In Memoriam: Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. (1937 – 2015)

When he addressed graduates at Commencement 2001, His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., then the Archbishop of Chicago, presented a concise and inspiring vision for the life of the Christian. “The education you’ve received here at Thomas Aquinas College has begun to set you free,” he began, “to pursue the truth in life, to discern good from evil, to recognize falsehood and destructive ways of living, to live life at the highest level possible: a life lived in communion with God and with all those whom God loves.”

Fourteen years later, the College mourns the death of Cardinal George, who lived the very sort of life which he recommended to the graduates — a life lived in communion with God and with all those whom God loves.

A Life in the Church

Born in Chicago on January 16, 1937, Cardinal George was the first native Chicagoan to serve as his city’s Archbishop. He studied theology at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and was ordained in the Oblates of Mary Immaculate on December 21, 1963, at the age of 26. He then earned a master’s degree in philosophy at the Catholic University of America in 1965 and a doctorate in American philosophy at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1970. In 1971 he completed a second master’s degree, this time in theology, at the University of Ottawa.

From 1973 to 1974, he was Provincial Superior of the Midwestern Province of the Oblates. He was then elected Vicar General of the Oblates and served in Rome from 1974 to 1986. Returning to the United States, he became coordinator of the Circle of Fellows for the Cambridge Center for the Study of Faith and Culture in Massachusetts (1987-90), and also obtained a doctorate of sacred theology in ecclesiology from the Pontifical University Urbaniana in Rome (1988).

Pope St. John Paul II appointed him the Bishop of Yakima (Washington) in 1990, Portland (Oregon) in 1996, and Chicago 1997, and then elevated him to the College of Cardinals on February 21, 1998. In accordance with canon law, His Eminence submitted his letter of resignation as Archbishop of Chicago to Pope Benedict XVI on January 16, 2012, his 75th birthday.

Friend of the College

In 2001, Cardinal George honored Thomas Aquinas College by agreeing to serve as its Commencement Speaker on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. In his address, he spoke of the then-ongoing efforts to reform the English translation of the Roman Missal. “You, who have in your years here struggled to understand classical texts in their original languages, can appreciate the problems of liturgical translation,” he said. Stressing the need for an improved translation, which the Church would, thanks in no small part to his efforts, adopt 10 years later, His Eminence insisted that the texts must “be both faithful to the original and … understandable in English, but with the first emphasis on fidelity to the Latin.”

He then built upon the theme of liturgical texts to address the Class of 2001 personally. “You are like a good translation. You are to be faithful to the original, to the image of Christ that is in you, faithful, and yet understandable to the world that will read you, to the world for whom you are to be a word,” he said. “Only if, like a good celebration of the liturgy, our actions are witnesses to God’s own transcendence and to our own future eschatological banquet, only then is liturgy good and are our lives holy.”

In recognition of Cardinal George’s own fidelity to the image of Christ, the Board of Governors awarded him the College’s highest honor, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion, praising him for “his courageous witness to the truths of the Faith, combined with zeal for souls, [which] have won him the admiration Catholics worldwide.”

May his soul, and those of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.