Worth a thousand words: New York’s mayor receives blessing during communion at St. Patrick’s

This is how it’s done.

From The New York Post:

As cops were being threatened and assaulted and the city reeled over the execution of two officers, Mayor de Blasio prayed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Sunday — then went into hiding.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton visited the scene of the horrific attack in Brooklyn and Gov. Cuomo paid a wrenching condolence call to the home of one of the slain cops, but de Blasio ran from reporters and was nowhere to be found after the church service.

He showed up for 10:15 a.m. Mass with his wife, Chirlane McCray, and Bratton, with all three sitting in a front-row pew as Timothy Cardinal Dolan urged prayers for the slain cops’ families, the NYPD — and the embattled mayor.

Dolan asked Bratton to tell cops that “we love them very much, we mourn with them, we need them, we respect them, we’re proud of them and we thank them.”

On Di Blasio’s religious background: 

As …Bill de Blasio ascends to City Hall, Archbishop Timothy Dolan is hoping the most powerful pol in New York City gives a lot more thought to an even higher power.

Mr. Dolan, the loquacious leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, told ABC7’s Up Close program yesterday that he would like to see the relatively non-religious Mr. de Blasio embrace his Catholic roots. 

“When I met him, however briefly, he told me he had been baptized and raised a Catholic and he was very proud of the fact that he had an uncle, a priest. What his religious status or health is now, I don’t know,” Mr. Dolan said of the mayor-elect.

In interviews, Mr. de Blasio describes himself as a “spiritual person,” but is not a practicing Catholic or an avid churchgoer. “I’m not affiliated with any particular church,” he told reporters in November. As a young man, he was deeply influenced by Christian “liberation theology,” a leftist Catholic political movement that finds in the Gospel a call to liberation from social and economic oppression.

“Would you try and bring him back into the fold?” ABC host Diana Williams asked Mr. Dolan.

“Oh I try to bring everyone back!” Mr. Dolan replied, laughing. “So if he indicates he’ll have an interest–I’ll be knockin’ at the door.”