The Next Cardinal

As a young seminarian at Rome's North American College, Archbishop John Patrick Cody of New Orleans once served Mass for a newly ordained priest named Albert Meyer. Last week Cody, 57, was named to succeed the late Cardinal Meyer as Archbishop of Chicago. As head of the nation's largest archdiocese (2,400,000 Roman Catholics), he is a sure bet to be named the next U.S. cardinal.

American bishops are traditionally better known for their building programs than for their theological skills. Cody is no exception. Son of a St. Louis fireman, he graduated in 1932 from the North American College, traditional breeding ground of bishops. For five years he worked with Giovanni Battista Montini, now Pope Paul VI, as one of the Vatican's assistant secretaries of state. Cody served seven years as an auxiliary bishop in St. Louis and became Bishop of Kansas City St. Joseph in 1956. There he earned a reputation as a tough-minded organization man who could raise $6,000,000 for parochial school expansion in four months.

In 1961 Cody was transferred to New Orleans as coadjutor to ailing Archbishop Joseph Rummel, who died last year, and smoothly accomplished the integration of the largest Catholic school system in the Deep South. Cody also launched another mammoth building program--$34 million invested so far, with $28 million more projected for new high schools. Protestant and Jewish leaders respect him as an ecumenical friend; he helped organize New Orleans' "Operation Understanding," in which city churches are opened for tours by men of other faiths. Cody has been a quiet but effective witness for civil rights--the biggest social problem he will face in Chicago. Three weeks ago he visited the widow of murdered Negro Deputy Sheriff O'Neal Moore in Bogalusa, described him as "a martyr to the cause of racial equality."

Even though he is primarily an administrator rather than a scholar, Cody has three earned doctorates. Theologically, he has the reputation of a conservative who likes priests to do things his way. In Chicago, where priests and laymen were given a free hand to experiment by both Meyer and his predecessor, Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Cody's taut-ship policy might create some strains. A past president of the National Catholic Educational Association, Archbishop Cody has a special interest in schools and will have under his jurisdiction the nation's largest archdiocesan system: 437 elementary and 90 high schools. "I feel that the education of our Catholic youth is one of the most important functions of the church," he says.

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