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Dolan says final Milwaukee mass

Apr. 12--Mary Panak came to the farewell mass of Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan with a camera, a small quilt and a framed photo of her son Dillon, who died in 2006.

She’d hope to get close enough to Dolan, who presided over his last Milwaukee mass on Easter Sunday, to ask him to sign the blanket and photo. She settled on the snapshots she was able to get as Dolan moved along the front rows of the congregation to shake hands and greet parishioners.

All that really mattered, Panak said, was that she was there to see Dolan before he left for New York, where he will be installed at the city’s new archbishop Wednesday.

“In 2003, my son was in the hospital in ICU and Archbishop Dolan came to visit him,” said Panak of Oconomowoc. “He could have been anywhere else, but he was at the hospital with my son.”

Panak was one among the packed, standing-room only Sunday mass. Organizers believed at least 1,000 attended the mass and at least a couple hundred of them were in side rooms where they couldn’t see Dolan, but could hear his final sermon and farewell remarks.

“Thank you for praying with me and for me at this, my final Eucharist,” Dolan said in the early part of the mass.

Immediately following the service, Dolan, 59, was scheduled to catch a flight to New York. He will preside over his first mass as New York archbishop Wednesday during the Mass of Installation.