Shirley Jean Radcliffe Dolan, mother of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, dies at 93
NEW YORK -- The mother of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan has died, the Cardinal announced in an email to the Archdiocese of New York.
Shirley Jean Radcliffe Dolan was 93, and had spent the last few years in an assisted living center near St. Louis, Missouri, CBS2's Tony Aiello reported.
"My family and I ... thank God for the gift she was, and for her long life of 93 years," the Cardinal wrote. "Your own prayers of gratitude for her life, that her trust in life eternal is now satisfied, and for consolation among her family would be appreciated."
Cardinal Dolan told CBS2 last month that he visited his mother the weekend of February 19, which coincided with the ten year anniversary of the consistory in Rome that made him a Cardinal.
Mrs. Dolan attended the 2012 consistory and was presented to Pope Benedict XVI. The Cardinal keeps a picture of that moment in his residence.
Shirley Dolan told Aiello in 2012 that as she met the Pope, he said to her son, "She is too young to be your mother."
"She said to him, 'Holy Father, as a Catholic, I've always believed you to be infallible, but now I know it,'" the cardinal told Aiello with a laugh.
Cardinal Dolan is the oldest of five children born to Shirley and Robert Dolan. His father died in 1977.
In his email, the Cardinal said he would travel to St. Louis on Sunday to lead the funeral mass for his mother. He will celebrate a memorial mass in her honor at St Patrick's Cathedral in Midtown on Saturday, March 19.
