Cardinal Francis E. George, Who Urged ‘Zero Tolerance’ in Abuse Scandal, Dies at 78, by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times (April 17, 2015)

Cardinal Francis E. George, Who Urged ‘Zero Tolerance’ in Abuse Scandal, Dies at 78

Cardinal Francis E. George, who was the Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago for 17 years and helped shape the American Catholic bishops’ response to the child sexual abuse scandal and their resistance to the Obama health plan’s contraception coverage, died on Friday at his residence in Chicago. He was 78.

The cause was cancer, the archdiocese said. Discovered in 2006, the cancer originated in his bladder and spread. But Cardinal George continued to work until November, when he stepped down. In December he announced that experimental treatments he had received had failed.

A quiet, cerebral man, Cardinal George was appointed to lead the Chicago archdiocese by Pope John Paul II. He was the first Chicago native to hold the seat.

It was his prominent role in responding to the sexual abuse scandal in 2002 that first made Cardinal George a national figure. Although it would be five years before he was named president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, he helped persuade his brother bishops to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy, barring priests who had been credibly accused of abuse from serving in ministry.

He was credited with then shepherding the policy change through an initially resistant Vatican.

Cardinal George became a hero to many Catholic traditionalists in the United States and in Rome, where he had worked for a dozen years as vicar general of his religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

He closed Catholic Charities in 2011 rather than comply with an Illinois state requirement that charities that receive state funding must not reject same-sex couples as potential foster care and adoptive parents.

Though a new English translation of the Roman Missal was scorned by many who attend Mass as awkward and full of antiquated phrases, he pushed for it nevertheless, resisting the entreaties of some bishops and priests who had hoped for a more accessible translation.

At the pinnacle of his power, as president of the bishops conference from 2007 to 2010, Cardinal George greeted the election of his fellow-Chicagoan Barack Obama as president in 2008 with a blunt letter warning him not to consider expanding abortion rights.

The bishops conference supported government health care reform, but early on Cardinal George took the lead in the group’s opposition to Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act because of its mandate that employers include coverage of birth control in their health plans.

Cardinal George often said, however, that it was unfair that he or his church was typecast as conservative. Indeed, he defended the rights of immigrant farmworkers and devoted archdiocesan resources to housing the elderly and the poor, in keeping with the church’s tradition of promoting social justice.

“I tried to be present in the life of the poor,” he said when asked in an interview with The New York Times in November what he would like to be remembered for.

The interview was in Baltimore, at the last bishops’ conference he attended. When a priest passing by congratulated him on his retirement and said, “Enjoy your years,” Cardinal George replied with his dour sense of humor, “Or months or days.”

Francis Eugene George was born in Chicago on Jan. 16, 1937. He attended Catholic schools and showed an early interest in joining the priesthood. His father was an engineer with the public school system, and his mother had worked at an advertising agency, according to The Chicago Tribune. Both were active Catholics. His survivors include an older sister, Margaret.

At 13 he came down with polio, which left him with a limp for the rest of his life. He was rejected by a diocesan high school seminary because of his disability, so he attended a boarding school run by the Oblates religious order, which is dedicated to ministering to the poor.

He was ordained a priest of the order in 1963 and rose through its ranks to become its second-highest official, vicar general, based in Rome. There he commanded respect with his erudition — he studied philosophy and theology and earned two doctorates — and spoke multiple languages, including Spanish and Italian, essential for a church leader. His experience in Rome made him a crucial player in navigating the Vatican on behalf of the American church.

Cardinal George began his climb in the American hierarchy as bishop of the small, heavily Latino diocese of Yakima, Wash. After six years there, he rose quickly, leading the diocese in Portland, Ore., before being named the eighth archbishop of Chicago 10 months later. He succeeded Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, a leading liberal voice of the post-Vatican II church, and a much-loved pastor.

Cardinal Bernardin, who also died of cancer, in 1996, made his suffering a public witness of his faith, endearing him further to the public. Cardinal George’s personal style was far more reserved.

In taking command of the Chicago archdiocese, the third largest in the American church, with 2.3 million members, Cardinal George was among a wave of theologically conservative bishops appointed by John Paul. At a forum sponsored by Commonweal, a liberal Catholic magazine, in 2004, he declared, “Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project,” adding, “It has shown itself unable to pass on the faith.”

His successor in Chicago, Archbishop Blase J. Cupich, praised Cardinal George on Thursday, saying that in struggling “with the grave sin of clerical sexual abuse, he stood strong among his fellow bishops and insisted that zero tolerance was the only course consistent with our beliefs.”

In 2006, however, Cardinal George faced a scandal close to home when it was revealed that he had failed to remove a priest, the Rev. Daniel McCormack, despite allegations that Father McCormack had sexually abused two boys. He later pleaded guilty to molesting five children.

Cardinal George told reporters, “I’m saddened by my own failure — very much so.”

Thousands of pages of documents released only recently as part of a settlement with victims revealed there were other situations in which the cardinal erred on the side of accused priests.

In recent years, Cardinal George frequently sounded the theme that religious freedom was under threat by encroaching secularism and intrusive government. His years as a leader in his order, traveling the globe, had brought him into contact with Catholics who had risked their lives and faced persecution for their faith. He said he admired them and identified with them.

“If you tell the truth,” he told a class of new priests in an ordination homily in 2009, “you may be killed by those whose position you threaten. If you give your life to people for the love of God, they may betray you. It is all part of priestly life. You know this; your formation has prepared you to live this life. Now it is your life.”