A quiet archbishop shows colorful side

(Clarification: A photo caption that accompanied the continuation of a Page One story Monday on Archbishop Sean O'Malley gave the impression that it was showing O'Malley looking at books at Schoenhof's Foreign Books in Harvard Square. Although the newly named cardinal likes to shop at the store, the photo was of a customer who identifies himself as Father Paul of Jesus.)

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, shortly after taking office, wrote a letter to Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley asking for a meeting. He never heard back. Neil F. Finnegan, banker and fund-raiser for Catholic causes, speaks with O'Malley at archdiocesan events, but they never stray into personal exchanges. Mary McHale, who runs a homeless shelter a block from O'Malley's South End residence, sent a note asking O'Malley to visit, but he never stopped by.

After three years, the archbishop of Boston remains aloof and enigmatic to many, a distant figure in flowing robe and simple sandals. Now Pope Benedict XVI's decision to elevate O'Malley to cardinal signals a new permanence to his posting in Boston and is spurring hopes that the relationship between the shy friar and the more than 2 million Catholics he leads will deepen into a more personal bond.

It won't be easy for the 61-year-old Franciscan Capuchin, who had hoped to devote his life to quiet service to the poor, to extend a less formal side of himself. O'Malley has shown deep reluctance to share even the most mundane details about his personal life in Boston. But conversations with waitresses at the diner he haunts, the priests with whom he watches the Super Bowl, and the clerk of his favorite bookstore paint a portrait of a more colorful O'Malley, a funny, affectionate man they hope will emerge in his new role as cardinal.

''This guy has tremendous charisma," said the Rev. Brian Kiely, pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Natick, who likes to go for plates of pasta with O'Malley at Papa Razzi restaurants and wishes everyone could see the easygoing companion he knows.

Kiely and those close to O'Malley speak of the prelate as a foreign film buff, art lover, and zesty conversationalist who can delve equally into ''The Da Vinci Code" and ''Prairie Home Companion" on NPR.

Many of Boston's elite have never seen this side of O'Malley, if they have met him at all. Unlike his ambitious, politically savvy predecessor, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, O'Malley has never testified on Beacon Hill or gone to the State House to meet either House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi or Senate President Robert E. Travaglini. Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole recalls meeting O'Malley only once, at an antiviolence summit, where O'Malley sat quietly in the back.

O'Malley declined to be interviewed for this story, but he has acknowledged he feels ill at ease with the attention he commands. He recently told the pope that he does not believe Capuchins should serve as cardinals, the princes of the church who influence Vatican policy. Unassuming followers of Saint Francis, the tiny order of 11,000 eschews ornamentation and adulation, preferring missions in the poorest corners of the world.

''I've always said -- and I told the Holy Father -- I think that Capuchins should only be bishops in the missions," O'Malley said in an interview last week with the archdiocesan newspaper, The Pilot, ''but we are to be available for the service of the church, in whatever the Holy Father asks us to do. He is the one who has to be judge of that."

All too often, it seems, O'Malley is the unsmiling face on the evening news, closing churches and schools, apologizing for sexual abuse by priests, trimming millions from the church's budget.

Not so for Erin Stephens, 35, who waited tables at Victoria's Diner, a busy Roxbury restaurant with Formica tabletops and oldies on the sound system. She knows O'Malley as a Friday night customer who always orders clam chowder and doesn't care which booth he gets.

Her co-worker, Linda Zyskowski, enjoys trying to banter with the powerful prelate. Once, she asked O'Malley to perform an exorcism on her unruly 13-year-old granddaughter.

''He looked at me crazy first," Zyskowski said. ''Then he said, 'I'll pray for her.' Two weeks later, I told him, 'She's a lot better now. The prayers must have worked.' "

O'Malley, easily recognizable with his snow-white beard and brown robe, draws stares from customers, some of whom approach his table to talk to him, said Samira Droubi, 54, manager and hostess at Victoria's. O'Malley, glancing up from his bowl, greets them with a smile.

''He doesn't mind," Droubi said. ''He talks to everyone. . . . When I first saw him here, I thought 'a bishop like him wouldn't come to a place like this."

A more deferential welcome awaits the archbishop when he walks into his favorite bookstore, Schoenhof's Foreign Books in Harvard Square. The Rev. Paul DuPuis, who works at the shop, said that when O'Malley enters, he kneels and kisses his hand.

A voracious reader who speaks Latin, French, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Italian, and Portuguese, O'Malley has recently been spending plenty of time in the Haitian Creole section, said Rupert Davis, store manager. He can spend an hour or more in the aisles, casually leafing through titles.

''He likes just to browse quietly," Davis said. ''We like to leave him to do that."

''I think it's kind of a relief for him," DuPuis said.

