Man of Faith
by Donna Diermann Soper
Photographs by Michael DeMocker

After an almost 30-year hiatus from the city down South where he received one of his four postgraduate degrees, the Most Rev. Francis Cardinal George, archbishop of Chicago, finds himself standing behind a podium in Myra Clare Rogers Memorial Chapel, facing a captivated crowd.

As he begins to explicate the poetry, plays and encyclicals of Pope John Paul II before the Tulane audience, it becomes clear, almost immediately, that this newly appointed cardinal is no ordinary man of faith. His lecture, "Images of God in the Writings of Pope John Paul II: A Spirituality for the New Millennium," is punctuated with references to anthropology, philosophy, phenomenology and ecclesiology, and, consequently, not intended for the weak of intellect.

Yet even the unordained are able to walk away from this experience with some level of understanding. Their enlightenment, however, has more to do with the cardinal himself than with his chosen topic.

What lies beneath this scholar's extensive knowledge of church teaching, his clear comprehension of some of the earliest and more obscure writings of Pope John Paul II and his mastery of even the most complex theories in philosophy is a simple, honest faith.

His is the kind of abiding, unconditional faith that radiates through the pomp and circumstance linked to the titles of honor and responsibility in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church--the kind of unquestionable faith that even the most superior intellectual, such as he, can reconcile with the principles of pure logic.

Career Choices

Born in 1937 to Francis and Julia George, Francis Eugene George attended Saint Pascal Grade School on Chicago's northwest side and Saint Henry Preparatory Seminary in Belleville, Ill.

He first entertained the idea of becoming a priest, he says, at the time of his first Holy Communion, but then he forgot about it for a few years. "I thought about it again at the end of grade school, and by the end of high school, I had definitely made up my mind."

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), the religious order of priests who had taught him in high school, was the logical choice for his seminary training. The order, which was founded in 1816 in France by Father Eugene Mazenod, was initially started to preach the gospel to the poor working people of southern France. Today, according to OMI documents, more than 5,000 Oblate priests and brothers are working in 68 countries on every continent.

After studying theology at the University of Ottawa, Canada, George was ordained an Oblate priest in December 1963 at the parish church of his grade school, Saint Pascal. Two years later, he earned a master's in philosophy at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

His thirst for knowledge still unsatisfied, he came to New Orleans in the latter half of the 1960s to pursue a PhD at Tulane. As the world was reacting to the war in Vietnam and digesting the directives set forth by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), George was refining his interest in American philosophers such as Josiah Royce, George Herbert Mead and Roy Wood Sellars.

"It was a very unsettled time," he says. "But I don't remember it as being an unsettled time for me. Those were happy years here. The philosophy department at Tulane was heavy on American philosophy, but that's just what I wanted at that time, and I had excellent professors."

While he was studying and teaching at Tulane, George served at Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Napoleon Avenue and Our Lady of Guadeloupe Church on Basin Street. Also during that period, he taught philosophy at the Oblate Seminary in Pass Christian, Miss. (1964-69) and at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. (1969-73). He completed his PhD in 1970, and, a year later, received a master's in theology from the University of Ottawa.

After serving two years as a provincial superior for the Oblates in St. Paul, Minn., George was elected vicar general of the order, which necessitated his moving to Rome. For 12 years (1974-1986), he visited Oblates throughout the world, and he began working on yet another degree, a doctorate of sacred theology in ecclesiology--the theology of the church--at the Pontifical University Urbaniana in Rome. His thesis--"Inculturation and Ecclesial Communion: Culture and Church in the Teaching of John Paul II"--reflected an enduring respect for and kinship with Pope John Paul II. It was during this long period in Rome that he began to be recognized by the Vatican for his leadership, intellectual prowess and commitment to the Catholic Church.

Upon his return to the United States, George became the coordinator of the Circle of Fellows for the Cambridge Center for the Study of Faith and Culture in Cambridge, Mass., from 1987 to 1990.

This last decade has proven one of great transition and challenge for George as he has ascended the Catholic hierarchical ladder at an unprecedented pace, beginning with his appointment in 1990 by the pope to be the Bishop of Yakima in Washington State, a diocese of nearly 65,000 Catholics, half of whom are Hispanic. Also that year, he began serving as Episcopal moderator and member of the board of the National Catholic Office for Persons with Disabilities, a position to which he brings personal experience. The cardinal maintains a slight limp, the result of a five-month battle with polio when he was 13.

Six years later, in 1996, George was selected to serve as the ninth archbishop of Portland, Ore., where he was responsible for propagating the faith to nearly 287,000 Catholics in 125 parishes and overseeing the education of almost 15,000 elementary and high school students in Portland's Catholic school system.

Less than one year later, on April 8, 1997, the pope named him the eighth archbishop of Chicago. He was carefully chosen to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, who died in November 1996.

Within seven months, Pope John Paul II elevated the new archbishop to the Sacred College of Cardinals, which is the chief ecclesiastical body of the Roman Catholic Church entrusted with electing and advising the pope. Upon his selection, Cardinal George became one of nine living U.S. cardinals and the sixth cardinal in succession to serve as archbishop of Chicago.

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