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"New York City will always be very, very much in the debt of John Cardinal O'Connor. He exercised tremendous leadership during the time that he was with us as the head of the archdiocese in New York-both as an archbishop and as a Cardinal.
"I remember to this day when he was installed as the archbishop, and since then have had the good fortune of knowing him personally. He was an extraordinary source of strength for the city, always. He was someone who was always willing to go out of his way to help the people of the City of New York, and the people who work for the City of New York.
"He exercised a great deal of moral leadership for everyone-Catholics, non-Catholics, people that are religious, people that aren't. I think they saw in him someone who was willing to stand up for what he believed in. And I believe that even people who disagreed with certain things that he preached or certain things that he stood for understood that this came from his commitment and his honest opinion of what he thought the right answer was in his role as a priest, as a person who was interpreting, as best he could, the word of God.
"There are certain things that people wouldn't know about him. I don't know that they would necessarily know the quiet and confidential things he did to help people who were in need. Occasionally it was written here are there, and it's absolutely true that he would go and take care of people in the Catholic hospitals at night, just unannounced. He would bathe them, talk to them, and help them in other ways-just like the chaplain in the hospital, but he was the Cardinal.
I remember when firefighter Wiley was fighting for his life. I visited the hospital, and firefighter Wiley's family was there. And his wife Randi asked me if I could get the Pope to pray for her husband, for his recovery, and I said I would try. And I couldn't figure how I could get the Pope to do it. If I called Pope, I don't know that, even though I'm the Mayor of New York City, the Pope would necessarily call back. Then I just said to myself, "Cardinal O'Connor, I'll call Cardinal O'Connor."
"He was on a retreat at the time. I reached him and I explained the situation. And, yes, he called the Pope and he got the Pope to say Mass. He came to the hospital immediately, within a very short period of time. He spent several hours with the family helping them in ways that probably help them to this day. And then he said Mass himself the next morning for firefighter Wiley and conveyed to them several times, the prayers of the Pope. That's just one example of the things he would do to reach out to people.
"Every time I called upon him for advice he was always kind and generous and thoughtful. And we're going to miss him tremendously-everyone is in this City will. And we want to say 'thank you' to his family because they had a lot to do with producing this exceptionally gifted talented, moral and decent man."
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