Byline: JIM FITZGERALD Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Cardinal John O'Connor was buried Monday beneath the St. Patrick's Cathedral altar that was his pulpit for 16 years, after a funeral Mass that drew thousands of mourners, from the powerful to the faithful.
``God gifted him with a keen and subtle intellect, an uncommon rhetorical skill, a knack for the dramatic gesture, a sharp wit and an outrageous sense of humor -- all of which he used in the service of preaching,'' Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, a close friend of O'Connor's for the past 35 years, said in his homily.
O'Connor, 80, died Wednesday of a brain tumor. He came to New York in 1984 from Scranton, Pa., and was appointed in 1985 as head of the nation's third-largest archdiocese, with 2.4 million Catholics.
The 3,500 mourners, including President Clinton, erupted in applause as pallbearers took O'Connor's casket …
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