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He once entertained a delegation of visiting New York police by stalking into a tavern, miter and all, and ordering a round of beer for his guests; another time, after blessing the fishing fleet at Gloucester, he vaulted aboard one ship and asked the captain to sail him home to Boston. At amusement parks he buys candy kisses for nuns and shamelessly employs a rather widely used gag as he tells them that "they're the only kisses you'll ever get." Hardly a day goes by that Boston Catholics can pick up their papers without seeing a new picture of their cardinal dancing a jig in an old folks' home or mugging outrageously beneath some improbable hat. Last year in Rome, when President Kennedy visited the North American College, Cushing was on hand to greet him, with a group of sobersided clerics looking on. Instead of offering his episcopal ring to be kissed, Cushing squared off, aimed a mock right hook at the President's solar plexus and bellowed: "Hi, Jack!"
Although he celebrates Mass with lengthy reverence, Cushing has little use for the trappings of his office. He wears Jack Kennedy's dog tag (a gift from Jacqueline Kennedy), but rarely wears a pectoral cross: "I have crosses enough without carrying one adorned with jewels." Dressed in his red cardinal's robes—he calls them his "glad rags"—he will march up to a mob of children at a parochial school and say: "How are you, children? It's Santa Glaus!" When he welcomes visitors to his stately residence on Commonwealth Avenue in suburban Brighton, he waves a hand at the rich furnishings and cracks: "What do you think of the joint?" Cushing loves to tell stories on himself—such as when he was summoned to give the last rites to a man at the scene of an accident. "Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost?" he asked. "Father, here I am dying," the man replied, "and you bother me with riddles."
"Hozahner in Excelsis." Malicious rumor has it that some Boston confessors require penitents, as reparation for their sins, to sit through one of the cardinal's sermons, which seem to be measured in units of eternity rather than time. Millions of Americans caught their first glimpse of the Cushing style at the 1961 presidential inauguration, when his windy, ear-shattering invocation was interrupted by a fire in the loudspeaker wiring. One viewer protesting the length of the prayer wrote to Cushing that the smoke represented "the Devil asking for equal time." Now Cushing says sadly: "I thought it was a pretty good prayer, but less than three years later Jack was killed. So it didn't seem to do any good."
Cushing's stentorian, gravelly baritone took on a rare human appeal last year when he presided ("Hozahner in excelsis") at John Kennedy's funeral and steadied the President's widow beside the grave in Arlington National Cemetery. Says Robert Kennedy: "The President felt closer to him than to any other clergyman." Cushing, in turn, regards himself as a "spiritual father" to the Kennedy family. He celebrated the nuptial Mass at the wedding of Jack and Jackie, baptized Bobby's son Chris, and about once a month visits ailing old Joe "to tell him newsy things."