American Notes LOS ANGELES

The Flying Nun was fantasy, but in Los Angeles the airborne Archbishop is for real. To enable Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony to get around his three-county, 8,700-sq.-mi. archdiocese, anonymous businessmen have given him a $400,000 jet-powered helicopter. Mahony is upgrading his pilot's license so he can fly it solo. Zinging along at 160 m.p.h., he can cut the travel time to the seminary at Camarillo to 15 minutes; by car it took up to 2 1/2 hours. Archdiocesan spokesmen insist the money has not been diverted from other purposes: the contributors are donating more than $1 million a year each to programs for the poor.