Along with maturing into a learned priest, Father Brady had matured into a fine-looking young man. For one thing, he had grown. He stood well over six feet with broad shoulders, a husky body, wavy blond hair, clear and penetrating blue eyes, a great smile, and a handsome face. Some of the teenage girls in Father Brady’s parish considered the priest a “hottie.”

Father Brady’s mother, Emma Brady, passed away while he was an assistant pastor at St. Matthias. She had never been a healthy woman. Once she was buried, Flynn Brady flourished. So did his appliance business. Flynn began working sixteen-hour days, something he’d always wanted to do but couldn’t because of marital duties. He also drank more, another habit he had been prohibited from indulging in while his wife was alive. Emma Brady had nagged her husband into not taking that extra drink by saying over and over again, “God will cause you to drop dead when you least expect it.” And Flynn Brady was a superstitious man.

As a result of Flynn Brady’s sixteen-hour days, the net worth of his appliance business soared (along with his blood pressure). Now more than ever Flynn Brady wanted his son, needed his son to join him at work. The load was getting to be too much for Flynn Brady. So was the stress. But Flynn Brady was innately afraid of strangers. He had a phobia about trusting them and consequently never hired anyone he didn’t know.

The day finally came when the old Irishman knew the dream of his son coming into the business he had founded was dead as a doornail. That was the day Father Deuber told him (proudly) that Cardinal Michael Ruffing, head of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, had his eye on Flynn’s son and Father Deuber’s assistant. Word had it the cardinal was going to transfer the assistant pastor to the church of His Eminence.

Within a month of hearing the news, Flynn Brady’s son was transferred from run-down St. Matt’s to the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul located at 222 North Seventeenth Street, in Philadelphia. The cathedral was a dramatic green-domed building surrounded by trees in center-city Philadelphia. The rust-colored, ornate brownstone structure belied a simple interior made up of a main aisle, pews on either side of the aisle, and a pulpit front and center. The cardinal’s office was there, but His Eminence lived elsewhere. The cardinal’s residence was a palatial mansion, courtesy of the Vatican, on the corner of Cardinal Road and City Line Avenue. The office and cathedral were known to Philadelphia priests as “The Twos.”

Father DP Brady was summoned to “The Twos” and made secretary to the cardinal, a rather awesome promotion for such a young priest. There were many things Cardinal Ruffing liked about Father Brady. The cardinal had found out from several of his sources that Father Brady was devout, that he had “a lust for the clergy,” the church’s way of calling the priest ambitious (but not “pushy”); and the young priest’s reputation for strictly adhering to Catholic dogma, which, the cardinal was told, Father Brady did without seeming dictatorial, was a plus.