Cardinal Dolan celebrates Sunday Mass

Clad in white and purple vestments and his new red hat, Cardinal Timothy Dolan celebrated his first Sunday Mass since being elevated to that position.

The faithful packed St. Patrick's Cathedral in midtown Manhattan, surpassing its seating capacity of 2,200, leaving many in the standing-room-only crowd to watch the service on one of the televisions positioned around the church.

"I want to be a saint and I want to bring as many people with me as possible to sanctity," Dolan said.

Dolan kept his delivery direct, down to earth and spiked with a little humor.

He told the congregants about a recently converted woman who accompanied him to the Vatican this month to receive her first Communion as a Catholic from his hands. Because Dolan's schedule kept getting delayed, she took part in the rite with a priest she'd "never met and will never meet again."

"She was a radiant reminder of a woman who had her priorities right," said Dolan, who said that taught him that heaven, not fame on Earth, is important, as was Jesus Christ's example.

The cardinal also gave Catholic New Yorkers something to be proud of when he mentioned that two of the seven people he helped vote into sainthood were New Yorkers: Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian who was born in 1656 in what is now upstate New York, and Marianne Cope, a Franciscan nun from central New York who ministered to leprosy patients in Hawaii in the late 1800s.

The congregation was enthusiastic about Dolan's new leadership position.

"I think he's a wonderful leader. Hope he brings younger Catholics back. I see a lot of the older people, people our age, are still the practicing Catholics," said Helen Kirpan, of West Virginia.

Nicholas Querrard, 31, of Queens, agreed.

"I thought it was very modern, his style of presenting, very direct, fun, outgoing; he's probably going to help a lot of young people coming back," he said.

Querrard said he hadn't been to church in a long time but watching some of Dolan's interviews on TV had inspired him to come to church with his wife, Veronica, and 5-year-old daughter, Eva.

Mary Loftus, an Irish New Yorker, said she's glad she spent her last Sunday at St. Patrick's Cathedral before moving back to Ireland for a nursing job.

"It reminded me of 20 to 30 years ago in the church, cutting out all the scandal, cutting out everything in between -- the real meaning of going to church," she said. "It gave me a feeling that this is the way it should be."