ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512110004
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ESTHER DISKIN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
AS HE PREPARES to mark his 25th anniversary, Bishop Walter Sullivan - who some might say has enough mileage on him to consider retirement - says he won't slow down.
A crucifix dangles from the rearview mirror.
PAX JUS is the message on the vanity plates, from the Latin words for peace and justice.
The gray Mercedes' odometer reads 79,857, every mile logged within the past two years.
The car that came before this one, a Volvo diesel, chewed up two engines and more than 380,000 miles before it finally had to be retired.
When it comes to cars, Bishop Walter F. Sullivan is unforgiving.
``I think that the bishop has to be in the center, amongst his people, but also at the margins,'' he said.
To reach 163,000 Catholics at the center and margins of his 37,000-square-mile Richmond diocese is no easy task. But Sullivan gives it his best shot. He once estimated that he spends about one night in four in his own bed. He keeps his schedule book in a pocket and keeps his staff dizzy.
``We all run around with our tongues hanging out from trying to keep up with him,'' said Anne Edwards, chancellor of the diocese.
Some might say that the 67-year-old Sullivan has enough mileage on him to consider retirement. And the road he's been traveling the last quarter of a century has had its potholes.
His statements about the immorality of nuclear weapons in the midst of the Cold War got him in Rolling Stone magazine and a guest spot on ``Donahue.'' When he called the Persian Gulf War ``immoral and unjust,'' military families went crazy. In 1992, he defied the Vatican by signing an advertisement supporting homosexual rights, including the right to adopt children.
While Pope John Paul II has sought to quash the notion of ordaining women as priests, Sullivan has pushed women to the front lines of leadership. Women have been appointed to lead 11 communities in the diocese where there are no assigned priests, and he has welcomed altar girls.
And now, as Sullivan marks his 25th anniversary - and the diocese marks its 175th - he's not talking about putting on the brakes. Or even slowing down.
``As a teacher of faith, I think I have something to say,'' he said.
In the Catholic tradition, bishops are considered successors of Jesus' apostles. Each bishop is a spiritual leader of his diocese or church district, a kind of middleman between the pope and the Catholics in the pews. Bishops report directly to the pope and are called to Rome at five-year intervals.
Sullivan sees his role more simply. Strip away the symbols of his authority - the billowy robes, the ornate hat called a miter, his heavy shepherd's staff - and he's still what he started out to be: a teacher and a priest.
His first teacher was his mother, a nurse who gave up her professional career to care for four children and, seemingly, their entire neighborhood in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md. His father was a dentist.
Unlike many in their middle-class neighborhood, his mother ignored class and racial differences, inviting the garbageman and other city workers in for breakfast. ``She was always helping people,'' he remembers. ``She would never say no to anybody.''
Sullivan, an altar boy at Church of the Blessed Sacrament, a few blocks from his house, decided by the time he was 8 that he wanted to be a priest. He said nothing about it until he was a teen-ager, when a director came to interview priest candidates at his Catholic school.
He didn't mention it before that, he says, because ``no one ever asked.''
At 14, he shipped out to the seminary in Baltimore, studying at St. Charles College and St. Mary's seminary. He sent his laundry home every other week, but he only returned for holidays and summer vacations, to be spoiled by his three doting sisters.
In his seminary days, Sullivan gave no signs he was destined for lofty station in the church, said the Rev. Robert Gloisten, who graduated with him.
``There are some people who always try to be in the right place at the right time. They try to wheel and deal,'' said Gloisten, who now serves in Hampton Roads. ``He never was like that.''
Sullivan was ordained a priest for the Richmond diocese in 1953, and his first parish was St. Andrews in Roanoke. He earned a degree in canon law from Catholic University in 1960 and started to move up in the church.
In 1970, he was ordained an auxiliary bishop, forging a close partnership with then-Bishop John J. Russell. ``I was really his alter ego,'' Sullivan said. ``There were no secrets between us. He was really a father figure for me.''
Four years later, after Russell retired, the 46-year-old Sullivan became the father figure for the diocese. It was a time of transformation: The diocese split in two, with the populous and wealthy Northern Virginia churches becoming part of the new diocese of Arlington. The nation also was in upheaval, recovering from the Vietnam War and weathering Watergate.
Sullivan began doing more of what bishops do - making appearances and giving speeches. He writes all his own speeches - unlike many bishops who have a speechwriter - and hardly ever speaks off-the-cuff. He considers each talk, each homily, an opportunity to teach.
The lesson he has argued with tireless passion is peace, but it's also a lesson that has gone down hard for some in his community, which includes the largest naval base in the world.
He first learned about peace by counseling conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War. Back then, he ignited a crowd of nearly 500 at a Knights of Columbus dinner with a speech about Jesus as peacemaker.
``I always remember being attacked after the speech,'' he said. ``The only one who came up to thank me was a Marine sergeant who had to decide whether to disown his son that evening. His son was going to Canada. And he thanked me.
Years later, his opposition to the war in the Persian Gulf taught him a tough lesson about choosing his words carefully. What he intended as a challenge for conscientious choice was widely taken as condemnation of those going to battle.
