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CRASH-KEELER (SECOND UPDATE) Oct-11-2006 (590 words) With photos posted Oct. 9. xxxn
Cardinal Keeler out of hospital after car crash in Italy, heads home
By Catholic News Service
BALTIMORE (CNS) -- Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore was released from a hospital in Terni, Italy, Oct. 10, three days after he suffered a broken ankle in a car crash that killed one friend and injured another.
Father Bernard Quinn, 78, was killed and Msgr. Thomas H. Smith, 75, broke several ribs in the Oct. 7 accident. Another vehicle struck the passenger side of the car in which the three vacationing American clerics were riding.
Father Quinn was a retired priest of the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pa., and Msgr. Smith, also a priest of that diocese, is pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Lancaster.
Cardinal Keeler was a priest and bishop in Harrisburg before he became archbishop of Baltimore, and he has often spent vacations traveling with the two priests.
Sean Caine, Baltimore archdiocesan spokesman, said Oct. 10 that following his release from the hospital Cardinal Keeler was recuperating at the Pontifical North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome. He told The Catholic Review, archdiocesan newspaper, that the cardinal is expected to be wearing a cast on his ankle for 30 days.
A North American College official said Oct. 11 that the cardinal caught a flight back to Baltimore that morning. Harrisburg diocesan spokesman Joseph G. Aponick confirmed that Msgr. Smith, who was also released from the hospital, was returning on the same flight.
Last spring Cardinal Keeler turned 75, the age at which bishops are required by canon law to submit their resignation to the pope, but Pope Benedict XVI has not yet accepted his resignation as archbishop of Baltimore.
Caine said the November ceremonies surrounding the reopening of Baltimore's 200-year-old Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary are expected to go ahead as planned, making whatever accommodations may be needed for the cardinal's injury.
Cardinal Keeler has spearheaded the $32 million restoration of the basilica, which was the first cathedral of the Baltimore Archdiocese and the first Catholic cathedral in the United States. Cardinal Keeler is to preside at the ceremony reopening the church Nov. 4 and is to lead the U.S. bishops in a 200th anniversary concelebrated Mass in mid-November, when the bishops hold their fall meeting in Baltimore.
The basilica was designed by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who also designed the first U.S. Capitol and is considered the father of American architecture.
According to an Associated Press report on the accident in Terni, Msgr. Smith was driving, Father Quinn was in the back seat and Cardinal Keeler in the front passenger seat when their car was hit.
Caine said the three have "known each other for many, many years and basically, when they took vacations, they took them together."
Father Quinn, who for many years was a Glenmary priest and was research coordinator for the Glenmary Research Center in Nashville, Tenn., had transferred from his order to the Harrisburg Diocese in 1990 and served in several parishes there. He had been in residence at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Lancaster since his retirement in 2001.
Aponick said Oct. 11 that Father Quinn's funeral would be held at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church with burial to follow at St. Joseph Cemetery in Lancaster. But he said the date of the funeral could not be set until arrangements were completed for the return of the priest's body from Italy.
Father Quinn is survived by his brother, Joseph, and two nieces and a nephew.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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