In Portland, in keeping with church doctrine, Bishop Gerety had lobbied against legislative efforts to legalize abortion, and once wrote to President Jimmy Carter admonishing him for supporting abortion rights.

But some of his initiatives, inspired by the Second Vatican Council reforms, made him a lightning rod for criticism by conservatives within the church.

In 1980, one orthodox journal in New Jersey went so far as to wonder, in a headline, “Archbishop Gerety: Has He Left the Roman Catholic Faith?”

His approval, or imprimatur, of a popular Roman Catholic textbook, “Christ Among Us,” earned him a rebuke in 1984 from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, who was then the prefect of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Conservative groups complained that the book deviated from official dogma on matters like original sin, creation, the virginity of Mary and sexual morality.

Archbishop Gerety’s lifetime spanned the terms of 18 presidents and 10 popes, and he held the title of bishop for more than half a century. But he found his vocation late, by some measures, several years after his graduation from high school.

Msgr. Franklyn Casale, the former vicar of the Newark diocese and now the president of St. Thomas University in Miami, said a priest had once told the teenage Peter Gerety, “You need the guts to make the decision to become a priest.”

“He had the guts,” Monsignor Casale said, “because his family had a tremendous amount of faith.”

Peter Leo Gerety was born on July 19, 1912, in Shelton, Conn., where his father, a factory manager also named Peter, and his mother, the former Charlotte Daly, had moved from New Jersey. He was the oldest and last surviving of nine sons, who went on to careers in medicine, law, engineering and government. (One was a federal official in charge of refugees.) He leaves no other immediate survivors.