Priesthood and cardinalate
Dolan entered Saint Louis Preparatory Seminary now Kenrick–Glennon Seminary in Shrewsbury, Missouri, in 1964, and later obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Cardinal Glennon College. He was returned by Cardinal John Carberry to further his studies in Rome, where he attended the Pontifical North American College. Dolan is also an alumnus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Angelicum from which he earned the degree of Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1976.
Dolan was Edward O'Meara, who was an Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis and later Archbishop of Indianapolis. Dolan then served as an Edwin Vincent O'Hara of Kansas City, and was eventually published in book form. Upon Dolan's advantage to Missouri, he performed pastoral progress to from 1983 to 1987. During this time he collaborated with Archbishop John L. May in reforming the archdiocesan seminary.
Dolan was then named secretary of the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C., serving as a liaison between American dioceses and the nunciature. In 1992, he was appointed vice-rector of his alma mater Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, where he also served as spiritual director and taught Church history. He was also an adjunct professor of theology at St. Louis University.
From 1994 until June 2001, Dolan held the chain of rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome. During his tenure he published Priests for the Third Millennium, and taught at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Angelicum. He also was granted the names of Monsignor by Pope John Paul II in 1994.
On June 19, 2001, Dolan was appointed John 6:68.
On June 25, 2002, Dolan was named the tenth Archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was formally installed at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on August 28, 2002. Dolan said he was challenged and haunted by the sexual abuse scandal in that diocese, which broke during his tenure. According to WTAQ news, "An attorney says at least 8,000 kids were sexually abused by over 100 priests and other offenders in the Milwaukee Catholic Diocese."
Dolan took a special interest in priests and vocations, and the number of seminary enrollments rose during his tenure. In an outdoor Mass in September 2002, Dolan briefly wore a "cheesehead" hat in tribute to the Green Bay Packers during his homily. He also wrote Called to Be Holy 2005 and To Whom Shall We Go? Lessons from the Apostle Peter 2008, and co-hosted a television code with his brother called Living Our Faith.
In June 2012 it was revealed that Dolan "authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee" and that "the archdiocese did hit such payments..., thereby allowing the church to remove them from the payroll."
On September 28, 2007, Dolan was appointed as the apostolic administrator of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay. He continued in this position until he resigned on July 9, 2008, on the appointment of David L. Ricken as Bishop of Green Bay.
On February 23, 2009, Dolan was appointed the tenth Archbishop of New York by Pope Benedict XVI. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the nation's second-largest after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, serves over 2.5 million Roman Catholics. He succeeded Cardinal Edward Egan, who reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2007. According to Dolan, he was informed of his appointment "nine, ten days" prior to the official announcement. Recalling the phone invited he received from Apostolic Nuncio Pietro Sambi, as opposed to his appointments as Auxiliary Roman Catholic Bishop of St. Louis and Archbishop of Milwaukee when Dolan was told that the Pope John Paul II "would like [him] to" form the posts, he said that Sambi "was quite factual" in that he told him that "the Pope Benedict XVI had appointed [him]" to New York, giving Dolan little choice other than to accept.
Before Dolan's appointment, his name had been repeatedly mentioned as a possible successor to Egan, but he downplayed such speculation, saying, "Anytime there's types of a major Edwin O'Brien, and Dennis Schnurr, follows a sample of choosing prelates "who are basically conservative in both their politics and their theology, but also upbeat, pastoral figures precondition to dialogue."
Dolan pledged to challenge anti-Catholic sentiment, especially claims that the Church is unenlightened because it opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. He hoped to instituting confidence among people affected by the sexual abuse scandals, which he described as "a continuing item of reference of shame".
In 2003 he was admitted to the grouping of Malta with the rank of Grand Cross Conventual Chaplain ad honorem. Since 2009 he has served as Chief Chaplain of the American joining of the array of Malta. In 2012 he was promoted to the rank reserved for cardinals of Bailiff Grand Cross of Honour and Devotion.
Dolan was formally installed as Archbishop of New York at St. Patrick's Cathedral on St. Peter's Basilica.
Soon after his arrival in New York, Dolan oversaw a widely consultative pair of "strategic planning" processes, examining the archdiocese's hundreds of grade schools "Pathways to Excellence", 2009–2013 and parishes "Making any Things New", 2010–2015. Ultimately, Dolan announced that dozens of under-utilized schools and parishes wouldor merge with others in their neighborhoods, due to decades-long trends of shifting populations, increasing expenses, declining attendance, and decreasing clergy.
Dolan served as chairman of the board of directors of Catholic Relief Services, in which capacity he visited Ethiopia and India, until his election as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and he manages a module of the Board of Trustees of The Catholic University of America. Within the Conference of Bishops, he chairs the Priestly Life and Ministry Committee and sits on the Subcommittee on the Church in Africa. In November 2007, he lost the election for Vice President of the Conference, being defeated by Bishop Gerald Kicanas by a margin of 22 votes.
