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A handful of clergy who are natives of the Albany Diocese or serve here have made sure that a statue of the Diocese's first bishop now stands in an unusual place: on the grounds of Mount St. Mary's University Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md.

Mount St. Mary's, from which many of the clergy graduated, gives out the Cardinal John McCloskey award each year to a priest for "distinguished service to the mission of the Church and the Mount." Cardinal McCloskey attended Mount St. Mary's; he was the first bishop of the Albany Diocese and went on to become the first cardinal in the United States. Several clergy with ties to the Diocese who are Mount alumni have received the McCloskey award in past years:

•  Archbishop Harry Flynn, a Schenectady native who once served as rector of the seminary and is now archbishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis;

•  Rev. Thomas Connery, pastor emeritus of Immaculate Conception parish in Glenville; and

•  Rev. Robert Hohenstein, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Schenectady.

Last year, Father Hohenstein attended a Mount alumni reunion at which the award was presented - and suddenly wondered whether the seminary had a statue on campus of the clergyman for which the award is named.

When he learned it did not, he took action. Father Hohenstein contacted clergy in the Albany Diocese who attended the Mount and others with an interest. He raised $10,000 for a statue from nine donors: himself, Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger (a native of Brooklyn, like Cardinal McCloskey), Bishop Emeritus Howard J. Hubbard, Archbishop Flynn, Father Connery, Revs. Joseph Cebula, James Daley and Robert Powhida, and Rev. Paul Redmond, an Albany native who taught for decades at the Mount and passed away in October.

The statue, located on the seminary's O'Donnell Lecture Hall Plaza, was blessed and dedicated by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore during this year's Mount alumni reunion in October. Among those in attendance at the ceremony was Father Hohenstein, whose name is on a plaque on the statue along with those of the other donors.

"They have anything and everything on the Mount campus," Father Hohenstein told The Evangelist.

Now, he said, the Mount campus has one more addition: "This is the only statue in the U.S. of Cardinal McCloskey."[[In-content Ad]]

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