Justine Di Filippo
by Renee Di Pietro
perspectives editor
He was one of the three American clerics invited to visit China and discuss religious freedom in January, 1998. He has visited many other nations as a human rights advocate and to survey humanitarian needs.
In July 1999, he was named a member of the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom. In December 2000, President Bill Clinton presented him with the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights.
Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick has a long list of achievements and honors, and last Wednesday, April 17, he added another honor to his list. He did not visit China, Cuba, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, Rwanda or any parts of Eastern Europe, which are all places he has all been before; but on Wednesday he visited Cabrini College.
As a student once of Sister Ursula Infante,foundress of the college, Cardinal McCarrick returned to his teacher’s side to say her funeral mass.
McCarrick was born in New York City on July 7, 1930, to Theodore Egan McCarrick and Margaret McLaughlin. He attended Catholic elementary school, Fordham Preparatory School, Fordham University and studied in Europe. He made up his mind early to become a priest and entered St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, NY, where he earned a Master’s Degree in History in 1958. He went on to earn a second Master’s Degree in Social Sciences and a Ph.D. in Sociology from The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.
He was a founding member of the Papal Foundation, serving as its president since 1997, and was elected one of 15 U.S. bishops to serve as a member of the Synod for America held in 1997, which resulted in the bishops electing him to serve on the Post Synodal Council.
Cardinal McCarrick currently writes a column in The Catholic Standard and Times to share his life experiences and most recent battles, but most importantly to remind the community how much he thinks of them every day.
Pope John Paul II ordained Cardinal McCarrick a cardinal on Jan. 23, 2001, with 36 other cardinals.
