AMERICAN PASTOR IN ROME

Bob Considine has called him ""the American Mayor of Rome,"" he has been ""blessed by Popes and saluted by presidents""... and all in all, Father Cunningham, pastor of Santa Suzanna for many years, considers his life ""something beyond the wildest expectation of a registered pharmacist from the state of Connecticut whose ambition in his early life was, someday, to own his own drugstore."" Father Cunningham changed at twenty-one and decided to become a priest. He learned prompt, unquestioning obedience, served in a Los Angeles parish where he was on a committee that evolved into the Legion of Decency and represented the Archbishop in labor relations, then a new area of action for the Church. After the war in which he served he became the Superior General of the Paulist Fathers, until his road led to Rome and Santa Suzanna, where his good offices were variously deployed between parishioners, the nuns, visitors from America (often unwed mothers wishing to bear their children and yield them up for adoption), the life of the Church (such as Vatican II and the Beatification of Mother Seton). Called home to America, he knew, with the other ""old Romans,"" that ""after Rome there is no promotion--there is only change."" Father Cunningham has a recognized talent for working with those not of the faith, and his book may include some of them along with a predictably predominant Catholic readership.