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Chapter Three Without a Doubt
By G. Wayne Miller 1. One morning in early September 1962, Mary and Raymond Tobin helped their youngest son, Tom, load his bags into the family car. The three then drove 2½ hours north to Erie, Penn. On clear days, you could see across the lake into Canada. It was a long way from home for a 14-year-old boy.
The family stopped at a three-story brick building on a hill overlooking the old industrial city. Seventy-six other young boys were also enrolling at St. Mark’s Seminary. Only seven in that class of 1966 would become priests. 
Father Tobin, second from left, celebrates his 1973 ordination at his home in Pennsylvania. He knew at a young age that he wanted to be a priest. Photo courtesy of Bishop Tobin The parents said their goodbyes, and the boys settled in. They would not see their families again until visitors’ weekend in October, and they would not go home until Thanksgiving. They could not use a telephone without permission, and letters in and out would be opened and read by their superiors. They were denied access to radio, TV and the movies. From 9:15 at night until rising bell at 5:50 the next morning, they were forbidden to speak. Great Silence, it was believed, would help in their formation. Tom Tobin was already a disciplined boy, and he did not find the rigidity of life at a minor seminary suffocating. In fact, he appreciated it: It gave him opportunity to reflect on his calling, which only strengthened as he progressed through St. Mark’s. Other paths that had intrigued him — writing and politics — faded from consideration. It was a gradual process — there was no apocalyptic moment, no thunderbolt or vision, when he knew beyond all doubt that he would be a priest. During Great Silence and at other times, he simply heard what he later described as “God’s voice working with me.” What can be better than to get close to God and help people save their souls forever? he thought. By the time Tom graduated, only 40 seminarians remained in his class. Scholastically, Tom ranked second. The St. Mark’s program included study at nearby Gannon College, which prepared him to spend two years at St. Francis College in Loretto, Penn., two hours east of Pittsburgh. He graduated in May 1969. Three months later, the 21-year-old crossed the Atlantic to enroll in Pontifical North American College, in the shadow of the Vatican. Tobin excelled in his studies, which included courses at Rome’s Gregorian University, established in 1551 by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and one of the oldest universities in the world. In their leisure moments, Tobin and his classmates dined at Italy’s fine restaurants — discovering for themselves the truth of the old saying that if you want the best food, follow the priests. On vacation, Tobin traveled extensively throughout Europe. He spent two weeks in the Holy Land and six weeks in Vienna, studying German. Culturally and theologically, he was becoming a “Roman.” Almost without exception, Romans — priests who served or were educated in the shadow of the Vatican — had run the Catholic Church for nearly 2,000 years. 
As a young seminarian in the mid-1960s, Bishop Tobin aspired to be a pastor in his home diocese of Pittsburgh. Photo courtesy of Bishop Tobin And yet, Tobin wanted nothing more than to become a parish priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. At heart, he was still a small-town boy. “He is a kind and gentlemanly person who works well with others. Together with his personal and spiritual growth, Mr. Tobin has shown fine qualities in his apostolic work. He is sensitive to people and an effective preacher. The faculty feels that he has fine potential which will be realized in the parish work to which he is assigned. “Mr. Tobin is a capable man who gives great promise of further growth in the future.” JULY 21, 1973, dawned warm and humid in Pittsburgh. The boy who had played Mass in third grade was about to become the real thing. Thomas J. Tobin was being ordained a priest. On his way into the cathedral, a bird perched in a tree soiled the young man’s white linen alb. What does this mean for the future? Tobin thought. What’s God trying to say? Is this a sign of things to come? But he and others made light of his embarrassment. “Well, obviously the Holy Spirit is here!” someone joked. And then they were caught up in ordination, among the Church’s most majestic ceremonies. When it was over, Mary and Raymond hosted a reception at a country club for the Rev. Thomas J. Tobin, 25. A friend had arranged it, for the Tobins did not belong to country clubs. Mary presented her son with a letter that day: “Dearest Tom,” she wrote. 
