Is this man the most influential Catholic in Washington?

He’s retiring from his position with the USCCB—and he could be one of the most important Catholics most people have never heard of.

From the Washington Post:

For the typical American Catholic, seeing Cardinal Tim Dolan, the country’s top bishop, give the closing prayer at the GOP convention was the big political event of the summer. But for Catholics who know how the church really operates in Washington, something far more significant went down last week: John Carr retired.

For the past quarter-century, Carr has been the most important policy adviser to the country’s Catholic bishops, their Karl Rove on everything from health care to clergy sex abuse. He describes himself as “a 62-year-old, white, round, church bureaucrat,” but Carr’s career is a road map for how Catholicism and politics have mixed in Washington for a generation.

The former seminarian has been lauded by U2 singer Bono for successfully pressing Third World debt relief on Capitol Hill and has challenged Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a Catholic, for not demanding more financial sacrifice from middle-class Americans in order to help the poor. When the head of the church’s key mental-health facility for clergy was dying of AIDS in the late 1980s, Carr negotiated how to make the news public. When the Hill’s top poverty advocates were desperate during last year’s budget talks to save assistance programs for the poor, Carr led the effort.

“I’m just so used to John being our leader,” Rabbi David Saperstein, the Reform Jewish movement’s longtime D.C. representative, said last week after describing what he called Carr’s role in convincing a major senator of the impact of climate change on the world’s poor. Carr, it turned out, wasn’t actually at that meeting. But that’s the way it is with Carr — he’s been so influential for so long that sometimes Hill faith lobbyists just assume his involvement in key events.

When a small group of prominent faith advocates organized a good-bye dinner last week for Carr, they intentionally picked “the Captain’s Room” at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

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Photo: Jahi Chikwendiu/WASHINGTON POST