Jewish Ancestry of the Late Cardinal John Joseph O'Connor Discovered

The New York Times reported at length yesterday on the newly-discovered Jewish ancestry of the the late Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor.  O'Connor was Cardinal Archbishop of New York for 16 years. It now appears that O'Connor's maternal grandfather was a rabbi, and his mother, who converted to Catholicism in 1908, was born a Jew.  The Cardinal, who apparently never learned of his Jewish roots, was born in 1920 and died in 2000. (Biography.) As Cardinal, O'Connor was strongly supportive of the Jewish community and active in Catholic-Jewish relations.