Newly-retired New York archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan weighed in on the impact decisions made by Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had on local Catholics.
Dolan, who served as archbishop of New York from 2009 until the end of 2025, specifically referred to the avowed socialist mayor’s decisions to not invite the cardinal to his Jan. 1 inauguration and to skip the installation of Dolan’s successor, Archbishop Ronald Hicks. The cardinal also shared his thoughts on Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, during an “EWTN News In Depth” interview released Thursday.
“So far, we were ticked off that he didn’t— I was ticked off he didn’t invite me to his inauguration. Most of the time, the archbishop of New York, among other religious leaders, gets invited. I was ticked off that he didn’t have. … He had few, few, few, few, few Catholics on his transition team, okay?” Dolan told EWTN’s Mark Irons.
“And then I was really ticked off that he didn’t show up at the installation of my successor,” the cardinal emphasized.
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“That defied precedent, the mayor not showing up to the installation of the archbishop,” Irons noted.
The tradition of New York City mayors attending the installation of the leader of the Big Apple’s Catholic archdiocese dates back to 1939, according to religious journal First Things.
In addition to Dolan, no other Catholic clergy were invited to Mamdani’s inauguration, the journal reported.
A City Hall official cited an unspecified scheduling conflict in the mayor’s skipping Hicks’s Feb. 6 installation, according to The Catholic Herald.
About a third (32%) of adults in the New York City metropolitan area identified as Catholic, according to 2023-24 data from the Pew Research Center.
Dolan also told Irons during the interview that Vance, whom he met a number of times, is a “very good guy.”
“I enjoy him a lot. I agree with a bunch of stuff that he talks about, you bet,” the cardinal praised the Catholic vice president, before admitting instances of conflict in which “I would sometimes say, ‘Uh-oh, can’t agree with you there.’”
“He [Vance] and I had a little tête-à-tête … when he suggested that bishops in the United States were pro-immigrant ’cause we were making money, which I said was not only untrue, it was scurrilous, and he apologized, all right. He says that was out of line, and that’s not true,” Dolan added. “And he apologized.”
Dolan, who is generally seen as a relatively conservative Catholic cleric, told Irons that Americans “ought to bristle if somebody identifies himself or herself as a socialist” like Mamdani, adding that socialism is “sort of the opposite of what America is.”
The cardinal, however, added that the mayor, whom he met with before Jan. 1, is “a refreshingly honest and approachable guy and obviously a man of high ideals, some of which I would disagree with.”
Dolan told Irons he asked the now-mayor “point-blank” why people said he was a socialist. The cardinal said Mamdani replied, “Cause I am,” before adding he was “kind of an economic socialist, not a political one.”
While retired, Dolan continues to serve among the highest echelons of the Catholic hierarchy as cardinal, a rank he has held since his appointment by the late Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. He is currently one of 17 cardinals in the Roman Catholic Church from the U.S., and was one of 10 who participated in the 2025 papal conclave which resulted in the election of the first American pope, Leo XIV.
Mamdani, by contrast, is the first Muslim mayor in New York City’s history and used three separate copies of the Quran during his two Jan. 1 swearing-in ceremonies.
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