He blesses his parents in 1973. On his ordination day, his mother wrote, "As God sent you to us twenty-five years ago, to love and care for, today we give you back to Him . . ." Photo courtesy of Bishop Tobin “As God sent you to us twenty-five years ago, to love and care for, today we give you back to Him — as His Priest, as He has called you to love and care for His people. Dad and I pray that you will serve Him faithfully, and that you will bring many souls to heaven. May you be blessed with good health and happiness, as you carry on your priestly duties. Remember us and the rest of your family in your prayers and always hold your Priesthood in highest honor. God bless you! Thou art a Priest forever, Son.” Father Tobin served as assistant pastor for six years at St. Vitus Parish in New Castle, an old mill town about an hour north of Pittsburgh on the Youngstown, Ohio, border. The old pastor was sometimes abrasive, but he allowed his young assistant a full ministry of baptizing, marrying and burying the faithful. Father Tobin began to develop a distinctive style of sermon, in which stories of everyday life — often, his own comical misadventures — were the hook to a deeper teaching of Catholic faith. In 1979, he was reassigned to St. Sebastian Parish, in Ross Township, about 10 minutes from Pittsburgh — close enough to his childhood home, where his parents still lived, that he could walk there for dinner. The priest, now 31, continued a traditional assistant pastor’s ministry — but he also took initiative by becoming an active leader of the diocese’s Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program, through which non-Catholics could convert to the religion of Rome. It was a high-profile mission that put him in close contact with the chancery, where the bishop ran the diocese. As he neared his fifth year at St. Sebastian, Father Tobin hoped his next assignment would be as pastor of his own parish, his longtime dream. 
At St. Sebastian Parish, in Ross Township, Penn., he works with Cub Scouts. Photo courtesy of Bishop Tobin He liked his ministry. He had good friends. He golfed with his father and enjoyed his mother's cooking. He was a great fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, of Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris and their four Super Bowl titles in six years, an NFL record. He imagined growing old in Pittsburgh and dying there, his body buried alongside his family. Unknown to Father Tobin, his name had surfaced on a confidential list. The Vatican in the fall of 1983 had chosen Anthony J. Bevilacqua, auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn, N.Y., to be the 10th bishop of Pittsburgh, a diocese that had more than 300 parishes and almost a million Catholics. Bishop Bevilacqua needed a good administrative secretary. He asked his staff to prepare a list of candidates. In June 1984, he selected Father Tobin, who was only 36. Three years later, Bishop Bevilacqua promoted his administrative secretary to associate general secretary. Father Tobin was getting deeper into administration, finance, personnel and the myriad other intricacies of running a diocese. 
Bishop Bevilacqua, Bishop Tobin, and parents Mary and Raymond Tobin celebrate the Tobins' 50th wedding anniversary. Photo courtesy of Bishop Tobin When Bishop Bevilacqua was appointed archbishop of Philadelphia, one of America’s leading dioceses, he was succeeded by the auxiliary bishop of Seattle, Donald W. Wuerl. It was 1988. Two years later, Bishop Wuerl promoted Father Tobin to vicar general and general secretary. If the diocese were purely a corporation, with Bishop Wuerl the chairman and president, Father Tobin was chief operating officer. Father Tobin now was living alone, as he preferred, in a house owned by the Sisters of the Holy Spirit of Pittsburgh, a small order founded by a Russian nun in the early 1900s. He was the order’s chaplain. His two immediate predecessors had lived in his house and had also been chaplain — and now both were bishops. The nuns sometimes could not resist the temptation to tease Father Tobin about following in their steps. “You’re going to be a bishop some day!” they said. “It’s going to happen!” They were not the only ones who saw a crosier in Father Tobin’s future. 2. Lent 2007 was still on the horizon when the Rev. Michael A. Colello and Bishop Thomas J. Tobin left the underground garage at One Cathedral Square in the bishop’s Mercury Montego and headed toward the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center. It was Feb. 13, and the forecast called for a nor’easter overnight — a storm with the potential for snow, sleet and freezing rain. The bishop was worried about a funeral Mass he was scheduled to say the next morning at Blessed Sacrament Church, a magnificent structure in Providence whose rectory was Father Colello’s home. The Mass was for a severely overweight priest, and the funeral home had contacted the bishop’s office to convey the fear that pallbearers carrying the casket up the church’s long, icy steps might slip and drop it. Bishop Tobin wondered aloud if they should bring him in a less treacherous side door — or tonight, before the storm struck. But then where would they put him, and who would stand watch? A bishop’s concerns were nothing if not wide-ranging. Father Colello parked the car while Bishop Tobin stepped into the hospital lobby. A stranger spotted the bishop’s Roman collar and began pouring out his heart. It is a common experience for priests. Sometimes when traveling, especially on tight schedules through busy airports, it is more expedient to wear lay clothes. The man, who was wearing a Marine Corps cap, said his son, apparently in his 30s, had died unexpectedly a few weeks before. The autopsy revealed severe blockage of the coronary arteries. The father said he began praying the rosary and was now reciting it nine times a day. He showed Bishop Tobin his beads. The bishop said: “You now have a friend in heaven.” The father said he couldn’t wait to