rank (reserved for cardinals) of Bailiff Grand Cross of Honour and Devotion. Dolan was formally installed as Archbishop of New York at St. Patrick's Cathedral on April 15, 2009. He wore the pectoral cross used by his 19th-century predecessor, Archbishop John Hughes. In attendance were eleven cardinals and several New York elected officials. He received the pallium, a vestment worn by metropolitan bishops, from Pope Benedict XVI on June 29, 2009, in a ceremony at St. Peter's Basilica. Soon after his arrival in New York, Dolan oversaw a widely consultative pair of "strategic planning" processes, examining the archdiocese's hundreds of grade schools ("Pathways to Excellence", 2009–2013) and parishes ("Making All Things New", 2010–2015). Ultimately, Dolan announced that dozens of underutilized schools and parishes would close or merge with others in their neighborhoods, due to decades-long trends of shifting populations, increasing expenses, declining attendance, and decreasing clergy. Dolan served as chairman of the board of directors of Catholic Relief Services, in which capacity he visited Ethiopia and India, until his election as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and he remains a member of the Board of Trustees of The Catholic University of America. Within the Conference of Bishops, he chairs the Priestly Life and Ministry Committee and sits on the Subcommittee on the Church in Africa. In November 2007, he lost the election for Vice President of the Conference, being defeated by Bishop Gerald Kicanas by a margin of 22 votes. Dolan was the apostolic visitor to Irish seminaries as part of the Apostolic visitation to Ireland following the 2009 publication of the Ryan and Murphy Reports on sexual abuse. Dolan was part of a team that included Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster; Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley of Boston; Toronto's Archbishop Thomas Christopher Collins; and Ottawa's Archbishop Terrence Prendergast. They reported their findings to Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. On January 5, 2011, Dolan was appointed among the first members of the newly created Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization. On December 11, 2011, he was awarded the rank of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus by Victor Emmanuel, Prince of Naples. From 2011 to 2012, Dolan led a root-and-branch review of all structures and processes at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. His report was highly critical of the college, as a result of which three Irish members of