Timothy Dolan

I received many letters of love and concern during my husband's protracted and complicated hospitalization at Mayo Clinic in the last half of 2004, but none more touching or meaningful than one which arrived in early December of that year. As summer gave way to fall, and fall to winter, the march of months seemed incomprehensible, otherworldly, an enormous weight, as we fought for a life worth saving in our frozen corner of southeastern Minnesota.

The Christmas holidays were fast approaching when someone a state away, across the rugged and beautiful Mississippi River, chose to sit down and and pen a note of unconditional prayerful support on the Feast of Juan Diego, while attending a board meeting that my husband was missing on the bluffs overlooking La Crosse. As pen to paper, it was priceless, personal, and will be forever treasured for its ability to lift my spirits at a time of enormous adversity.

Opening that letter meant the world to me. Someone out there who wasn't compelled to write the note was moved to do so, actually cared, and was reaching out, straight to the heart of our difficult battle.

That person was Tim Dolan.

Timothy Michael Dolan was born February 6, 1950, in Saint Louis, Missouri, the first of five children. He studied at Saint Louis Preparatory Seminary and Cardinal Glennon College, where he studied philosophy. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts, he ventured across the sea to Rome to continue his studies at Pontifical North American College and the Angelicum.

In June 1976, he was ordained to the priesthood, and three years later began doctoral work at Catholic University of America. He has served as secretary to the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C., Vice-Rector of Cardinal Glennon Seminary, Adjunct Professor of Theology at St. Louis University, Rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, and teacher at Pontifical Gregorian University and the Angelicum.

He received his episcopal ordination on August 15, 2001, from Archbishop Justin Rigali in Saint Louis, after being appointed by Pope John Paul II to serve as Auxiliary Bishop of Saint Louis.

On June 25, 2002, he became the Tenth Archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a position he has held honorably these past seven years as a man of courage, conviction and compassion.

A week from today, on Easter Wednesday, April 15, 2009, Timothy Michael Dolan, firstborn son of Robert and Shirley Radcliffe Dolan, will be installed in Saint Patrick's Cathedral as Tenth Archbishop of New York.

















Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Never underestimate the power of a written note.


Ad Quem Ibimus. Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.- John 6:68

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

I did not know the rural Wisconsin farm boy, youngest of six children, who entered the seminary, went off to Rome, and was ordained a priest by the late Pope John Paul II.

I met the priest who'd been in Rome as a canon lawyer and became a bishop, only to return to serve the people of his rural homeland in Wisconsin, the descendants of European immigrants in the American heartland along the banks of the Mississippi.

My husband had known Bishop Burke's three predecessors well, Bishops Treacy, Frekking and Paul. We had been given a special blessing by Bishop Paul shortly after our marriage prior to departing on our honeymoon. And my husband had known "Father Burke" prior to his departure to Rome as a member of the Diocese of La Crosse.

But I came to know him shortly after our marriage, meeting him for the first time when we attended an anniversary celebration for Marriage Encounter in Marathon, Wisconsin. I was struck then by his intelligence and the strength of his spirit, and came to know over the subsequent years the great depths of his holiness. Whether vacationing on the beach in Sanibel Island or ministering to his flock in central Wisconsin, he was always that rarest of things, a truly holy man.



It was always clear that God had great things in mind for this servant shepherd. And the Mother of God entrusted him with the great task of building a shrine to bring the faithful to her Son.

Divine providence took him in 2004 from the banks of the Mississippi in Wisconsin to the the banks of the Mississippi in Missouri, when he became Archbishop of Saint Louis, and now takes him again back to Rome, as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the chief judge of the highest canonical court of the Roman Catholic Church and Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis.

On November 20, 2010, he was elevated to the position of cardinal in the Holy Roman Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.



Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke.

He will always be to us a treasured friend, someone tapped on the shoulder by the divine, servant of God and His people, devoted son to a loving mother, a leader, a visionary, an example.

Secundum cor tuum.