As was widely expected, the Vatican has named Edward Egan, Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, as the new archbishop of New York, succeeding the late Cardinal John O'Connor. The announcement last week came as no surprise, particularly since 68-year-old Bishop Egan served as auxiliary bishop under Archbishop O'Connor from 1985 to 1988. Like Archbishop O'Connor, Bishop Egan is a Vatican loyalist who is expected to uphold traditional church teaching on such issues as abortion and homosexuality. He is also widely praised as a person of firm views with strong administrative and financial skills. At a news conference in New York after the Vatican announcement, Bishop Egan was asked if he would uphold the church's "pro-life" stance on a number of issues. "With all the enthusiasms and insistence and light that I can possibly add, the answer is yes,'' he said. "Without any question, yes."Much of Egan's time in Bridgeport—a suburb of New York—has been spent consolidating the archdiocese's schools and other institutions, sometimes making unpopular decisions. The New York archdiocese has 2.4 million church members, more than 400 parishes and about 250 schools. A third of its members are Hispanic, and they are the fastest growing group within the archdiocese. The archdiocese's location in the nation's biggest city—which is in effect also the nation's media capital—means that the archbishop of this city is the most visible Roman Catholic spokesman in the US. Edward Egan is a native of Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He was ordained a priest in 1957, after studying at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome. He was a vice chancellor of the archdiocese of Chicago before spending more than 13 years as a judge in the Roman Rota, ...