As a Maryland boy, now living in New York, I found special significance in this news:

This morning, Pope Benedict accepted the age-induced resignation of Cardinal William Keeler as archbishop of Baltimore, naming Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of the Military Services USA as the fourteenth successor to John Carroll, the nation’s founding bishop.

The first New Yorker sent to American Catholicism’s birthplace since James Roosevelt Bayley became its eighth archbishop in 1872, the Pope’s appointment of O’Brien, 68, is a marked signal that priestly formation is Priority #1 in the US’ Premier See. The nation’s only bishop to have led two major seminaries will now head the lone American see boasting two of its own: St Mary’s in the city’s Roland Park section, and Mount St Mary’s in Emmitsburg. In testament to his experience as a formator, the Holy See tapped the archbishop to head the Apostolic Visitation of US seminaries during the 2005-6 academic year.

A son of the Bronx, O’Brien was ordained for the archdiocese of New York in 1965. After spending the first decade of his priesthood as an Army chaplain, then earning a Roman doctorate in moral theology, he returned to his hometown’s “Powerhouse,” rising through the ranks as vice-chancellor, director of communications, and private secretary to Cardinals Terence Cooke and John O’Connor before beginning his first stint as rector of St Joseph’s, Dunwoodie in 1985.

It’s intriguing to me that, once again, Benedict has tapped a man to be bishop who has a background in education (like the pontiff himself) and who, like the great John Cardinal O’Connor, also served as a military chaplain.