While there were predictions that Cardinal Timothy Dolan might become the new pope, there is at least one person happy that New York's archbishop won't be head of the Catholic Church. That person is his mother.
In a candid interview with KSDK.com, Shirley Dolan explained that during the recent papal transition, whenever commentators brought up her son potentially being chosen, she felt uneasy.
"The more they started talking about it over there, that's what really was getting me upset," Dolan told the news outlet. "It's not that he wouldn't have been good for the church, I know he would have and he would have done a great job, but I want him here."
The "Today" show's Matt Lauer caught up with Cardinal Dolan on Thursday and asked him about his mother's reaction. The cardinal laughed and blew his mother a kiss.
“I haven’t talked to Mom yet, but I send her my love,” Dolan told "Today."
On Wednesday, not long after Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was named Pope Francis, members of the press asked Dolan whether he was relieved that he had not been chosen as the new pope. The cardinal seemed to suggest he never thought he would be pope, at least not this time around.
“I’d like to say this, especially to the New York press: ‘I told ya so!’” Dolan said, according to CBS New York.
Still, some have already speculated that Dolan having his name floated for the papacy could bode well for his future. Terrence Tilley, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University, told the Wall Street Journal that it gives the cardinal a "boost that is quite remarkable."
"He becomes more of an influential person, a kingmaker in clerical and Vatican circles," Tilley said.