get there, where he would be able to spend “hundreds and hundreds of years” with his boy, compared with the short time, so abruptly interrupted, given to him down here. The man was close to tears. He told of a day recently that his wife had gone grocery shopping, leaving him alone lying on his bed. He wasn’t sleeping, he said. Suddenly, his son walked in. He was wearing shorts and was cold from being outside. Then he disappeared. The man said he took the apparition as a sign his boy was OK. The bishop said that was a good thing. He handed the man a prayer card with an American flag that he was giving to veterans on his tour. He blessed the man, and Father Colello joined his boss. The tour began, led by a hospital official and a chaplain who had been ordained decades before by Boston’s legendary Richard Cardinal Cushing. The tour brought Bishop Tobin to the Intensive Care Unit, on the sixth floor. The sounds and tubes and monitors and smells — and the haunted looks on some patients — were evidence that death was no stranger to this ward. The bishop walked into rooms where he was allowed, wishing the patients well and offering his prayer card and a blessing to those who wanted them. Most did. He stood outside isolation rooms, delivering his wish and blessing through glass. He praised the staff for their care and dedication. A third-year resident doctor told him she was from Pittsburgh. They chatted a bit about the city and its football team. At one point, the bishop paused at a bulletin board on which some early Valentine’s Day greetings were posted. One handwritten note observed that love is like a bra, since it’s so close to the heart. “I don’t have any experience with that!” the bishop laughed. When he emerged from the lobby, he found a security guard about to write a ticket for his Mercury Montego. Father Colello said a hospital official had given express permission to use the no-parking zone, as a privilege to the bishop, but the guard apparently thought it was a lie. Bishop Tobin sat inside his car while negotiations continued. “This could go either way,” he said — the guard might be sympathetic to priests and forget the ticket, or he might have issues with Catholics and be delighted to complete the fine. This was the second time recently that security guards had challenged the bishop. Waiting to be discharged after treatment for back pain late last year from North Providence’s Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, where he was chairman and treasurer of the board, the voice on the public-address system had announced that if the car with the three-digit plate wasn’t moved immediately, it would be towed. The bishop liked telling that story. It fell into the same category as a bird soiling him on ordination day. In the end, the veterans’ center guard relented. Still fretting the details of tomorrow’s funeral, the bishop and Father Colello proceeded to Cumberland for his next appointment. He was running a few minutes late, which was unusual. SEVERAL DOZEN priests awaited Bishop Tobin in the basement of Cumberland's St. John Vianney Church. A buffet lunch was served, and the bishop took the podium. This was the first of four briefings for the 2007 Catholic Charity Fund appeal, which subsidizes the diocese’s nearly 40 health, social and educational agencies and ministries. Revamping the appeal, which had been running a deficit, had been an early addition to the bishop’s list of priorities. The bishop welcomed the group and mentioned his morning at the veterans’ hospital. “Visiting a place like that certainly keeps things in perspective,” he said. Then he told a story from his annual January stay on Florida’s Sanibel Island, from which he had returned with a nice tan. As he often did on vacation, he had attended Saturday evening Mass at the local church — dressed in lay clothes. “I find that very refreshing sometimes, to participate from that perspective and to be somewhat anonymous during Mass,” he said. It was nice to occasionally experience worship from the other side of the altar. The priest on this occasion, Bishop Tobin said, apologized for three collections: the regular one, a second one for hurricane relief, and a third for the Sanibel-area bishop’s annual appeal. The priest told the congregation: “You know, when it comes to money, bishops always get what they want.” Bishop Tobin laughed. “I wanted to raise my hand and say, ‘It’s not quite that simple!’ Raising money, as you know — and as a bishop knows — requires a lot of vision and commitment and planning and hard work.” Bishop Tobin gave the priests in Cumberland some statistics: the Diocese of Providence in 2006 received 44,000 donations through the Charity Fund, down from 83,000 in 1990, a drop that was related to declining Sunday Mass attendance, a phenomenon, in part a result of the priests’ abuse scandal, that was not unique to Rhode Island. Because the average size of donations had increased, the fund in recent years was still bringing in about $7 million, the bishop said. Nonetheless, with needs growing, the diocese had been running in the red. “I don’t believe in deficit spending,” the bishop said. “We have to have a balanced budget.” Bishop Tobin had already addressed one side of the equation by ordering a 5-percent cut in services subsidized by the Charity Fund. The other side was increasing revenue. The old formula, the bishop said, no longer worked. “It’s clear to me that in recent years the fund has become somewhat predictable, I guess, is the right word. Somewhat stagnant, perhaps a little bit tired. It’s the same thing pretty much every year and the results have shown that effect.” The bishop said he and his staff had worked for months on a new formula designed to bring “some new energy, some new life, some new excitement, some new vision into the annual charity fund.” He sounded like a marketing executive. But he was competing with many other charitable causes, and the pie is only so big. The 2007 campaign would solicit donors by emphasizing what the