From Ann Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Oct, 17, 2007...

"The Rev. Louis Vallone, BLS Alum ('65) received a call immediately after the pope's announcement from Cardinal-designate DiNardo, a close friend. They have been friends since 1963, when the future cardinal enrolled two classes behind him at the former Bishop's Latin School in Pittsburgh.

"I have always said from the very beginning that he is the best that the American church has to offer," said Father Vallone, pastor of St. John of God in McKees Rocks and administrator of St. Catherine in Crescent.

"He is a man of absolute native brilliance and intelligence. He is a man who is 100 percent a pastor at heart, no matter what job the church gives him. And he is a man of God and a man of the people with no hint of discrepancy between serving those two simultaneously."

Cardinal-designate DiNardo was born in Steubenville, Ohio. He was ordained a priest in 1977, and his first assignment was as a parochial vicar at St. Pius in Brookline. He later want to work in the schools office of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Then he was dispatched to Rome, where he staffed the English language desk of the Congregation for Bishops, translating documents pertaining to possible bishop appointees in the U.S., Canada and Australia. In the 1990s, he returned to Pittsburgh at his own request.

"He wanted to come back. He wanted to come back and be a pastor," said Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus of the Duquesne University School of Law, who also attended Bishop's Latin School (class of 1967) with him and later had him as a pastor."