Flu-bit Dolan better after missing Mass

TIMOTHY Cardinal Dolan was forced to miss Christmas Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Monday — as his up-and-down battle with the flu stretched into its third week.

Dolan, 67, also missed the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

“He’s OK,” said Msgr. Robert Ritchie, who led the Monday morning holiday Mass. “He’s under the weather like a lot of people are right now. We’re praying he’ll get better soon.”

Dolan was first diagnosed with the flu two weeks ago and was briefly feeling better. But the symptoms returned on Friday, said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

“So he’s really taking it easy so he can really be rid of it once and for all,” Zwilling said.

He was healthy and out in public during a shopping event to assist underprivileged New York families on Dec. 9.

During the Midnight Mass, Auxiliary Bishop John O’Hara stood in for Dolan and told worshipers the archbishop wished them a Merry Christmas.

His absence saddened some worshipers. “It’s Cardinal Dolan that keeps me coming back year after year,” said 54-year-old retiree Greg Packer, who came from Huntington, L.I., to attend his fifth Midnight Mass.

In a written message prepared before the holiday, Dolan pointed out that “we have faced some tough times these past 12 months.”

He cited hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, multiple allegations of sexual harassment and “raw political discourse at all levels of government.”

“People continue to suffer,” he said. “And we must never be callous or indifferent about that; we have an obligation to respond wherever people are hurting.”