By G. Wayne Miller
Journal staff writer

On Monday, Oct. 29, Journal staff writer G. Wayne Miller hosted Bishop Tobin and diocese communications director Michael Guilfoyle for a live, hour-long chat. Read the transcript Ordination Day: Watch a clip from a video created by the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 1973 on the ordination day of 25-year-old Thomas J. Tobin and some of his fellow deacons, who talk about the meaning of joining the priesthood. Keep the Heat on campaign Our Lady of Fatima Hospital Barrington Carmelite Monastery The Diocese of Providence Diocesan newspaper Bishop Tobin’s columns The Vatican Whispers in the Loggia U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Catholic Encyclopedia

1.

Bishop Tobin departed Youngstown, Ohio, in May 2005 with many Catholics there thanking him for revitalizing the diocese, in America’s Rust Belt. Certainly, it was in better financial shape. Bishop Tobin inherited an operating deficit when he was installed, in 1996, and he had eliminated it by quickly cutting staff and other expenses.

But some considered their departing bishop more an executive than a shepherd.

When the Vatican announced that Bishop Tobin was reassigned to Rhode Island, one longtime critic dashed off a letter.

“My heart leapt for joy when at 9 this morning I read in the Akron Beacon Journal online that you were leaving Youngstown,” the man wrote, noting that he was “saddened” for Rhode Islanders, whom, he maintained, were getting a bureaucrat, not someone who might help souls to heaven. “What a pity for the diocese to deserve you!” the man wrote.

For better or worse, Rhode Island now had him.

Wednesday, June 1, 2005, was Tobin’s first full day as the eighth Bishop of Providence. He spent much of it visiting a school and an adult daycare center. That evening, he entertained relatives and friends with a cookout at his house, and the next morning, Thursday, June 2, he celebrated a funeral Mass for a priest. By the end of the week, he was settling into his office at One Cathedral Square, with plans to review budgets and operations, familiarize himself with the Diocese’s extensive properties and schedule meetings with all of his priests. He was building his list of goals. He was following the news carefully, discovering the rough-and-tumble politics of Rhode Island, where a U.S. senator, both U.S. representatives, the governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, legislative leaders, and four of the five Supreme Court justices were all Catholic, though not all in agreement with every Church teaching.

The bishop would later recall those early days as “overwhelming,” and not only for the demands of learning the inner workings of an enterprise that he, an outsider, now ran. Along with administration, he had personal tasks: finding a new doctor, obtaining a driver’s license, registering to vote. WaterFire, Federal Hill and Del’s Lemonade were all new to him — but like a governor, he was expected to know Rhode Island culture. He was expected to know the Buddy Cianci and John Celona stories, and more.

Sometimes, alone at home at the end of a long day, he found that he hadn’t had time in his schedule for prayer.

“This is terrible to say, but you’re just so busy trying to survive that your prayer suffers a little bit,” he later recalled. “On the other hand, it can be a time of great spiritual reflection and growth. I just remember putting everything in God’s hands and saying: ‘You sent me here. I will do my best, but that’s all I can do, is my best. You have to help me with everything else.’ ”

By the end of June, a more temporal sort of help arrived: Molly, who had stayed in Youngstown during the transition. A close Pittsburgh friend, Annamarie Stauffer, and her mother drove the dog to Rhode Island and spent the weekend with the bishop at the caretaker’s house at the East Providence cemetery. With Molly back, life might approach normal again.

AS THE SUMMER of 2005 progressed, Bishop Tobin remained highly visible. The interest the media had shown in him during his announcement and installation proved more than fleeting, which did not sit well with some.

In July, a Cranston woman wrote a letter to the editor commending The Providence Journal and local TV stations for their coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II, the election of Pope Benedict XVI, and the arrival of Bishop Tobin.

“However,” the woman said, “I must take umbrage at the bias once again evident in Rhode Island. Surely there must have been stories just as newsworthy regarding other Christian — as well as Jewish, Muslim, etc. — members of Rhode Island society. … If Rhode Island persists in such bias, how much hope is there for countries and religions worldwide to acknowledge each other and learn to live alongside each other in peace?”

