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By Root 1811 0

He shrugged and sat back comfortably, the flesh of his neck falling down over his stiff white and black collar, and said that he had no idea how easy it would be to lay hands on such a thing. He supposed any capable jeweler could manufacture one. Obviously, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the man; but just for the hell of it I decided to ask if he was aware of Paul Kelly’s partially realized threat to stir up trouble among the immigrant communities over the issue of the murders. Potter said he was barely aware of Mr. Kelly at all, much less of any threats he might have made; being as the Episcopal Church had very few members among what Potter called the “recently arrived citizens of the city,” little attention would have been paid to such matters by either himself or his subordinates. Potter concluded by suggesting that I visit Archbishop Corrigan, who had much more contact with such groups and neighborhoods. I told him that Corrigan’s residence was my next stop, and was on my way.

I’ll admit that I’d been in a suspicious mood even before I encountered Potter; but his very un-churchmanlike lack of interest only made me more so. Where was any sense of concern for the victims of the crimes? Where was the pledge that if there was anything he could do, I had only to ask? Where was the head-shaking wish that the fiendish murderer be captured, and the fervent pressing of the flesh on that wish?

All these, I soon learned, were at Archbishop Corrigan’s residence, behind the almost-completed magnificence of the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets. The new St. Pat’s was unarguable evidence that the architect James Renwick had only been warming up when he’d designed our downtown neighbor, Grace Church. The enormous spires, archways, stained glass windows, and brass doors of St. Patrick’s were on a scale, and had been executed with a speed, unheard-of even in New York. And, in good Catholic tradition, all the considerable work had been paid for not by the kind of crass business ventures that lined the coffers of the Episcopal Church, but by subscriptions from the faithful—including wave after wave of Irish, Italian, and other Catholic immigrants, whose numbers were rapidly swelling the power of a religion which, in the first days of the republic, had been frowned on by nearly all the populace.

Archbishop Corrigan was far more animated and engaging than Potter had been; a man who lives by subscriptions, I reasoned as I met him, has little choice but to be. He took me on a short tour of the cathedral, and outlined all the work that was still to be done: the Stations of the Cross needed to be installed, the Ladies’ Chapel was as yet unbuilt, the chimes had to be paid for, and the spires required crowning. I began to think that he was going to ask me for a contribution; but I soon discovered that all this was just a buildup to a visit to the Catholic Orphan Society, where I was to be shown that the Church had another side. The Society was located across Fifty-first Street, in a four-story building with a pleasant front yard and plenty of well-behaved children wandering about. Corrigan took me there, he said, because he wanted me to understand the depth of the Church’s commitment to lost and abandoned children in New York; they were avowedly just as important to him as the great cathedral in whose shadow the Orphan Society stood.

All of which was fine—except that I suddenly realized I hadn’t asked him anything yet. This very pleasant, welcoming, deep-feeling fellow knew why I was there, a fact that became especially apparent after I started putting the same questions I’d asked Potter to him. Corrigan answered as if he’d been carefully rehearsed: Oh, yes, it was a terrible shame about those murdered boys; horrible; he couldn’t imagine why anyone purporting to be a Catholic priest would be interfering (though he didn’t seem very shocked by the suggestion); certainly, he would make inquiries, but he could assure me…On and on. I finally spared him any further effort by pleading a pressing