The New York Times - November 6, 1985
Ronald Sullivan

The priest, the Rev. Aloysius Jenko of St. Veronica's Church on Christopher Street, said reports that the parish rectory had been selected were true and that renovations were under way.

However, a spokesman for the archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling, would not confirm the choice of the site, saying no final decision had been made.

The rectory, which is at 657 Washington Street, around the corner from the church, is in an area of the West Village where large numbers of homosexuals congregate.

Called Logical Choice

Homosexuals account for more than 70 percent of the 14,000 cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome that have been reported nationally. About one-third of the cases have been reported in New York City.

City health officials said St. Veronica's rectory would be a logical choice for a shelter. Changing social patterns in the West Village area near Christopher and West Streets have diminished the number of parishioners in what once was a thriving parish, leaving the five-story rectory with only two priests, Father Jenko, and the pastor, the Rev. Joseph Snee.

Two months ago, the opposition of parishioners forced the archdiocese to withdraw a plan to shelter AIDS patients in a former convent of the Holy Name of Jesus at 206 West 97th Street.

Parishioners, most of them parents of pupils in the Holy Name school, expressed fear of having their children exposed to AIDS.

In contrast, Dolores Cannata, who lives next to the rectory at 659 Washington Street, said she do not oppose the shelter plan. "We do not live in an insular society," she said. "AIDS is not transmitted by air, and its victims have to be taken care of someplace."

Safety Assurances Sought

But Miss Cannata said that she and the other tenants of her building wanted assurances that the shelter would provide adequate safeguards.

Rosemary Hunt, an assistant administrator at the Village Community School, a private institution at 272 West 10th Street, around the corner from the rectory, said that the school's physician had given assurances that an AIDS shelter would not pose a danger.

Msgr. James P. Cassidy, the director of Catholic Charities' division of health and hospitals, has said that setting up a shelter was the first part of a plan by John Cardinal O'Connor, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, to provide hospital care and shelter in Manhattan for AIDS patients.

The Missionaries of Charity have agreed to provide nursing care, and a rectory aide said Mother Teresa, the Nobel Prize-winning head of the order, inspected the rectory a week ago.

Part of the Cardinal's plan includes opening a special hospital unit for AIDS patients at St. Clare's Hospital and Health Center, at 415 West 51st Street.

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