He had yet to march in a rally or appear on a radio talk show, but the bishop was already controversial.

By the end of the summer, Bishop Tobin found time to resume his “Without a Doubt” column, in The Providence Visitor, the Diocesan weekly newspaper. In his first Rhode Island offering, he shared his early observations about his new home.

“I’ve learned that although Rhode Island is a very small state, there’s lots of diversity, and people don’t seem to get around very much. In terms of miles, Woonsocket is not far from Westerly, but they might as well be on different planets. People from the West Bay hardly ever travel to the East Bay. And lots of folks have a great deal of affection for a place called South County, even though it doesn’t really exist.

“I’ve learned that Rhode Islanders like to send fish to their friends and neighbors to mark special occasions, for example, a birthday cod, an anniversary cod, even a sympathy cod. (I know, they’re really ‘cards,’ but it doesn’t sound like it. I know, too, that you have to put up with my Pittsburgh accent that sneaks through once in awhile.)”

But more substantial matters kept the bishop in the news as his first year in Rhode Island unfolded.

In September 2005, a judge sentenced a Rhode Island priest to prison for raping two altar boys several years before Bishop Tobin’s tenure. “While this brings the legal proceedings to an end, the process of healing deep wounds that remain must continue,” the bishop said in a statement. “This has been a difficult situation for all the parties involved. I offer my prayers for all who have suffered the pain of such abuse and renew my commitment to do everything I can to protect young people from such harm.”

In October, the bishop launched his Keep the Heat On campaign, which assists low-income families in paying for their oil, gas and electricity. In November, he lent his support to janitors who were staging a five-day fast to protest poor working conditions. In February 2006, Providence Journal columnist M. Charles Bakst profiled the bishop and the Catholic Church’s stands on physician-assisted suicide, abortion and gay marriage. The bishop’s views drew strong reactions, pro and con.

“Kudos to our Most Rev. Bishop Thomas Tobin for setting the record straight on abortion and the other hot-button issues of our times,” a South Kingstown man wrote in a letter to the editor. “It has been a long time coming, and Bishop Tobin is to be congratulated for his courageous stand.”

Critics were equally fervent.

“God did not ‘create’ marriage, as Bishop Tobin stated in his interview with Charlie Bakst,” a Cumberland man wrote. “Bishop Tobin’s tinny lecture on ‘morally illicit’ views reflects the church’s waning influence on issues such as gay marriage and abortion — especially here in the bluest of states.”

In Bakst’s column, the bishop said Catholic politicians who support gay marriage or abortion rights should refrain from receiving Holy Communion.

“How unlike Christ,” a man from Newport responded in a letter to the editor. “When he was implored to feed the multitudes with loaves and fishes, did he say, ‘I will only feed those who are in ‘structural union’ with my teachings?’ ”

Another fault-line issue, immigration, compelled the bishop to join thousands who stayed out of work on May 1 to march in support of immigration reform. Three weeks later, he blessed demonstrators who had walked from Westerly to Providence to call attention to homelessness and the shortage of affordable housing. His support of these causes, immigrants’ rights especially, was less than universally popular.

The bishop’s second year was just under way when, in the summer of 2006, he revealed in a “Without a Doubt” column, that he occasionally gambled — in raffles, football pools and even at Foxwoods Resort Casino. His revelation, during a heated statewide debate on a proposed Narragansett Indian casino, made front-page news — and angered some bloggers and talk-show callers, who did not accept his explanation that the Church does not consider all gambling immoral.

“His lighthearted attempt to explain away his own limited gambling episodes is only a smokescreen for his disgraceful lack of fortitude in addressing this issue,” wrote one man in a letter to the editor.

“I am sure blessed in not having Bishop Tobin as the leader of my flock,” wrote another.

The bishop had become a lightning rod.

INSIDE One Cathedral Square, other agendas prevailed. When he updated it at the end of summer 2006, the bishop’s list of goals and objectives ran to three pages.

Topping the list was “Visitation of parishes, schools and institutions.” The bishop hoped eventually to visit them all, but with so many in the most Catholic of states, it was a time-consuming process — and no matter how much time he invested, he could not be at every event where he was wanted.

