This is how legends are created by our intrepid, independent press:
NEW YORK (AP) — Cardinal Edward Egan was eating breakfast when then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani called to say there was a tragedy and the churchman was needed. A police car would soon be outside the chancery to take the leader of New York's Roman Catholics downtown.That's just what you need to do in a crisis: call some twit priest who's on a first-name basis with sky fairies so he can mutter incantations and give bits of plastic away. I'm sure that helped a ton. And many thanks to the inestimable Rudy Giuliani for calling this jerk instead of someone who could, you know, do something. The reporter's reverent tone makes me ill. "There was a tragedy and the churchman was needed." Indeed. I hope the church paid the writer well for this slavering bit of iconography.
Egan didn't know exactly what had happened in lower Manhattan that morning as he and his priest-secretary hurtled through the city . . . He would spend the next several days anointing the dead, distributing rosaries to workers as they searched, yada yada yada.