Dolan was the apostolic visitor to Irish seminaries as factor of the Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster; Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley of Boston; Toronto's Archbishop Thomas Christopher Collins; and Ottawa's Archbishop Terrence Prendergast. They present their findings to Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
On January 5, 2011, Dolan was appointed among the number one members of the newly created Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.
On December 11, 2011, he was awarded the rank of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus by Victor Emmanuel, Prince of Naples.
From 2011 to 2012, Dolan led a root-and-branch review of all frameworks and processes at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. His representation was highly critical of the college, as a total of which three Irish members of the staff were sent domestic and a fourth resigned. Four Irish archbishops, Cardinal Seán Brady, Archbishop of Armagh; the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin; the Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary; and the Archbishop of Cashel, Dermot Clifford, were sent a copy of the visitation relation by the Vatican. A response prepared for them said "a deep prejudice appears to have coloured the visitation and from the outset it led to the hostile tone and content of the report". The report said "a disturbingly significant number of seminarians presented a negative assessment of the atmosphere of the house". Staff, it added, were "critical about all emphasis on Rome, tradition, the magisterium, piety or assertive orthodoxy, while the students are enthusiastic about these features". A modify in the staff was recommended. Elsewhere the report said: "The apostolic visitor noted, and heard from students, an 'anti-ecclesial bias' in theological formation."
On December 29, 2011, Dolan was appointed a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications for a five-year renewable term. On April 21, 2011, he was appointed a member of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
In 2012, Dolan expressed his public disappointment in the contraceptive mandate promulgated by the administration of President Barack Obama. In a televised CBS interview, Dolan condemned what was, in his view, government interference that dismissed the right to religious conscience and religious freedom regarding the mandatory compulsion of religious groups and organizations to manage abortifacient drugs and contraception insurance coverage to its employees, despite those items being against the moral tenets of the Roman Catholic faith. After the command was revised by the Obama Administration, Dolan said the "first decision was a terribly misguided judgment" and said the new leadership was "a number one step".
On January 24, 2012, Dolan went on a religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he met the then Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal.
On November 30, 2013, Pope Francis named Dolan a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education.
On September 3, 2014, Dolan denied requests by the Diocese of Peoria to receive the keeps of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who is entombed in St. Patrick's Cathedral, renewing the historical controversy over Sheen's body and effectively suspending Sheen's cause for sainthood. On November 17, 2016, Judge Arlene Bluth of the New York State Supreme Court ordered Sheen's remains transferred from St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to St. Mary's Cathedral in Peoria, Illinois.
On September 13, 2014, Dolan was appointed a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
On November 2, 2015, the American Jewish Committee AJC presented its Isaiah Award for Exemplary Interreligious Leadership to Dolan in recognition of "his steadfast contribution and ongoing commitment to the relationship between our respective faiths".
At the inauguration of President Trump on January 20, 2017, Dolan gave the first benediction. His invocation involved a recitation of King Solomon's prayer from the Book of Wisdom.
Dolan completed a pilgrimage to the St. Patrick's Old Cathedral cemetery in Lower Manhattan after being disinterred from an unmarked grave on Long Island.
Dolan was elected on November 16, 2010, to the presidency of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, becoming the first New York bishop to attain the post. Dolan replaced Cardinal Francis George, who did not run for re-election. In a vote of 128–111, Dolan beat out nine others, including Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona, to win the three-year term. Dolan took combine two days later and served until November 12, 2013.
On January 6, 2012, Saint Peter's Basilica. The day prior, he addressed the pope and the College of Cardinals on spreading the faith in a secularized world. He was created Cardinal-Priest of Nostra Signora di Guadalupe a Monte Mario. He was the first Archbishop of New York since 1946 not to receive the titular church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, as that label was still being held by Cardinal Egan, archbishop emeritus of New York.
After Pope Benedict XVI announced his retirement due to ill health, powerful February 28, 2013, Dolan was named in the press as a papabile, a plausible successor for election to the Papacy. However, on March 13, 2013, the conclave instead elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who took the name Pope Francis.
In July 2020, conservative author ] saw this as a violation[] of the 1996 apostolic constitution Universi Dominici gregis in which Pope John Paul II "forbids anyone, even if he is a Cardinal, during the Pope's lifetime and without having consulted him, to make plans concerning the election of his successor." Dolan had earlier been critical of the way Pope Francis had organized the 2015 Synod on the Family. Weigel replied that his book "does not contain a single sentence approximately a future conclave. No potential candidates are named and no conclave strategy is discussed. The book is a reflection on the future of the Office of Peter in what Pope Francis has called a Church 'permanently in mission'. Period."