By Sarah Hayes

Seven decades of serving God and country

Archbishop Hannan, who has been a player in many of past century’s big events, will soon mark the 70th anniversary of his priestly ordination

In December 1939, as Europe was just becoming embroiled in World War II and America was about to begin its seven-decade-long love affair with the movie “Gone with the Wind,” a young man from Washington, D.C., was ordained a priest in the chapel of the North American College in Rome.

Little could that 26-year-old priest, now Archbishop Philip M. Hannan, retired archbishop of New Orleans, imagine that he’d witness some of the most important events in the life of the Church and American culture in the decades to follow:

Parachuting out of planes as a chaplain for the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II; attending every session of the Second Vatican Council; giving the eulogy at the 1963 funeral for President John F. Kennedy; enjoying correspondences with U.S. presidents; hosting Pope John Paul II during his memorable visit to the Crescent City in 1987; comforting the thousands who suffered the wrath of hurricanes, from Betsy in 1965 to Katrina in 2005; and working for civil rights in the 1960s. (Many of his adventures will be detailed in “The Archbishop Wears Combat Boots: From Rome to Camelot to Katrina” (OSV, $24.95), to be released in spring 2010.)

During a recent visit to Our Sunday Visitor, Archbishop Hannan, 96, sat down with OSV to discuss the priesthood, the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, how he came to understand the evil of abortion, and what he is continuing to do to protect the sanctity of human life.

Our Sunday Visitor: Do you think society’s views of priests have changed in the decades since your ordination?

Archbishop Philip M. Hannan: Yes. As a matter of fact, the difference has been in society itself. Society has different demands right now than when I was ordained.

For instance, when I was ordained, nobody asked you to do anything that was very difficult.

Today they’ll ask you to do practically anything. Very often, it’s a compliment to the priesthood. It is as if the priest could do practically anything. That’s, of course, a wrong assumption.

OSV: How do you think society has changed?

Archbishop Hannan: Just for instance, in regard to abortion. Now, that’s very common today, but it still has the same problems as it had before.

For instance, I got a call about 2 in the morning when I was a pastor of St. Patrick’s [in Washington, D.C.], and, of course, I was a bishop at that time, and this lady said, “You’ve got to come out now, I want to talk to you. It’s a serious matter.” So, naturally, I thought it was about abortion, and that’s exactly what it was.

The whole trouble was that she had tried to get help from her own doctor, and, of course, he didn’t know what to do because he wasn’t a priest and he was simply taught about the physical things. And her problem was this, although she had put it way back in her mind, that as a young girl she had had an abortion.

Even though everybody told her it was not very serious, despite that she remembered it and remembered it, it dogged her and dogged her. And, finally, she got sick, and what made the sickness even more difficult was that, at the same time, she remembered she had killed a little baby.

So, she got very, very upset and needed a doctor for the physical effects it had on her, but he didn’t understand that as a good Christian, she had a terrible problem of conscience, and that was exactly what her trouble was. She wanted to talk a bit, of course, before she went to confession.

She tried to convince me — and I didn’t need any convincing of it — that abortion is a terrible thing and that people didn’t understand it. And most of all, most of the young women who had abortions didn’t understand what a serious thing it was. She said to me, for the Lord’s sake, don’t go easy on the women who have had abortions; it’s really deep in their conscience. So be sure to talk to them very, very sternly, and [tell them] not only can they not do that again, but in their own circle, they ought to deter people from having abortions.

From then on, I understood that abortion would worry people until they went to confession. I learned not to underrate the evil of abortion.

OSV: Could you talk about the organization you are involved with to fight abortion?

Archbishop Hannan: I was trying to put together an organization with outstanding lawyers who would be able to craft, for each state in the union, the legislation [needed to overturn abortion]. While I was trying to put this together, it turned out a group of lawyers had already put together that sort of organization (called the Bioethics Defense Fund, see sidebar).

They invited me to an important meal, and I gathered from them that the real difficulty with this is that, in order to change this kind of legislation, they needed a large number of people to support them. It was with that introduction that I joined them and said I’d help them out.

OSV: Speaking of abortion, with the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy, what did you think about some people saying he shouldn’t have had such a large Catholic funeral because of his support of legalized abortion?

Archbishop Hannan: The Catholic Church, beginning with Christ, is for forgiveness. In St. Peter’s Basilica itself, there is only one quotation from Scripture, and that’s about Christ giving St. Peter the power to forgive sins. That’s the only quotation in the whole of the church, and it’s about that point. The important thing was that Christ forgave St. Peter. Christ never took away his position as head of the Church.

Early Christians kept that as a real big signal. Their signal for that was a cock crowing. If you go into the catacombs [in Rome], and you see [an image of] a cock crowing, that means forgiveness. That was a constant thing in their thinking — forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.

OSV: You attended every session of the Second Vatican Council. There have been rumors about the Vatican rolling back some of the changes introduced by the council. What do you think about those rumors?

Archbishop Hannan: I think that we have to listen to them, and if we think they’re good, then OK.

From the very beginning, even before he was pope, [Pope Benedict XVI] wanted to deal with doctrinal matters.

To this day, when he gives talks, as he did at The Catholic University of America and to the professors there (during his spring 2008 U.S. visit), he talked about the doctrine of the Church, and he gave no idea that he was more or less slavishly going to accept everything the Second Vatican Council did, that he was going to think about all of them. I think in my mind that’s exactly the attitude he still has.

OSV: Since the 70th anniversary of your priestly ordination is coming up in December, do you have a big celebration planned?

Archbishop Hannan: No. I’m going to say Mass at (St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans) and I’m going to invite all the priests, especially, to be there.

And to me that’s the kind of celebration I want. I don’t want a big celebration at a hotel or anything like that. I want it all to be focused on the Blessed Sacrament.

Bioethics Defense Fund (sidebar)

Archbishop Philip M. Hannan has joined with the Bioethics Defense Fund to fight abortion and other threats to the dignity of the human person. The organization’s mission is to “provide innovative and practical solutions that address the human rights violations involved in human cloning and embryo research, abortion, and end-of-life.” For more information, visit www.bdfund.org.

Parachuting prelate (sidebar)

Archbishop Philip M. Hannan still remains loyal to the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army, for which he served as chaplain during World War II. In addition to attending reunions with his fellow paratroopers, he recently wrote to President Barack Obama — his only correspondence with the president so far — requesting that the president honor the division’s pleas to send more soldiers to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban.

Sarah Hayes is OSV’s presentation editor.