of St. David's, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales.
The Monastic Rule of David prescribed that monks had to pull the plough themselves without draught animals, must drink only water and eat only bread with salt and herbs, and spend the evenings in prayer, reading and writing. No personal possessions were allowed: even to say "my book" was considered an offence. He lived a simple life and practised asceticism, teaching his followers to refrain from eating meat and drinking beer. His symbol, also the symbol of Wales, is the leek (this largely comes from a reference in Shakespeare's Henry V, Act V scene 1).
Rhygyfarch counted Glastonbury Abbey among the churches David founded. Around forty years later William of Malmesbury, believing the Abbey older, said that David visited Glastonbury only to rededicate the Abbey and to donate a travelling altar including a great sapphire. He had had a vision of Jesus who said that "the church had been dedicated long ago by Himself in honour of His Mother, and it was not seemly that it should be re-dedicated by human hands". So David instead commissioned an extension to be built to the abbey, east of the Old Church. (The dimensions of this extension given by William were verified archaeologically in 1921). One manuscript indicates that a sapphire altar was among the items King Henry VIII confiscated from the abbey at its dissolution a thousand years later.
It is claimed that David lived for over 100 years, and that he died on a Tuesday March 1 (now Saint David's Day). It is generally accepted that this was around 590, however, March 1 actually fell on a Tuesday in 589. The monastery is said to have been "filled with angels as Christ received his soul." His last words to his followers were in a sermon on the previous Sunday. The Welsh Life of St David gives these as: "Bydwch lawen a chedwch ych ffyd a'ch cret, a gwnewch y petheu bychein a glywyssawch ac a welsawch gennyf i. A mynheu a gerdaf y fford yd aeth an tadeu idi", which translates as, "Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed, and do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us." "Do ye the little things in life" ("Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd") is today a very well known phrase in Welsh.
David was buried at Saint David's Cathedral at Saint David's, Pembrokeshire, where his shrine was a popular place of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages. During the 10th and 11th centuries the Cathedral was regularly raided by Vikings, who removed the shrine from the church and stripped off the precious metal adornments. In 1275, a new shrine was constructed, the ruined base of which remains to this day, which was originally surmounted by an ornamental wooden canopy with murals of Saint David, Saint Patrick and Saint Denis of France. The relics of Saint David and Saint Justinian were kept in a portable casket on the stone base of the shrine. It was at this shrine that Edward I came to pray in 1284. During the reformation Bishop Barlow (1536–48), a staunch Protestant, stripped the shrine of its jewels and confiscated the relics of David and Justinian.
David's popularity in Wales is shown by the Armes Prydein Fawr, of around 930, a popular poem which prophesied that in the future, when all might seem lost, the Cymry (the Welsh people) would unite behind the standard of David to defeat the English; "A lluman glân Dewi a ddyrchafant" ("And they will raise the pure banner of Dewi"). Unlike many contemporary "saints" of Wales, David was officially recognized at the Vatican by Pope Callixtus II in 1120, thanks to the work of Bernard, Bishop of Saint David's.
David's life and teachings have inspired a choral work by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, Dewi Sant. It is a seven-movement work best known for the classical crossover series Adiemus, which intersperses movements reflecting the themes of David's last sermon with those drawing from three Psalms. An oratorio by another Welsh composer Arwel Hughes, also entitled Dewi Sant, was composed in 1950.
Saint David is also thought to be associated with corpse candles, lights that would warn of the imminent death of a member of the community. The story goes that David prayed for his people to have some warning of their death, so that they could prepare themselves. In a vision, David's wish was granted and told that from then on, people who lived in the land of Dewi Sant (Saint David) "would be forewarned by the dim light of mysterious tapers when and where the death might be expected." The color and/or size of the tapers indicated whether the person to die would be a woman, man, or child.
In the 2004 edition of the Roman Martyrology, David is listed under 1 March with the Latin name Dávidis. He is recognized as bishop of Menevia in Wales who governed his monastery following the example of the Eastern Fathers. Through his leadership, many monks went forth to evangelize Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Armorica (Brittany and surrounding provinces).
