Originally Posted by
East Side OP
izziindetroit, you pose an interesting question about the size of the house originally used by the Catholic cardinal. Actually, a cardinal serves as the host for many international and national gatherings of people gathered for church business. Some of these international visitors, such as members of the hierarchy on various missions from Rome might typically have also needed some work space available to them [[office space) as well as for one or two staff memebrs who might have been accompanying them. As one of only 7 or 8 American cardinals the Detroit archbishop's residence would quite frequently have been the location for various kinds of meetings, fund-raising events to help support the endless chain of charities operated by the Catholic Church and so on. So in a way, part of the purpose of a cardinal's residence is to function as a temporary kind of "company headquarters on the road" so adequate space is needed. Also, a cardinal rarely lives alone. There would have always been at least one or two if not a few more priests living there as well [[e.g. the priest who was the cardinal's executive secretary) and as unrelated adults, it would have been typical for each permanent resident of the house to have a modest suite of two or three rooms rather than just his own bedroom. That is the same model, by the way, used for all diocesan rectories in parishes. So a large residence for a cardinal is not intended to accommodate any kind of ostentatious lifestyle; the size has more to do with the dictates of the function of the facility.
