On this day in 1992, Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara died at Indianapolis. The following day the New York Times had his obituary:
INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 11— Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara, who headed Catholic relief efforts for war and disaster victims around the world, died Friday at his home here. He was 70 years old.
Archbishop O’Meara, the spiritual leader of the 200,000 Roman Catholics in the Indianapolis Archdiocese, was found last summer to be suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease.
The illness led him to resign in September as president and chairman of Catholic Relief Services, an agency in Baltimore that was created to help refugees during World War II and was expanded to a worldwide relief organization. Last year it distributed $230 million in aid to 74 countries.
He was elected to the first board of directors of Catholic Relief Services in the 1970’s and became the agency’s president in 1987. Son of Irish Immigrants
Archbishop O’Meara, who headed a 39-county archdiocese that covers most of the southern half of Indiana, traditionally delivered the invocation before the Indianapolis 500 automobile race.
The son of Irish immigrants, he was born in St. Louis on Aug. 3, 1921, and was ordained there in 1946. He attended Kendrick Seminary in St. Louis and in 1952 earned a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
He was named auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of St. Louis in 1972 and was installed as the fourth Archbishop of Indianapolis in 1980. He died 12 years to the day after his installation.
In an interview shortly after his installment, Archbishop O’Meara said his affinity for the Catholic Church was rooted in his childhood. “I can never remember a time when I wasn’t drawn to it,” he said. “I liked to be around the priests. I liked what they did. I admired their wholesome life.”
Archbishop O’Meara left no immediate survivors.
When he was installed, in 1980, Archbishop O’Meara made note of the seemingly traditional relationship between St. Louis and Indianapolis. He himself was ordained by Archbishop Ritter, who had been sent from Indiana to St. Louis in 1947
