The chancery staff gathered around his bedside on the second floor of his West Wesley Woods home. The final annointings were administered. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on March 26, 1968. The first Archbishop of Atlanta, Paul J. Hallinan, was dying.

It had been a four year battle for the 58-year-old archbishop. A uniquely rare kind of hepatitis, probably contracted in Rome at the Council, had laid claim to his robust life. After those years of fighting and optimistic medications, now it was all coming to an end.

The archbishop, realistic even as he kept faith and hopes high, had recognized the end approaching. Family and friends, always a close part of his great-hearted life, were summoned during the final weeks. His brother Art and his cousins visited from Cleveland, his home. Cardinal Dearden, his old seminary professor (“we used to call him ‘Iron John’”) came from Detroit and classmate Cardinal Krol from Philadelphia.

Civic leaders, who marched many journeys to justice with him came too. Ivan Allen, the city’s mayor, Rabbi Rothschild, Rev. Sam Williams, Dr. Benjamin Mays. They came for final conversations, final prayers, final recognition of the leadership-bond, binding their community efforts even at the end. He had wanted to see Dr. King also, but somehow the final meeting never took place.

On the morning of March 26, Archbishop Vagnozzi, Apostolic Delegate to the United States stopped by the house on his way to Florida. He spoke with the dying archbishop even as he faded in and out of consciousness. Friend and constant companion of his illness, Dr. Joseph Wilbur, attended the archbishop many times during that final period. As evening approached word fanned out to the parishes and the priests came to the house for last visits.

The long line of clerics came to his room, some to sit and be present, others to read the divine office, others to kneel and offer communal prayers, others merely to sit in momentary silence. Many of the priests had been close cooperators with Archbishop Hallinan in his constant drive for renewal. Others had disagreed with the visions he explored. All were now united in the brotherhood of the sacrificial priesthood gathered this night around the final moments of the departing high-priest. It was an evening that will be remembered.

Bishop Joseph Bernardin, attending a ceremony in Florida, was last to arrive. Assured by the attending nurse that the archbishop was still “too strong” and would not die that night, he decided to remain in the house but retire to the small guest bedroom. It was past midnight.

The bishop remembers well the frantic knocking on his bedroom door. “It was like a dream, but the words were very clear. ‘He’s going, hurry’.” The future Archbishop of Cincinnati hurriedly dashed into the sickroom. “He gave a final few gasps” remembers the Bishop. “There was just an instant for a prayer and he was gone.” It was the early hours of March 27, 1968. Paul J. Hallinan had passed into his eternal reward and into the history of the North Georgia Church.

Hallinan had transferred from the historic Diocese of Charleston in 1962, to the newly founded Archdiocese of Atlanta. He had loved the solid foundations of the Church in Charleston. “John England was pioneer of the Church in the South,” he would say “and he planted the faith firmly, first of all, in Charleston.” He loved to go back and visit the narrow streets of that city and casually ramble once more around the elegant Cathedral.

He would always pay a visit to the crypt-chapel where all the Bishops of Charleston were buried. “It is a lovely chapel,” he would say, “and the people can and do come here to remember those men who served as bishop.” Often he had wondered if a crypt of that kind should not be made a part of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta. “Since there are only two Bishops of Atlanta, Bishop Hyland and myself, maybe we should build one.” It was a thought he often expressed.

After a Mass of the Resurrection, beautifully celebrated in the renewed liturgy that he helped create, Paul J. Hallinan, first Archbishop of Atlanta, was buried in the priest’s plot in Arlington Cemetery.

The Diocese of Atlanta, founded in 1956, was twelve years old. And memorable history was being written.