Displeased that their bishop had not attended every high school graduation since being installed, school administrators asked to meet with him. He invited them in.

It was Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006.

Bishop Tobin began the meeting by telling the educators a story about plans being made for the re-entombment of founding Bishop Thomas Hendricken. Five other dead bishops had been discovered in the basement crypt of the Cathedral of SS. Peter & Paul, including one who had led the Archdiocese of Hartford decades before.

Bishop Tobin said that he had telephoned the current Hartford prelate and said: “We found your bishop, would you like him back?”

The room laughed, but the mood soon changed.

Bishop Tobin had asked his administrative secretary, Father Michael A. Colello, to prepare a list of all his appearances at Rhode Island’s nine Catholic high schools since his arrival in Providence a year-and-a-half before. He passed around copies. He had celebrated nine Masses, made three classroom visits, and attended a science fair, two groundbreakings and three graduations.

“I’ve tried really hard to be personally present and involved in the life of our schools,” Bishop Tobin said. “I’m doing the very best I can. But I can’t do everything.”

Someone mentioned his absence from most of the graduations.

The bishop said he found saying baccalaureate Mass, a commencement week event, more meaningful than handing out diplomas.

Someone said Bishop Tobin’s predecessors had always attended all nine graduations every year.

“It’s not in the Ten Commandments,” the bishop said, icily. “Things can change when a new bishop comes to town.”

OK, the person said, he could live with that.

“That’s good,” said Bishop Tobin, “because you have to.”

2.

AS THE END of his second year in Rhode Island approached, Bishop Tobin had settled comfortably into his new life. He liked the Ocean State, and he believed that he would retire as bishop of Providence, some 17 years hence. His fate, of course, was not in his hands. Some saw archbishop or even cardinal in his future, but he dismissed such talk.

In his leisure time, the bishop dined out with friends — priests mostly — or invited them to his house for a cookout or dinner. He occasionally hosted houseguests: his sister and brother-in-law, priests from Youngstown and Pittsburgh, and Annamarie Stauffer and her mother. Annamarie had known the bishop since 1990, when she was 19 and took a job as a secretary with the Diocese of Pittsburgh, where she still works. She found then-Father Tobin down-to-earth, as she put it, a man of integrity with an appealing wry humor. They stay in touch by telephone and e-mail.

The bishop no longer has time to golf. He rarely attends concerts, although he made an exception when his favorite group, Peter, Paul and Mary, came to town. He is no movie-goer. The only film he can recall seeing in a theater in many years is The Passion of The Christ, released in 2004, more or less mandatory viewing for priests. He found it emotionally powerful, but “over the top” in its violence.

Depending on the season, the bishop has outside commitments — confirmations, parish celebrations and the like — two or three nights a week. He comes home to a casserole or stew that the housekeeper had left in the refrigerator for him to microwave, and then he retires to the sunroom, Molly at his side, the burglar alarm activated, to watch TV and have his evening martini.

Molly came to him in August 1998, when he was 50 — an answer to his “mid-life crisis,” he often joked. He hadn’t had a pet since he was a child, but the idea of a dog again began to interest him. He was living alone in the bishop’s residence in Youngstown, so he would not have to consider anyone else’s feelings.

One night after dinner with a priest friend, he said: “Michael, let’s go get a dog.”

They drove to a pet store, where puppies looked out from behind glass.

Molly caught the bishop’s eye. She was what some call a designer dog, a cockerpoo — half cocker spaniel, half poodle — with beige fur, dark eyes and big floppy ears. She brought to mind the image of a mop.

“Do you want to hold her?” the clerk said.

The bishop did.

He was smitten.

But there were practical considerations. The bishop asked how big she would get.

About 25 or 30 pounds, the clerk said.

“I didn’t want a real big dog and I didn’t want a little tiny yapper, either,” the bishop later recalled. “So the size seemed about right.”

Did she shed? The bishop has allergies, and he didn’t want beige fur on his black suits or the furniture.

No, the clerk said, this puppy would not shed.

The dog went home with the bishop. He named her Molly. It had no special significance; he just liked the way it sounded.

THE DOG, like the bishop, is content in her new home in Rhode Island. They begin and end their days together. She is his sole congregant in his private home Masses. She follows him from room to room.

