NEW YORK - Auburn native Cardinal Avery Dulles, a convert to Roman Catholicism from a prominent American family who was the only United States theologian named a cardinal without first becoming a bishop, died Friday. He was 90.

Dulles, a Jesuit, died in an infirmary at Fordham University, where he was a professor for two decades, according to the Rev. Jim Martin of America, a Jesuit magazine that regularly published Dulles' articles.

He was born in Auburn and, though he grew up in New York City, kept his connection to the area with summer visits to Owasco Lake and letters to his grandmother, Edith Foster Dulles.

“I've always felt a certain kinship to Auburn,” he said in 2001.

Pope John Paul II appointed Dulles in 2001 to the College of Cardinals, making him the first American Jesuit and the first U.S. theologian outside of a diocese to be named a cardinal. He was considered the dean of American Catholic theologians.

“It just kind of happened,” he told The Citizen at the time. “We Jesuits do not aspire to become dignitaries of the church. In fact, we rather avoid it.”

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. in April, he made time for a private meeting with the cardinal in New York, underscoring Dulles' importance to the church.

Dulles came from a family of statesmen.

The grandson of a Presbyterian minister, he was the son of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who served under President Dwight Eisenhower. The cardinal's uncle was Allen Dulles, who led the Central Intelligence Agency, also in the Eisenhower administration.

Avery Robert Dulles was a graduate of Harvard College and joined the Jesuits after he was discharged from the Navy in 1946. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1956, later earning a doctorate in sacred theology from Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

He served for 14 years as a professor at The Catholic University in America, becoming an internationally known lecturer, then joined the Fordham faculty in 1988 in New York.

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