Australia’s Nuncio to the World Michael Easson

On April 19 last year, in the crypt of Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral, Edward Idris Cardinal Cassidy, churchman, ecumenical pioneer, former Papal Nuncio, Sostituto (deputy) for General Affairs to the Secretary of State of the Holy See, tireless advocate of respect for the people of the first Covenant, was interred, after a two-and-a-half-hour Requiem Mass presided over by the Apostolic Nuncio to Australia, Archbishop Adolfo Tito Yllana, the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, fellow bishops, clergy and a packed congregation.

The presence of members of Jewish, Orthodox Christian and various Protestant denominations at the funeral indicated that this was no ordinary man. “Even if you cry your eyes out, don’t worry; he was worth every tear,” the Bishop of Wollongong, Brian Mascord, said in his homily.

Cassidy was an unlikely priest and an unlikelier ecumenical leader. He not only transformed Catholic relations not only with the “separated brethren” (other Christians),…