In the summer of 2006, Bishop Tobin almost lost her.

He was headed to Pittsburgh on a Sunday morning when a friend who was taking care of Molly called to say that she was paralyzed. The friend brought Molly to a veterinarian, who diagnosed a ruptured spinal disk. Bishop Tobin directed her treatment by phone.

He was given two options: medication or surgery. Neither guaranteed success, and at an estimated $6,000, surgery would be more expensive. The bishop opted for medications. If they didn’t work by the end of the week, the veterinarian said, they could still operate, as a last resort.

But the bishop decided that if drugs failed, he would not pursue surgery. Nor would he bring a paralyzed Molly home. He didn’t want her to live like that.

“Much as I love Molly, you have to draw a line somewhere,” he later said. “I can feed a lot of people for $6,000.” If she wasn’t walking by Friday, he would authorize the veterinarian to “send her to doggie heaven.”

By Friday, she was walking. The next day, the bishop, back from Pittsburgh, took her home to East Providence.

BISHOP TOBIN’S own spine humbled him a few months later.

It was Monday, Nov. 28, 2006, and Father Colello drove the bishop to St. Edmund’s, a Catholic retreat compound on Enders Island, joined by a causeway to mainland Mystic, Conn. The bishop had called his newer priests to two days of reflection on their young callings, and he was joining them for dinner.

Wearing loafers, a leather jacket, slacks and shirt without tie, he arrived at social hour, which followed late-afternoon vespers. The bishop made himself a martini, and mingled with his men — but not comfortably. He was walking stiffly, his posture awkward; for several days, he’d experienced severe lower-back pain. A doctor had prescribed Vicodin, but he hadn’t taken it yet. When he finally did, he joked, the drug combined with gin would surely do the trick.

After dinner, the bishop spoke on issues that had been discussed at the recent meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, in Baltimore. Several public statements had emerged from the meeting, including “Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care.” Addressing the Iraq war, the bishops endorsed no timeline for withdrawal of American troops, but did say the military should stay “only as long as their presence contributes to a responsible transition. Our nation should look for effective ways to end their deployment at the earliest opportunity consistent with this goal.”

Father Colello drove his boss home.

The next morning, the bishop couldn’t get out of bed.

He phoned Father Colello, who called an ambulance. The driver had no trouble finding the bishop’s house: with its chain-link fence, Pittsburgh Steelers banner and statue of the Virgin Mary, it was unmistakable.

The ambulance brought the bishop to North Providence’s Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, where he is chairman and treasurer of the board. Doctors administered pain-killers and ran tests. For days, the bishop remained immobilized, an unsettling if instructive predicament for a man who likes to be always in control. Would he be paralyzed? Was this what Pope John Paul II meant when he prophesized: You will suffer a great deal.

Bone spurs in his lower spine, associated with aging, turned out to be the diagnosis. Two trips to the operating room for nerve blocks proved effective, and after a week, he was sent home with instructions to see a physical therapist. He carried a funny story: a new nurse on his floor who didn’t believe who he was until he showed his bracelet ID. He had many such stories, of people not recognizing him or mistaking him for someone else. They were reminders of humility.

Celebrating Mass at state-run Zambarano Hospital three weeks later, the recovering bishop spoke in his homily of his incapacitation. Many of the patients in the chapel were partially or fully paralyzed.

“I’m someone who usually likes to have complete control over my life,” the bishop said. “I like everything in place, I like to know exactly what’s going to be happening tomorrow and every hour of the day. Well, my experience during my illness last month and my stay in the hospital was a good reminder that deep down, I’m really not in control of anything.”

The bishop recalled his arrival at the emergency room.

“I was there on the stretcher and people were coming in and putting IV lines in my arm. I had to trust that they knew what they were doing and they were putting the right things into my body. When they told me to try and stand up and take off my clothes — something I don’t usually do in public! — I had to trust that there was a reason I had to take off my clothes and put on a hospital gown.

“And then I went upstairs to the fourth floor at Fatima Hospital and if they told me to take these pills, I took these pills. If they came in to give me a shot, I took that shot. If they took me downstairs to the operating room to do a nerve block, I had to trust that when they were putting me to sleep they knew what they were doing.”

