Whispers in the loggia: The Last Prince of Baltimore, Cardinal Keeler Dies at 86

In the annals of the Premier See of these United States, two figures form the center of a legend born alongside the Constitution. Yet even for all John Carroll and James Gibbons would bequeath to posterity, it’d fall to yet another to bring the Maryland Tradition of American Catholicism into the 21st century.

And this morning, the cleric who made that mission his own has been called to his rest.

The only man ever to wear both the badge of an Eagle Scout and the scarlet of a Roman prince, William Henry Keeler – 14th archbishop of Baltimore, ninth President of the nation’s bench, only the third of Carroll’s heirs to be raised to the papal Senate – died overnight at 86 after a long, gradual illness.

Named to Charm City in 1989 – amid the 200th anniversary of the nation’s founding diocese – Keeler’s two-decade tenure at the helm of the Birdland fold didn’t merely burnish the crown jewel he inherited, but served to achieve some history of its own. Above all else, the cardinal brought a Pope to Charm City, as now-St John Paul II celebrated Mass at Camden Yards and lunched with the homeless at Our Daily Bread on the lone sunny day of his final Stateside tour in 1995. And at his ministry's end, only after a sound footing for the archdiocese’s schools and charities was ensured, the third cardinal pursued his dream project, restoring the nation’s first cathedral – the Basilica of the Assumption – to the simple splendor with which it was conceived, stripping away a century’s worth of darkness to the recapture the vision Carroll hatched with Benjamin Latrobe: Catholicism's tribute to the American experiment of religious freedom, a dream fused together in light.

A son of Harrisburg and Philadelphia ordained in 1955, the future cardinal attracted early notice on the Roman scene, so much so that, as a student-priest, he was dubbed “Ruby Keeler” given the shoes that went with the red hat in that era. Not even ten years in, Keeler would have his first brush with the spotlight during the Second Vatican Council as the secretary who led the daily English-language press briefings, a heady task given the involvement of 2,500 bishops and the Council's business being conducted entirely in Latin. Despite being almost painfully shy – a trait that expressed itself in a soft-spoken and dignified reserve – the experience birthed a driven interest in and support of the press which would remain for the rest of his life.

The lone prelate to lead the nation's hierarchy both as its first among equals as well as by election – likewise the first conference president to be given the red hat while at its helm – the Keeler legacy on the broad stage is most intimately linked to another lifelong commitment: interfaith relations, most intensely with the Jewish community. Having remained the church's lead figure on the national Catholic-Jewish dialogue well into his retirement, it was at Keeler's behest that, in the 1990s, John Paul conferred the first papal knighthoods on non-Catholics to two rabbis who were the cardinal's counterparts in the effort. Such was the prelate's devotion to the cause that – even for an adherence to history that could border on the fanatical – Keeler broke from the 19th century aesthetic of the "Gibbons Room" of the Archbishop's Residence on Charles Street to place one modern item within it: a menorah strikingly sculpted with six human figures, each one representing a million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

As with every prelate of his generation, Keeler's greatest challenge at home erupted in 2002 with the national revelations of clergy sex-abuse and cover-up. Yet while the storm placed an eternal cloud over several of his fellow cardinals and a host of other prelates, the unique response from Baltimore quickly made the scandal a local afterthought.

In a marked contrast to most places, where prosecutors or plaintiffs’ attorneys resorted to legal force to attain disclosures from the Chanceries, Keeler ordered the publication of the archdiocese's complete record of accused priests – a list of 57 names, their assignments, and the dates and nature of the alleged misconduct, all of it stretching back to the 1950s.

For much of the Baltimore presbyterate, the revelation – especially the list’s inclusion of the dead – proved an unforgiveable act of betrayal by their archbishop, who nonetheless remained unswayed in his conviction that it was “the right thing to do.” Almost 15 years later, his archdiocese spared the tide of charges, litigation and distrust which would devastate much of the East, the wisdom of the act almost speaks for itself… and in the eyes of those closest to the cardinal, his move to publish remains “his finest hour.”

All these aspects, however – the commitment to transparency and dialogue, the sense of history and community – are merely parts of a piece, its core found in the golden thread Keeler viewed as his unique treasure not merely to guard, but revive for a new age.

Developing – more to come.

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by Rocco Palmo via Whispers in the Loggia