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Whispers in the loggia bishops corner!
“When I was
a young boy
My father
took me into The City
to see a marching band /

He said,
'Son, when
you grow up
Would you be
The Savior of the broken
the beaten, and the damned?'....
While on the usual after-hours circuit at the 2014 November meeting of the US bishops, this scribe stopped to wave and nod to a familiar trio of prelates holed up at a table in the Marriott lounge.

Per his habit, the then-auxiliary of Rockville Centre wasn't with his old confreres from Philadelphia, but the bench's contingent of his fellow Cuban exiles: the auxiliaries of Brooklyn and Newark, Bishops Octavio Cisneros and Manny Cruz. (Somehow, the group's senior member – Felipe Estevez, the Miami-bred bishop of St Augustine – was oddly missing.)

To be sure, Nelson Perez would always join the other Philly priests-made-bishops for their traditional dinner during the week, but – having spent 15 years in these night sessions (i.e. the part of the day when Whispers' Whispers in the loggia cardinal.