Using guidelines sketched out weeks ago in Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s own hand, church officials Thursday began making funeral arrangements to accommodate everyone from VIPs to parishioners.
After daybreak on the morning of the cardinal’s death, the archdiocese also transfered day-to-day leadership of 2.3 million Catholics in Cook and Lake Counties to the priest who had been filling that role at the end of the cardinal’s fight with pancreatic cancer.
The wake, certain to draw throngs of mourners, will not begin until Monday, largely because of logistical complications at Holy Name Cathedral.
There is a wedding booked there Saturday and a full schedule of masses Sunday–the pageant of ordinary life, the humble cardinal would surely be pleased to know, will have right of way over his funeral procession.
Six weeks ago, Bernardin wrote out some of his wishes for his wake and funeral.
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“His request was very simple,” said Robert A. Quakenbush, a spokesman for the archdiocese. “He hoped they would be celebratory and simple.”
Starting at 1 p.m. Monday, the cardinal will lie in state around the clock in Holy Name in a casket picked out days ago by one of his closest friends, Monsignor Kenneth Velo.
Officials anticipate large crowds of mourners, creating a scene of tribute and sorrow reminiscent of the visitations for Mayors Richard J. Daley and Harold Washington.
The funeral mass, for which the cardinal made only a few suggestions, will be said at noon Wednesday.
Bernardin died at 1:33 a.m. Thursday with his sister, his doctor, and friends and advisers from the church in the room.
Bishop Raymond Goedert, a friend and trusted aide who is overseeing daily operations of the archdiocese, stepped outside to make the announcement about an hour later.
“Our brother Joseph is at peace,” he said. “His life on Earth has ended.
“Cardinal Bernardin gave us a very special gift. For 16 months, he prepared for the hour of his death. He did so with unwavering faith, unparalleled courage and characteristic grace.”
Goedert said Bernardin, who had been unable to speak all day Wednesday, appeared at peace at the end.
“From about 3 o’clock on, he was much more restful, and in the last hour or two, his breathing was calmer,” Goedert said. “There was no indication at all that he was in distress.”
After the cardinal’s death, Rev. William J. Sheridan, associate pastor of Holy Name Cathedral, was wakened by a phone call. He flipped a switch that began the pealing of the church’s bells for the next 20 to 25 minutes.
“It’s a beautiful custom, but a very somber one,” Sheridan said later.
At about 3:20 a.m., a hearse from the Blake-Lamb Funeral Home on North State Street pulled into the semicircular driveway in front of the cardinal’s residence on North State Parkway.
Fifteen minutes later, a party that included funeral directors and friends of the cardinal emerged with the casket. They walked slowly, lit only by the dim porch light of the old mansion.
Behind the casket, arm in arm and three abreast, came Velo; Elaine Addison, the cardinal’s only sibling; and one of the nuns who had served the cardinal at the residence.
South Side resident Bill Walker, 70, happened up at about the same time, one of an endless stream of those who came to pay their respects.
“I just came by in my little humble, simple way to say goodbye to my cardinal,” said Walker, who is not Catholic. “I thought he was a decent human being.”
Later, a jogger who had been breezing along saw the makeshift memorial on the steps, stopped for a moment and knelt. She concluded her prayer with a sign of the cross, then sprang up and resumed her run.
In the days before the funeral mass, the parishes that make up the archdiocese will celebrate the cardinal.
Catholic schoolchildren across the area will take part in some 250 services at 9:30 a.m. Friday.
The services, planned weeks ago, had been intended to offer prayer and tribute to Bernardin during his lifetime. They will, instead, become some of the first memorials.
The outline for the more formal rituals of mourning was sketched out about six weeks ago by the cardinal, according to Sheila McLaughlin, director of the archdiocese’s office of divine worship.
He did not, however, intend to micro-manage his funeral.
“He left some general guidelines and a few specific things,” McLaughlin said. “I think he did what he always does, which is to trust people to do their work, and he wanted things to be done liturgically beautifully. But he did not make a lot of specific requests.”
He did not select the readings for the mass.
One specific request was for a hymn called the “Magnificat.” The hymn is taken from the Virgin Mary’s prayer after the Archangel Gabriel announced to her that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ.
In it, Mary lauds God and vindicates the lowly, saying: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones/And exalted those of low degree.”
The cardinal’s instructions also indicated that he wanted Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, and Velo to be the homilists at the mass of Christian burial.
The cardinal also asked that a prayer vigil be held for the archdiocesan priests, a nod to the mass he said shortly after he arrived in 1982 to heal wounds that had lingered for years in Chicago’s Catholic community.
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“That was a very significant moment for him and a very important moment for the priests, so he explicitly asked that we do something similar to that with the priests, something reminiscent of that night with him,” McLaughlin said.
The vigil will begin at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The cardinal also asked that he be buried in a vestment that was given to him last year as a gift from his cabinet.
Admission to the funeral mass will be by ticket only, and the 1,200-plus seats at Holy Name Cathedral will be taken up largely by priests, bishops, nuns and dignitaries.
The public’s greatest chance for involvement will be at the visitation, which will run from Monday afternoon until 8:30 a.m. Wednesday with only a few interruptions for observances.
“We know that the cardinal’s influence goes way beyond even the Catholic population of Chicago, and there is a great love and respect for him and a great desire on the part of many, many people to pay their respects,” McLaughlin said.
After the mass, the cardinal’s casket will be taken on a route of side streets through the neighborhoods of Chicago to Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Hillside.
There was other business to tend following the cardinal’s death.
The 13-member College of Consultors met Thursday afternoon and selected Goedert, an auxiliary bishop, to be the administrator for the Chicago archdiocese. The college is made up of members from the Presbyteral Council, which represents priests.
Goedert said he would keep the archdiocese on the course Bernardin had charted until a successor is named.
“The basic rule is that there are no innovations,” Goedert said.
“You cannot do anything that might create some sort of problem for a successor. You basically keep the ship afloat.”
He said it was unclear how long it would be before Bernardin’s successor is named. “It could be months,” he said. “It certainly will not be weeks.”
Goedert said, however, that he did not think he would be the successor.
“If I were the Holy Father, I would never choose me,” said Goedert, 69. “I’m too old.”