Let me share with you a copy of Edwin Cardinal O’Brien’s homily
from St. Patrick’s Day Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Here is
an excerpt: It was Archbishop John Hughes, Irish born, who to
the consternation of many laid the cornerstone for this
Cathedral on August 15, 1859. The City and the Nation were at
that time in a deep financial depression: bank closures and
unemployment were rampant. And the site he chose to build was
well north of the then bustling heart of New York. His whole
plan was called Hughes’ Folly, so unrealistic were the finances
as well as in the timing and the choice of this very location.
Nevertheless, the dauntless Archbishop, with prophetic vision
and typically Irish determination—what others might call
stubbornness, insisted on the need, to erect quote “a Cathedral
in the City of New York that may be worthy of our increasing
numbers, intelligence and wealth as a religious community, and
as a public architectural monument to the present and
prospective greatness of this metropolis of t