bishop called “impact” — the thousands of Rhode Islanders who are helped by the fund. A bit later in the presentation, Anthony Gwiazdowski, director of the Stewardship and Development Office, described the message that sermons, mailings, advertisements and stories in the Diocesan paper and Web sites would convey. “There’s some really powerful impact that’s going on out there in our community today,” Gwiazdowski said, “and we’ve got to sell that: how much we do to change peoples lives every day.” Bishop Tobin said the 2007 donation goal was $7.85 million, an increase of more than 10 percent from last year. His staff had analyzed every parish and come up with a target figure for each; in many instances, a parish’s increase was “significant.” Pastors could choose an option — used successfully elsewhere, but never in Rhode Island — in which they could keep any money raised beyond their target for use in their own parishes. It was motivational, a sort of profit-sharing. Some priests seemed anxious about the greater expectations, which for some would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The bishop assured them that the figures were targets, not taxes or assessments. Other dioceses require parishes to meet their goals, even if it means borrowing money, but Bishop Tobin does not embrace that model. “I don’t want you to be overly anxious,” he said. “I don’t want you to lose any sleep over this. I don’t want you to fret and worry about your goals. Do your best. The only one who should lose any sleep over this campaign is me.” The appeal would begin soon and conclude on June 30, the end of the diocese’s fiscal year. If the new formula failed, the bishop said, “we’ll go back to the drawing board and try something different next year. It’s not like we’re writing the Ten Commandments.” 3. As Lent 2007 unfolded and the Catholic Charity Fund appeal began, much was happening inside One Cathedral Square. After years of decline, only about 130,000 of Rhode Island’s nearly 700,000 Catholics regularly go to Mass, a trend that is in line with the national picture. The bishop was establishing a Sunday Mass attendance committee, which he would urge to be open-minded in finding ways to bring Catholics back; he was even willing to use focus groups, if that would help. On other fronts, the bishop was reorganizing several internal boards. He and his staff were analyzing parish schools, many of which were experiencing rising costs and declining enrollments; consolidation or closings were likely in some schools’ future. The bishop had also ordered a review of all diocesan property that would include an appraisal and a recommendation to retain, renovate or sell. The bishop would use some of the proceeds from sales of unnecessary properties to pay off debt from settlements of the sex-abuse scandal -- and also to establish an endowed maintenance fund. He had inherited a system with almost no money to keep properties in good repair; neglected for years, some properties were deteriorating. But of the many items on his list, none, perhaps, irked him more than the Diocesan newspaper. He had been unimpressed from the first issue he read. This was a man who began and ended his days with the news — and here was this tired, gray weekly publication, The Providence Visitor. Even the name annoyed Bishop Tobin, reminding him, as it did, of a Chamber of Commerce. Like the Charity Fund appeal, the paper needed new life. The bishop would keep a close hand in the rebirth, but many of the details would fall to his communications director, Michael K. Guilfoyle, who had replaced the retiring William Halpin in late 2005. Guilfoyle was one of the bishop’s earliest appointments. He was a further sign of the importance Tobin placed on the media. Guilfoyle, 30 at the time, was a practicing Catholic, and he’d graduated from a Benedictine college, Saint Anselm, in Manchester, N.H. But he was no religious shill. He’d made his mark in the secular world, first as press secretary for U.S. Rep. Robert Weygand, then as director of communications for Weygand’s successor, Rep. James Langevin. He was communications director for Sheldon Whitehouse’s young senatorial campaign when the bishop hired him. Reporters respected Guilfoyle. Some could not understand why he had taken a position as spokesman for a bishop. But Guilfoyle had tired of the political world, with its incessant demands on a man with a young family. He had never met Bishop Tobin, but when he did, after being recommended by a search committee, he liked the man. He liked the work of the Church and the opportunity to be “proactive,” as he would later describe it, in sending a positive message after years of headlines detailing the horrors of the priest sex-abuse scandal. “Whether it is promoting the important role Catholic schools play in educating our youth, or the work of the church to help the disadvantaged, among countless other good deeds and charitable works,” Guilfoyle said when he was appointed, “the Diocese of Providence is a vibrant faith community that serves all of Rhode Island.” The bishop, with Guilfoyle, soon hired outside consultants to critique The Visitor. Their 27-page report, completed in May 2006, was damning. “The Providence Visitor could be and should be a more prominent voice in the community,” they concluded. “Given that the Diocese of Providence constitutes the entire state of Rhode Island and comprises such a compact geographic area, the newspaper could have a much better market penetration area and could have a great impact on the Catholic community and the community at large.” For content and design, the paper received poor grades. Bishop Tobin was too polite to express it this way, but the paper was, as the consultants said, a failure. More personally, it was no place to showcase the bishop’s Without a Doubt columns, which he enjoyed writing, home in his study, his dog at his feet.
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On Monday, Oct. 29, Journal staff writer G. Wayne Miller hosted 
