c. 1997 Religion News Service
CHICAGO _ With a wreath of incense, prayer and song, Chicago Roman Catholics welcomed Archbishop Francis George as he was installed as their new archbishop Wednesday (May 7) in an elaborate ceremony drawing on the church’s ancient traditions to celebrate its growing diversity.
George, who succeeds the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, took note of that diversity in his first formal homily.
He told his new flock he came as a neighbor and invited them to be part of a church bringing justice to the rainbow of communities in the sprawling archdiocese that covers 1,411 square miles in Cook and Lake counties.”Justice is not an equality that suppresses differences,”George said.”With one another, with all the gifts, justice is right relationship, which delights in differences, and helps us to share them.” He called on his listeners in the packed Holy Name Cathedral to create churches and neighborhoods in which everyone can be at home.”The poor, the unborn and the dying must be made visible in the church and society,”George said.
The service, which lasted more than two hours, symbolically began on the streets surrounding the cathedral. Francis was joined by more than 100 liturgically-garbed bishops, including eight cardinals, and numerous archdiocesan priests for the procession into the church.
There, amid the ringing of handbells and the sprinkling of holy water, he was welcomed by the Rev. Robert McLaughlin, cathedral rector, and 1,500 invited guests, including Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar.
Others witnessed the ceremony as it was broadcast live on six local television stations.
Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, Pope John Paul II’s envoy to the United States, performed the rite of installation as he read the letter of appointment from the pontiff transferring the office of the Archdiocese of Chicago to George.
Honoring both George and the much-loved Bernardin, the pontiff said,”Uplifted by the celebrated and happy memory of our brother Joseph Bernardin, a cardinal of the holy Roman church, whose works and merits we see will remain for a long time to come, we now turn our thoughts to that Catholic community, over which it had been our will that he preside.”By virtue of his prudence and his experience in ecclesiastical matters, (George) will know, equally in turn, how to govern effectively and advantageously, that same metropolitan church.” As head of the Chicago archdiocese, Francis is almost certain of becoming a cardinal.
After asking George to become the shepherd of the Chicago archdiocese, Cacciavillan led the congregation in prayer. He then led George to the cathedra, the archbishop’s chair, which signifies George’s place as the community’s teacher. Accompanied by applause and a choir singing the”Gloria,”George received the crosier, or shepherd’s crook, symbolizing his responsibility and authority to lead the diverse and sometimes fractious Chicago flock.
At George’s request, prayers and music were offered in English, Polish, Tagalog (Filipino), Korean and Vietnamese to reflect the ethnic diversity of Chicago’s 2.3 million Catholics, the nation’s second largest Roman Catholic archdiocese behind Los Angeles.
The first of the three scripture lessons was read in Spanish, showing respect for Chicago’s sizable Hispanic population. Two of the lessons were read by women.
George, 60, is member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate religious order and has a reputation as a first-rate intellectual who is fiercely loyal to the conservative theology of John Paul and deeply committed to the church’s social mission to the poor.
While the installation service served as a symbolic rebirth after months of mourning Bernardin’s November death, the late cardinal’s presence and legacy were very much in evidence.
On Tuesday evening (May 6), approximately 1,200 religious order and diocesan priests gathered for a prayer vigil at the cathedral, a tradition Bernardin began with his arrival in 1982. At that time, Bernardin greeted an archdiocese much divided and rocked by the scandal engulfing his predecessor, the autocratic Cardinal John Cody. In an effort to show his flock he wished to mend the fragmentation, Bernardin told the clergy,”I am Joseph, your brother.” George, whose reputation as a doctrinal conservative concerns some local liberal and progressive Catholics, said he did not yet feel he could claim that intimacy. But in his 15-minute remarks Tuesday to the clergy he said,”I will work very, very hard to become your brother.” As head of the archdiocese, George, whose previous posts were as bishop of Yakima, Wash., and archbishop of Portland Ore., will oversee a corporation that handles $667 million annually and employs 18,876 people.
George was born Jan. 16, 1937, and was ordained a priest in 1963 in Chicago. He earned a master’s degree in philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, and a doctorate at Tulane University in New Orleans.
After serving as vicar general for the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and receiving his doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, George returned to the United States to head the Cambridge Center for the Study of Faith and Culture in Cambridge, Mass., from 1987 to 1990, when he was named bishop of Yakima.
DEA END CAMPBELL