``I made a mistake in explaining my opposition, because I declared that the war is immoral. Unfortunately, some people interpreted it that I was saying, `Your husband, your son, is immoral for fighting in it,''' he said.
His parishioners also have taught their teacher, sometimes by butting heads with him.
When several hundred Catholics banded together to lobby Sullivan for permission to conduct the Mass in the traditional Latin style, Sullivan realized - as he now says - that the reforms in the liturgy were moving too fast and alienating some people. He first allowed a Latin Mass on a one-time basis, but now permits it every Sunday in certain churches.
``He acceded to our desires and provided it,'' said Robert Forrest, a Virginia Beach resident who now happily attends Latin Mass every Sunday in Chesapeake's St. Benedict's Chapel. ``He's the boss in the diocese.''
But Sullivan has learned that he can't be bossy. While the priests he admired as a child were trained to be ``the answer man,'' that style no longer flies.
``It used to be that the priest was the boss - whatever Father said, goes. The people really sat back. That altar railing had a real purpose,'' he said. ``It created a real division between the clergy and the laity; the two did not mix. Now, everyone is in the sanctuary.''
And Sullivan remains ever mindful that he might not be the bishop if it came to a popularity contest.
``Someone once said to me, `Unfortunately, we don't get to vote for you,''' Sullivan laughs. ``I'll never forget that one.''
Walter Sullivan has never gotten comfortable wearing his miter, perhaps the best-known symbol of the bishop's prestige.
On a recent Sunday, he donned the peaked, ornamented hat for the procession down the aisle of Church of the Holy Family in Virginia Beach. When the Mass was over - as soon as he was fairly up the aisle, grabbing congregants' hands and chatting - he whipped it off.
``Can you put this inside?'' he politely asked a priest. ``I don't wear the hat that much,'' he said later.
His style is informal and approachable. He wants his priests to be ready to work alongside parishioners, and he sets the example.
He continues to do work that is mainly the domain of parish priests - baptisms, marriages and personal counseling. Sometimes, he pops into churches by surprise. But even these low-profile tasks provide opportunities to put his faith into action in a public way.
For years, he attended prayer vigils before criminal executions as a way of demonstrating his complete opposition to capital punishment. When the executions were moved from Richmond to the rural community of Jarratt in 1991, he no longer was able to do that.
He now visits death row inmates in Mecklenburg Correction Center twice a year, he said, and conducts a Christmas Mass annually. Two years ago, at a prisoner's request, he walked to the death chamber and witnessed the execution. ``We have our share of Catholics on death row, about six or eight,'' he said. ``I think we are called to minister to them.''
His public stands, and his willingness to take heat for them, give his priests courage to go against the tide. ``It becomes easier for me to take stands in homilies, even when I know I'll get grief in the parking lot,'' said the Rev. John DeGiorgio, who leads a church in Mechanicsville.
Sullivan considers priests his peers - ``fellow journeyers,'' he often says - and gives all of them the phone numbers to his office, home and car.
Despite his accessibility and apparent openness, he still is a very private man. He is willing to talk but is uncomfortable focusing on himself. There are few unguarded moments in a conversation with the bishop.
His ideas take shape in solitary moments, and he says he relies on his own intuition, rather than much consultation, when deciding to take his often controversial stands. ``It comes from me,'' he said. ``It's not people pushing me.''
He considers his family and some priests his closest friends, but he protects them and his privacy. Ask to interview his sisters, who still call him by his childhood nickname, ``Wally,'' and he laughs: ``They're too close. Leave them alone.''
How about the priests at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Richmond, near his office? ``I wouldn't bother them,'' he said.
The bishop is a man who understands many things, his friends say, but there's one thing he's never really grasped - how to relax. Under the category of vacations, he includes leading large groups of Catholics on pilgrimages to Rome.
When the workaholic bishop needs to unwind, he heads to a rambling beach house on the oceanfront in Sandbridge, which he bought more than 20 years ago. Sullivan just added a wing with five bedrooms, because he often is host to priests and other work-related visitors. He plans to live there upon retirement, mandatory for him in eight years when he turns 75. Later, he'll bequeath it to the diocese.
He's up every morning at 6 to walk his two miniature schnauzers, Sandy and Muppy, along the beach. Even his dogs don't escape his vocation: Muppy's name is a play on the Russian letters for peace, which look like ``MUP'' in English.
He can never seem to stay many days. Something draws him away from the quiet. Before long, it's time to get behind the wheel of the Mercedes again.
``I don't go looking for these things. They come. You respond,'' Sullivan said. ``You see powerful forces of control, and someone needs to be a voice for the little guy, for the voiceless.''
LENGTH: Long : 198 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: BETH BERGMAN/Landmark News Service. ``As a teacher ofby CNBfaith, I think I have something to say,'' Walter F. Sullivan says.
color. 2. Walter Sullivan gets up every morning at 6 to walk his two
miniature schnauzers, Sandy and Muppy, along the beach. KEYWORDS: PROFILE