The books he buys ''are all oriented to studies that will help him better grasp the people," DuPuis said. ''I don't think he has much time for just literature."

The Rev. Paul O'Brien, 41, a friend who worked with O'Malley in the Fall River diocese, said he is saddened that O'Malley has not been able to spend nearly as much time out and about in Boston as he did in Fall River. O'Brien blamed O'Malley's schedule and the constant attention he attracts in Boston.

Nowadays, when O'Malley goes to a movie or a museum, it's usually in Florida, where he has family and seldom draws attention, O'Brien said.

O'Malley enjoys two indulgences: his $190 leather sandals, hand sewn by a Provincetown craftsman, and heaps of Parmesan cheese on his pasta, said Kiely, the Natick pastor. Kiely recalls the patience of the wait staff at Papa Razzi.

''The poor waiters and waitresses, they'll say, 'Would you like cheese with your dinner?' They'll be grating, grating, grating, and I say, 'Why don't you sit down?' " Kiely said. ''There is no pasta left by the time they're done. He just loves cheese."

Said O'Brien: ''I think he is a much happier human being when he's consuming pasta."

O'Malley does not drink alcohol, opting for mineral water, usually San Pellegrino.

''Sometimes a ginger ale, if he wants to feel risqué," said Kiely.

And he adores dessert, according to the Franciscan brothers at San Lorenzo Fraternity, a sprawling, brick friary in Jamaica Plain. O'Malley loves to visit the friary's eight brothers, most times with an armload of cookies or brownies, and, once, a cake baked in the shape of a lamb.

The brothers can summon spot-on impersonations of O'Malley's slow bass voice on the telephone, asking: ''What's for dinner?" in a tone parishioners might recognize from his homilies. O'Malley spent last Super Bowl Sunday with the brothers, holed up in the kitchen, making meat and vegetable pizza. A Pittsburgh Steelers fan, he asked for regular updates on the score.

''He was just helping us, being one of the guys," said one friar, Andrew Nowak, 33.

Among his friends at the friary, O'Malley loves to tell tales of his days as a novitiate, at St. Conrad's Friary in Annapolis, Md., where he was not allowed to leave the grounds, superiors opened his mail, and he could not read anything that was not approved by higher-ups. He rarely talks about the painful choices he has to make as archbishop. Among the friars, O'Malley's travails are understood, Nowak said.

''We're not going to judge him, or needle him, or ask him anything," Nowak said. ''It's just understood that this is a time just to be with brothers."

O'Malley's busy schedule has forced him to cut back on one of his passions: foreign films. His two favorites are ''Au Revoir, les Enfants," the Louis Malle film about a Jewish boy who hides from the Nazis in a French Catholic school, and ''Diabolique," the 1955 French thriller about a man murdered by his mistress and his wife, said Kiely. The latter seems an odd pick for a priest, but O'Malley just likes a good story, said Kiely. The two men watched the film in the Virgin Islands -- where O'Malley was bishop during the 1980s -- on a VCR powered by a generator after Hurricane Hugo wiped out the electricity in 1989.

''I hated it. I thought it was so boring," Kiely said. ''But he loved it. He speaks French and he can follow the dialogue."

O'Malley's ease with language and curiosity about foreign cultures has served him well as he reaches out to Boston's immigrant Catholics. He often says Mass in Creole and Spanish, and has made an effort to bond with new arrivals. Gertrude Delsoin, a Haitian activist, said that on the day of Haiti's elections last month, O'Malley said he had been praying for the country ''since this morning, all day long."

''That was a good thing to see him thinking about Haiti," Delsoin said.

He also shows an affinity for those who have been traditionally marginalized in society, often spending extra time with parishioners in wheelchairs after Masses at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End. Spotting a crimson-colored shawl on one disabled woman, his dry wit surfaced: ''Red," he intoned. ''For the consistory, but it's too early. . . ."

As he prepares to become the fifth cardinal-archbishop of Boston and only the 10th Capuchin cardinal since the order's founding in the 16th century, O'Malley has engendered deep respect in Boston despite his unease with his celebrity. Many find his lack of pomposity refreshing. After selling the opulent mansion where Law lived in Brighton, O'Malley inhabits a Spartan living space by the Cathedral. His quarters include a bedroom and a sitting room. He has no television.

''He's intelligent and he's holy and he's humble," said Peter G. Meade, a Catholic civic leader, who recalled O'Malley showing up unannounced at his mother's hospital bedside after she had a stroke. ''And I don't think the College of Cardinals is oversubscribed in those categories. "

In time, Kiely hopes O'Malley's comfort in his position will grow, and his personal charm will emerge.

''I'd love to see him out of the office more and around the people, because once they get to know the man, I know they'll follow him to hell and back," Kiely said.

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com. Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com