The Cardinal Was a Jew

So it turns out the Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor, the Catholic Church’s top official in New York for 16 years until his death in 2000, was a Jew.

Mary O’Connor Ward, the cardinal’s 87-year-old sister, recently discovered that their mother was Jewish, a daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, while digging into her genealogical roots. Their Prussian-born maternal grandparents were Gustave Gumpel and Tina Ruben, who are buried in a Jewish cemetery in Fairfeld, Conn.