Cardinal Timothy Dolan said he was “ticked off” that Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not invite him to his January inauguration or attend the installation Mass of the city’s new archbishop, but the cardinal also credited the mayor’s openness to immigrants and desire for fair housing.
Speaking in a Feb. 19 interview with EWTN, the retired archbishop of New York said Mamdani’s absence from the Jan. 1 inauguration and from the Feb. 6 installation of Archbishop Ronald Hicks at St. Patrick’s Cathedral broke with longstanding civic custom.
“I was ticked off he didn’t invite me to his inauguration,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Most of the time the archbishop of New York, among other religious leaders, gets invited.”
He added that he was “really ticked off” that Mamdani did not attend Archbishop Hicks’ installation. That too was a departure from precedent, Dolan said.
“That defied precedent, the mayor not showing up to the installation,” he said. “One of the many things I love about New York is the amity among the different religions. We all get together. We all enjoy one another. The ecumenical and interfaith health of this city is phenomenal.”
The cardinal said he regularly attends the religious events of other faith communities and that political leaders have traditionally done the same, “not because of the clout of the Catholic Church, if it has any left, but just out of respect for the fact that a big chunk of the citizens of this great city profess the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church as their family of religious choice.”
Asked about areas of potential conflict between the Church and the new mayor, Cardinal Dolan pointed to concerns about abortion, religious liberty, and the definition of the family.
“I’m afraid he would be an avowed Democrat, meaning he’s not pro-life,” Cardinal Dolan said. “You worry, is he going to protect religious liberty? You worry if he's going to protect the dignity and the definition of the family.”
At the same time, Cardinal Dolan said the Church could find common ground with Mamdani in some areas.
“But we may have some other areas where we're saying, ‘Hey, not bad,’ such as his openness to the immigrant, his desire for fair housing, his earnest desire to increase the income and the prosperity of most of the people in this town,” he said.
The cardinal noted that his tenure in New York put him in the position of working with several mayors with whom he had both agreements and disagreements.
“This ain't our first rodeo,” he said. “It's not like his predecessors have been, you know, real pro-life, and real pro-Church.”
Cardinal Dolan stopped short of assigning the mayor a specific grade, but suggested that political leaders are rarely in full alignment with Catholic teaching.
“No political figure bats a thousand when it comes to whether their values are aligned with those of the Gospel as professed for 2,000 years,” he said. “I always figure this: if a politician gets a C+ it ain’t bad, ‘cause some of them flunk.”