A towering intellectual force in the American Catholic church is dead of cancer at age 78.
Former leader of the Chicago Archdiocese, Cardinal Francis George, succumbed to the disease after a long illness. George retired last year after a third diagnosis of cancer and was replaced by Archbishop Blase Cupich. He was elevated to head the Chicago diocese following the death of Cardinal Joseph Bernadin in 1997.
In his 17 years as head of the third largest Catholic diocese in America, George confronted the sex scandals roiling the church head on, proposing in 2002 a “zero tolerance” policy for sex offender priests. He also became a leading light in the anti-abortion debate and was the driving force behind Catholic bishops opposing President Obama’s contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act.+
A Chicago native, George suffered a bout of polio when he was 13 and was denied entrance to the seminary. Instead, he attended a private seminary run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. After becoming a priest, he spent the next 30 years traveling the world representing his order, eventually landing in Portland, Oregon to head the church there. John Paul II tapped him to lead the Chicago diocese in 1997.
As head of the nation’s third-largest archdiocese, he shepherded the Chicago church through school closings and the priest sexual abuse scandal, striving to reconcile his support for the clergy with the pain of victims.
He also became a point person between the U.S. and the Vatican on the abuse scandal and matters such as liturgy of the Mass, playing a key role in revisions that brought the English translation closer to the original Latin.
George in November 2014 became the first Chicago archbishop to retire, following his third cancer diagnosis, and was replaced by current Archbishop Blase Cupich.
“He stood apart for his intelligence, his ability to make the church’s proposal in a compelling way to contemporary society, his deep faith, personal holiness and courage,” said Catholic scholar and papal biographer George Weigel.
“I think he would want to be remembered as a good and faithful priest,” Weigel said. “That’s all he ever wanted to be.”
George received his first cancer diagnosis in 2006 and had surgery to remove his bladder and prostate. He was diagnosed with cancer again about six years later and underwent more surgery.
His most recent diagnosis came in March 2014, when doctors found new cancer cells in his right kidney. He underwent chemotherapy, but the archdiocese announced in late 2014 that he had stopped taking an experimental drug because it had not been effective.
From his childhood on the Northwest Side of Chicago, George embarked on a spiritual career that took him around the globe as a missionary, then brought him back home in 1997 when he was appointed as the eighth archbishop of the Chicago Archdiocese and spiritual leader of its more than 2 million Catholics.
Born Jan. 16, 1937, George went to St. Pascal School in the Portage Park neighborhood, where he knew early on that he wanted to serve the church.
“The first time I thought about being a priest was my first Holy Communion, when I really came to appreciate the nature of that sacrament as much as a 7-year-old could,” he said in a church documentary in December 2013 commemorating his 50th anniversary as a priest.
Cardinal George was immensely popular in the city due to his good humor and gentle ways. When it became necessary to close dozens of Catholic schools due to declining enrollment, he publicly agonized over his decision, realizing that the people who would be hurt the most were black and Latino parents desperate to keep their children out of the Chicago public school system.
In fact, George made saving Catholic education in Chicago his life’s mission. When he arrived, the diocese was ready to close 45 schools in addition to the 175 they had shuttered in the previous 3 decades.
George, a former professor who graduated from St. Pascal Catholic School on Chicago’s Northwest Side, balked at such a drastic move. He immediately launched fundraising campaigns, ordered academic overhauls and traveled to Springfield to lobby legislators for tax credits and private school vouchers. He also pledged to make teachers’ salaries competitive with those of public school teachers, an inequity he found particularly troubling.
His early efforts met with success, said Bob Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois. By 1999, George had brokered a meeting with House Speaker Mike Madigan, then-Gov. George Ryan and other legislators and secured support for a state income tax credit of up to $500 for parents of private and parochial school students to help defray tuition costs. Legislators also increased money for transportation and textbooks.
“I’m not asking (policymakers) to be open to this for sentimental reasons. I’m asking them to be open to it for public reasons,” George once said. “This is a pivotal, central public service. It is privately provided, but it is a public service.”
But success in Springfield was short-lived, Gilligan said, in part because of the state’s own fiscal crisis. The cardinal’s proposals to fund math and science education for at-risk students, reimburse schools for fulfilling state mandates, provide vouchers and lift the cap on the tax credit never materialized. Even money for transportation and textbooks has disappeared from the budget, he added.
To be sure, the progress has been slower than expected, said Sister Mary Paul McCaughey, superintendent of Catholic schools.
“It took a little longer than what the two of us had hoped,” she said.
To this day, teacher salaries remain way below those in public schools and schools in other dioceses, and individual Catholic schools still don’t provide parents the same academic accountability that neighborhood public schools offer by publicizing their test scores.
The cardinal, however, has focused on securing outside funds, building a case for parish schools as community stabilizers that serve children in need of a quality education, not just Catholics. He claims that Catholic schools save the public school system $1 billion a year, a cost it would incur if Catholic schools closed and displaced more than 60,000 students.
His was a powerful voice that will be missed by Christians of all denominations.
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