SUNDAY worshippers at the Cathedral of the Holy Name, the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago, entered the church below a white and purple funeral bunting. Under the church’s splendid wooden ceiling, near the massive granite altar, was a big photograph of Cardinal Francis George, a former Archbishop of Chicago. Many had come to pay their respects to a man who had been one of the most influential Catholics in the country. The cardinal died on April 17th, aged 78.
As the head of one of America’s biggest and most important archdioceses for 17 years, until 2014, Cardinal George was universally respected, even by those who disagreed with his conservative views. “He was an academic, a philosopher and an intellectual,” says Father Kenneth Simpson at St Clement, a vibrant parish in Lincoln Park, a posh part of Chicago.
Cardinal George served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010. Under his leadership the bishops adopted a “zero tolerance” policy to sexual abuse within the church, barring priests from the ministry who had been credibly accused of misdeeds. This approach appealed to parishioners, and was ultimately embraced by an initially reticent Vatican. Yet the sex-abuse scandal still left a lasting mark on the cardinal. He faced criticism in 2006 when it became plain that Daniel McCormack, a Chicago priest, was left in a parish for several months despite allegations of abuse. The now defrocked Mr McCormack eventually pleaded guilty to abusing five boys. Cardinal George apologised for not acting sooner. “Oh, by far, the most difficult challenge has been the terrible fallout from the sexual abuse of children by some priests,” he said in an interview towards the end of his life. “That’s been the overwhelming weight in a sense that has stayed with me.”
Francis Eugene George was born into a Catholic family in 1937 in Chicago. At the age of 13 he contracted polio and was subsequently rejected by a diocesan high-school seminary because of his disability. He joined the Oblates, a religious order dedicated to ministering to the poor, and in 1963 was ordained a priest of the order. Rising quickly through its ranks, he became the Oblates’ vicar general, based in Rome. A student of theology and philosophy, he had earned two doctorates and spoke Spanish and Italian as well as other languages. His erudition and linguistic skills made him a strong candidate for a leading role in the American church.
In 1997 Pope John Paul II named Francis George the eighth archbishop of Chicago, succeeding Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, a liberal voice of the second Vatican council and a much-loved pastor. As a doctrinal and cultural conservative, Cardinal George was close to both the Polish pope as well as his German successor, Pope Benedict XVI. In 2004 he wrote that liberal Catholicism is an “exhausted project” because it failed to pass on the church’s “faith in its integrity” on marriage, the priesthood and other topics. Though a champion of the poor and an advocate of health-care reform, the cardinal spearheaded the church’s opposition to President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act because it required employers to include birth control in their health plans. In his eyes such a requirement amounted to the state sanctioning abortions.
For Cardinal George it was harder to find common ground with Pope Francis, the reformist Argentine cleric who assumed the papacy in 2013. He called the new pontiff's messages “a bit jumbled at times”. When Cardinal George retired in November 2014, after years of fighting the cancer that would claim him, Pope Francis surprised everyone—and disappointed the cardinal—by appointing as his successor Blase Cupich, a progressive priest with Croatian roots. Ever the faithful soldier of the church, Cardinal George fully backed his successor once the appointment was made.
Archbishop Cupich (he is not a cardinal yet) paid a moving homage to his predecessor on the day of his death, encouraging parishioners to remember him as someone who was “always choosing the church over his own comfort, and the people over his own needs”. He beseeched followers to heed Cardinal George’s example and be “a little more brave, a little more steadfast and a lot more loving”.
