On January 1, newly inaugurated Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a solemn vow to his constituents: “I promise you this: If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you.” No Catholic clergy were invited to the inauguration.
Five weeks later, Ronald Hicks was installed as the eleventh archbishop of New York, but no mayor graced the first pew of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Mamdani’s absence marked the first time since at least 1939 that the mayor of New York skipped the installation of the Catholic archbishop. On Monday, Mamdani told reporters, “I wasn’t able to make that event,” before adding, “I’m so excited, frankly, at his leadership in this city.”
The mayor’s presence at the installation Mass of a new Catholic archbishop goes back at least to Fiorello La Guardia, who attended Archbishop Francis Spellman’s installation in 1939. Given Spellman’s enormous political power, it behooved La Guardia—a reformer opposed to the Irish-dominated Tammany Hall—to remain on the cardinal’s good side. But the custom is meant to transcend political calculus, connecting public authority across administrations with an institution that anchors New York’s civic and religious life.
So ingrained was the mayor’s attendance at an archbishop’s installation that, at then Archbishop John O’Connor’s 1984 installation, he opened his homily with Ed Koch’s familiar catchphrase—“Mr. Mayor, how’m I doin’?”—prompting laughter and applause from Koch, a secular Jew. The two men became close friends. Cardinal O’Connor offered a depressed Koch consolation and reassurance during a 1986 scandal that engulfed members of his administration, but not the mayor himself. They even co-authored a book in 1989. Koch, a front-row fixture at St. Patrick’s midnight Masses, would later say that he loved O’Connor “like a brother.”
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John Ketcham is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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