Eagle to Cardinal: BC's Garvey to CUA

Over on the daily blog of the National Catholic Reporter, Catholic University of America alum -- Cardinal extraordinaire, really -- Michael Sean Winters reveals the successor of David:

A source tells NCR that the CUA Board selected John Garvey, currently Dean of the Law School at Boston College. Garvey will take over the leadership of the nation's only pontifical university from Bishop-elect David M. O'Connell who will be ordained Coadjutor Bishop of Trenton on July 30.

As previously noted, the president-elect will be formally presented at a 10am press conference in the Great Room of the Brookland campus' Pryzbyla Center -- the same venue where Pope Benedict addressed the nation's Catholic educators in April 2008. A meeting with the university community has likewise been scheduled for 10.30.

SVILUPPO: With the blessing of the CUA board chair, Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, the Washington Post confirms:

Garvey, 61, will be the third lay president of Catholic. The last was Edmund Pellegrino, a doctor and medical ethicist who served from 1978 to 1982.

The search committee was not looking for a lay president; in fact, trustees had a mild preference for another clerical leader, said Vigneron, who chairs the university's Board of Trustees and led the nine-month search.

"The board would have seen a lot of advantages to having a priest be the president, but in the end the board asked the search committee to put forward the best candidates," he said....

Trustees settled on Garvey at a June 7 meeting, Vigneron said, and he accepted the job that day. Vatican approval, required for any new Catholic University president, took an additional two days.

Vigneron said the university board expects Garvey to continue O'Connell's work to reclaim a Catholic identity for the Northeast Washington campus. O'Connell raised the share of students and faculty who self-identified as Catholics and hosted Pope Benedict XVI in a 2008 visit. He said trustees also appreciated the legal mind Garvey has brought to bear in analyzing Catholic quandaries.

"I'm very grateful that he's an accomplished scholar, and I think he brings from his legal scholarship a lot of wisdom about the church's place in contemporary society," Vigneron said. "He's a very thoughtful man, very measured. He tries to bring light and insight to matters about which there's a lot of argument."

PHOTO: The Catholic University of America

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