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.