This was an education to him, but not to his Zambarano congregation.

“Perhaps more than most people in the world, I think you’ve learned those lessons of patience and of trust,” he said. “And because of that — because of your patience and perhaps your long suffering and the pains you’ve endured and the prayer that’s part of that — God is able to do good things in your life.”

3.

THE FOURTH week of Lent 2007 found Bishop Tobin at a monastery for Carmelite nuns near Narragansett Bay in Barrington. The bishop had visited the year before to introduce himself, and he was returning to say Mass again and share breakfast.

It was Thursday, March 15. Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, was just 17 days away.

In his sermon, the bishop talked about the Gospel of the day, a passage from Luke that relates the story of Beelzebub, prince of demons. “In the spirit of Lent, I have to be honest and confess it’s not one of my favorite gospels,” the bishop said. Whenever he read it, he said, he thought of William Golding’s dystopian novel Lord of the Flies, in which children devolve into savagery. But the bishop drew meaning from the gospel’s end, when the Lord, according to Luke, said: “Whoever is not with me is against me. And whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

That, the bishop said, is a message still current today.

“Are we with God or against him?” the bishop said to the nuns. “Are we with Jesus or against Him?” He was, at it were, preaching to the choir, but he continued nonetheless, the wail of a foghorn providing mournful interlude.

The bishop said a vital part of his ministry is asking people to examine their consciences.

“Where do they stand on some of these moral issues? Whether we speak about the defense and promotion of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, whether we talk about the whole panorama of respect-life issues from abortion to euthanasia; whether we talk about welcoming strangers into our country, into our midst, the immigrants and that whole very difficult debate that’s going on.

“And concerns about violence and addiction and abuse and war and peace. And on all of these issues I think our world, our nation, our community, our Church — we have to reflect in terms of this question: Are we with God, or against him?”

The Mass ended, and everyone repaired to the dining room. These 14 Carmelites spend hours every day alone in prayer, and only three nuns are designated to leave the monastery, primarily to shop. But the sisters no longer adhere to the old-fashioned code of silence, where sign language and notes were the means of communication. They sometimes watch television — never missing the New England Patriots, their favorite team.

On his visit in 2006, the sisters had prepared a poster with photos of Patriots to tease the bishop, whose delight in the Steelers’ recent Super Bowl win had been front-page news. This visit, they presented him with a photo from the last, when he’d posed wearing a Pats cap. The bishop joked that that was not the first time he’d worn one — sometimes, he quipped, he wore one while taking Molly out for her daily constitutional.

He opened his wallet to show the sisters a picture of his dog.

“A bishop who has a dog must be a good bishop,” a sister said.

“I don’t know about that,” Bishop Tobin said.

As they dined on bacon, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit and scones, each nun told the bishop about herself. One had been a Carmelite for more than 60 years. One was a native of Georgia, another of Quebec, a third of Bethlehem. Most were in their 70s and 80s. The prioress, Sister Susan Lumb, 60, born in Maine, was a Catholic school teacher and Peace Corps volunteer in Venezuela before becoming a Carmelite.

When it was his turn, the bishop talked of his childhood and education, including his two years in the 1960s as a seminarian at St. Francis College in Loretto, Pa. He noted that former state senator John A. Celona, convicted in federal court of corruption, had recently begun serving his sentence at a prison in Loretto — in a building that the college had sold in the 1970s to the federal government. The bishop said the government had spent $1 million in renovations before housing inmates.

“It was OK for seminarians,” he joked, “but not for prisoners.”

He wasn’t done with Rhode Island politics. He noted that during a recent Mass for Diocesan schoolchildren, many students answering his homily quiz raised their hands twice, thus claiming to be both Red Sox and Yankees fans.

“Typical Rhode Islanders,” he joked, “voting twice.”

Then he told the nuns: “I have voters in my cemetery.” He also had the late crime boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca, who was buried in Gate of Heaven more than two decades before, a fact he sometimes points out to visitors to his house.

He remains a Steelers fan, but after two years in town, the bishop has become a Rhode Islander.

 

gwmiller@projo.com