Anthony Bevilacqua
Anthony Joseph Cardinal Bevilacqua ( born June 17, 1923 in New York City, New York, USA, † January 31, 2012 in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania) was a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia.
Life
Anthony Joseph Bevilacqua came from an Italian immigrant family with eleven children. He attended a parochial school in Brooklyn and won during this time numerous prizes and awards for excellence. In 1943 he entered the seminary of New York in Huntington and studied Catholic theology and philosophy there. In 1949 he received the sacrament of Holy Orders by the Bishop of Brooklyn, Thomas Edmund Molloy. From 1949 to 1953 he served as a curate in two parishes and as a teacher at Cathedral High School. He then completed a postgraduate course in canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he in 1956 with a summa cum laude rated Doctorate in Law. can. completed. He then worked at the Diocesan Court of Brooklyn and studied at the same time political science at Columbia University.
Vice-Chancellor of the Diocese of Brooklyn, he was in 1965, in 1971 he founded the Catholic Office for emigrants and refugees. 1975 Bevilacqua received his doctorate in Queens in addition to the doctor in the Department of Civil Law and obtained the license to practice law for the states of New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1976 he received the appointment as Cancellarius Curiae of the Diocese of Brooklyn. Pope Paul VI. gave him the same year the title of Honorary Prelate of His Holiness. From 1977 to 1980 he also took a teaching position for immigration law at St. John 's University.
On 4 October 1980, he was appointed by Pope John Paul II as Titular Bishop of Aquae Albae in Byzacena and auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Brooklyn. He received his episcopal consecration of the Bishop of Brooklyn, John Francis Mugavero on 24 November 1980. Were co-consecrators John Joseph Snyder, Bishop of Saint Augustine, Florida, and Charles Richard Mulrooney, Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn.
On 10 October 1983 he was appointed head of the Diocese of Pittsburgh was then transferred, the inauguration took place on 12 December of the same year. On December 8, 1987, he was appointed by Pope John Paul II appointed Archbishop of Philadelphia and introduced into the office on 11 February of the following year. He reformed the administration structures and paid particular attention to a vital communication between the parish priests and the diocese line. He appeared on many occasions in public, to engage in conversation with people. Special, who did much to Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Since 1991, he was a cardinal priest with the titular church of the Most Holy Redeemer e Sant'Alfonso in Via Merulana to the College of Cardinals. On 15 July 2003 John Paul II accepted his pre- attached for reasons of age resignation from the office of the Archbishop of Philadelphia. Until the assumption of office of his successor, Justin Francis Rigali, on 7 October of the same year Bevilacqua led the archdiocese as Apostolic Administrator.
Bevilacqua was chairman and member of numerous boards and committees of the U.S. Bishops' Conference. In 1988 he became Apostolic Assessor of Legatus, an international organization of Catholic business leaders. In 2000 he was elected Chairman of The Papal Foundation, an American Foundation for the support of the Holy See. He was Honorary Chairman and Member of the Board of Directors of Franciscan Foundation for the Holy Land.
At the conclave in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II, he did not participate, as he had at that time the age of 80 years already passed.
Honors and Awards
- President's Medal ( 2000, St. John's University (New York))
- St. Thomas More Award for Outstanding Leadership ethics (2000, St. John's University School of Law and Alumni Association)
- Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (2002; Gwynedd Mercy College, Pennsylvania)
- Konstantin Medal (1994 )