The following comes from the CNS:Retired Archbishop Philip M. Hannan of New Orleans said "it would be tremendous" if his city's team, the Saints, beat the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV Feb. 7 in Miami. "As a matter of fact, if it happens, the downtown parish of the city will simply explode," he told the Clarion Herald, newspaper of the New Orleans Archdiocese. Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond, current head of the archdiocese, and Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein placed a friendly wager on the game. "If we win, he owes me some southern Indiana pork chops, and if they win, I owe him some gumbo," Archbishop Aymond said. "It should be fun." But it was Archbishop Hannan, now 96, who was there at the beginning, when the Saints and their fans were "newly minted," as editor Peter Finney Jr. of the Clarion Herald recounted in his column for the Feb. 6 issue of the newspaper. The archbishop, who headed the archdiocese from 1965-88, even helped name the Saints. According to Finney, the archbishop reassured then-Gov. John McKeithen "that he did not consider the nickname sacrilegious. 'But I have to tell you,' he told McKeithen, 'from the viewpoint of the church, most of the saints were martyrs.'"
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