Churchly speculation on who would succeed the late Francis Cardinal Spellman as Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York mostly centered on familiar names. Rochester's Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was one much talked-about candidate; so was Detroit's Archbishop John Dearden, head of the national conference of U.S. bishops. Last week Pope Paul confounded all handicappers by naming as head of the nation's richest and most prestigious archdiocese a young and virtually unknown prelate: the Most Rev. Terence James Cooke, 47, one of New York's twelve auxiliary bishops.
There is some precedence for the Pope's surprising choice: Spellman himself was an obscure...
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