At 10:16, Edward Cardinal Egan moved onto the altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral, his tall miter glittering, his pastoral staff firmly in hand, his chasuble pure and white over his alb and red cassock.

He was followed by those who work for him on his daily mission, along with cloaked women and altar boys. The miters were removed and snapped flat, and these men of God adjusted their skullcaps, those red links to ancient Judaism. All took seats facing the cardinal. The altar seemed almost voluptuous with scarlet and gold.

On this Palm Sunday, during a moment of extraordinary crisis in the Catholic Church, the great cathedral was packed. Every pew was squashed tight with human beings. Other worshipers stood three deep along the walls. There was an odd rustle caused by the bending and cracking of palm fronds. The crowd seemed tense, as if wondering what Egan would say about pedophile priests, if anything.

One infant broke the tension with a yawp. Another infant answered with a sob. Then all were directed to the hymnal and the music started and the crowd was singing a hymn I remembered from my own youth as an altar boy in Brooklyn.

All glory laud and honor
To Thee redeemer King
To whom the lips of children
Made sweet Hosannas ring...

Egan then welcomed all to the cathedral, including a delegation from the Czech Republic who had come to visit Ground Zero. But the lips of children did not vanish as a symbol of innocence. The cardinal then called attention to the letter that was being passed out to all present (and to the media). It was addressed "My Dear Friends in the Lord" and its first sentence was blunt: "There can be no doubt: Sexual abuse of children is an abomination."

A visitor could feel the crowd almost audibly exhale. Good, they seemed to say. He's going to talk about this thing. But at that point, Egan referred to the scandal only briefly. "More about this later," he said, and then he retreated to his high thronelike chair, while another man read the entire New Testament account of the entrance into Jerusalem of a Jew named Jesus, on his way to the last Passover ofhis life. That is, he related the tragedy of arrest, conviction and sentencing that is essential to Christianity.

This was the version by Matthew, often cited by scholars as a foundation text for anti-Semitism. It places the heaviest blame for the execution of Jesus of Nazareth on Jewish priests, rather than the Romans, who actually carried it out.

When that reading was complete, Egan again spoke. "I will be brief," he said. "Jesus Christ knew what he was getting into when he entered Jerusalem ..." The cardinal did not say that he knew what he was doing when he entered the Archdiocese of New York. Instead, he emphasized the sacrifice of Jesus (that is, his own human death) and the triumph of Resurrection.

He was clearly furious at those priests in the modern church who had committed such appalling acts against children. The cry of protest, he said, "comes from all our hearts. That cry goes out from my heart as well." He combined in his anger the priestly sexual assaults — "sins, not mistakes" — with the assault on the World Trade Center. He asked for "freedom from fear" and for compassion, and for "the purification of our church..."

'Very Good Start'

Much of his homily was wrapped in cottony imprecision; some longed for a tougher, more precise and exact speech that would go straight to the heart of this legal and ecclesiastical mess. That is clearly not Egan's style. Still, it seemed to many in the cathedral that he had said more than they ever expected. Some of them talked out on the steps.

"I'm glad he just didn't duck the whole thing," said one visitor from Brooklyn, who preferred not to give his name. "At least he said something. And that means he'll have to say more."

Carmen Garcia, who came to New York 33 years ago from Zacatecas, Mexico, and has lived in Chelsea for more than 20 years, was holding twinned images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the late John Cardinal O'Connor.

"I thought he did a good job," she said. "This happens in other religions, too, and in other places. But I love my church. I know we're going to get through this. This is a very, very good start."

On the Fifth Ave. steps, while tourists posed for digital cameras in front of the doors of the cathedral, and people spoke Spanish, Japanese, French, Italian ("Excuse, where is the, uh, Rockefeller Center?") and, of course, English, others were less forgiving. That piece of Fifth Ave. was a microcosm of the much wider debate.

One man told me, "I'm born a Catholic, which means I've been a Catholic for 54 years, and this is the worst thing that ever happened in the church." He paused. "It isn't even about sex. It's about hypocrisy." Others insisted that celibacy has to be set aside as a requirement for the priesthood. "I know, I know, there's plenty of married pedophiles. But let's reduce the odds, okay?"

One insisted that better screening of potential priests was mandatory, "including getting their police records." One man said that the church should not ordain priests until they are 50 years old, "when they're out of gas." Several said that nothing at all should be changed, that the church knew what it was doing now, and would "weed out the bad apples."

Mammon's Role

The danger of a witch hunt also seemed very possible. Cynical con men might make false accusations against priests in hopes of winning a lottery: That is, picking up a nice hunk of cash to keep quiet. Others could succumb to the "buried memory" school of psychobabble, remembering events that never took place. Everybody should go to see Liam Neeson in Arthur Miller's great play "The Crucible" to see how base motives (the lust for property) can combine with hysteria to cause terrifying damage. Nobody should forget that the most triumphant of all New York gods is mammon.

When the crowd drifted away ("How far is Times Square?"), I walked toward the 6 train on Lexington Ave. Across the street from the side entrance to Saks Fifth Avenue, a man with one leg was balanced on crutches, holding a cup. He was Mexican, about 35, far from home. We talked a little, as I remembered my father, who had lost a leg playing soccer in the immigrant leagues in the 1920s. After the war, one of the veterans came home to our block, swinging on crutches, a leg gone. My father asked him to have a drink. "Don't let it get to you," my father said that day. "You can still have a life."

In the shadow of St. Patrick's, I gave the man some money and told him in Spanish to have a good life. "Mil gracias," he said, meaning a thousand thanks. Then in Spanish, "I'll pray for you, señor."