Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who led the Archdiocese of Chicago for 14 years, died 25 years ago. Here’s a look back at his remarkable life.
This edited story originally ran in the baiduhai on Nov. 15, 1996:
The son of an immigrant Italian stonecutter, Joseph Bernardin grew up in the South and described himself as twice an outsider because of his heritage and religion.
His family was so poor that his mother made his first priest’s suit out of a bolt of black cloth.
Yet from those humble beginnings, Bernardin rose to become one of the most influential leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in America and one who, fittingly, reached out to those of other faiths and creeds.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who died of pancreatic cancer on Nov. 14, 1996, was known as a master mediator who worked to reconcile the increasingly fractious elements of the American church and spoke out on controversial issues such as the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race.
Privately, he is remembered as a man with a gentle wit, who occasionally invited friends over to try out his pasta, bought a piano he rarely played and spoke of buying a vacation home but never got around to it because he worked so much.
During the 14 years he led Chicago’s Catholics, Bernardin revitalized a dispirited and disorganized archdiocese and tackled some of its most emotionally charged issues, among them the closing of schools and churches and the clergy sex abuse scandal. In response to the mounting evidence of abuse in the church, Bernardin created an independent panel to review complaints of sexual abuse by priests in 1992, but years after his death internal church letters showed he also helped cover up abuse.
His severest personal test came when he was falsely accused of sexual abuse, an ordeal he described as more painful than the cancer that took his life.
In his final and greatest challenge, he turned his impending death into a public meditation on faith. Read the full story.
April 2, 1928
Born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Italian immigrant parents, who moved to the predominantly Protestant South as his father sought work as a stonecutter and granite quarry worker. After his father died while Bernardin and his sister, Elaine, were young, their mother worked as a seamstress at Fort Jackson, an Army base.
1944-45
Attends premed classes at the University of South Carolina before considering the priesthood.
April 26, 1952
Ordained a priest for the Diocese of Charleston and becomes an assistant pastor in Charleston, South Carolina.
April 26, 1966
Consecrated as the auxiliary bishop of Atlanta.
April 1968
Becomes the general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (now the USCCB) — as the youngest bishop in the U.S. — a post he holds until 1972.
Dec. 19, 1972
Becomes archbishop of Cincinnati — the nation’s youngest archbishop — and serves there for 10 years. Bernardin challenges the Nixon administration’s bombing campaign in Vietnam during his tenure.
Nov. 19, 1974
Elected president of the NCCB and serves in that role until 1977. Bernardin is instrumental in founding one of the conference’s most influential and successful programs, the anti-poverty Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
Aug. 25, 1982
Installed as the seventh archbishop of Chicago.
Feb. 2, 1983
Elevated by Pope John Paul II to the Sacred College of Cardinals.
May 3, 1983
Writes a pastoral letter opposing nuclear weapons called “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response,” which was issued by America’s Catholic bishops.
Aug. 16, 1984
During a 10-day “pilgrimage of faith” to Poland, Carindal Bernardin is introduced by the Roman Catholic primate of Poland as an “apostle of peace,” where he electrified 250,000 pilgrims, telling them that God “vindicates the humble and the oppressed and dethrones the proud and powerful.”
1986
Sparks the creation of the Big Shoulders Fund, which provides financial support to needy Catholic schools in Chicago.
Jan. 21, 1990
Announces a major restructuring that will close dozens of churches and schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago.
April 28, 1991
Bernardin celebrates 25 years of service as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church with a mass at Holy Name Cathedral.
Sept. 21, 1992
Establishes an independent panel to review complaints of sexual abuse by priests and plans to appoint a victim assistance minister — someone who is not a priest — to handle the complaints.
Nov. 11, 1993
Bernardin is accused in a lawsuit of molesting Steven J. Cook years earlier in Cincinnati, where Cook went to high school and Bernardin had been archbishop. Cook dropped the allegation three months later, saying he wasn’t sure of his memories. Bernardin later met with Cook, accepted his apology and said Mass for him. Details of that meeting are detailed in Bernardin’s book, “The Gift of Peace.”
March 1995
Leads a delegation of Jews and Catholics from Chicago to Israel.
June 8, 1995
Bernardin is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and undergoes a complicated surgical procedure a few days later.
Aug. 12, 1996
Starts the Catholic Common Ground Project, now known as the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, which appealed for dialogue on pressing issues including the ordination of women, the priest shortage and the quality of worship at Mass.
Aug. 30, 1996
Announces his cancer has returned and is terminal.
Sept. 9, 1996
Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton at the White House. He is cited for holding “to his mission to bring out the best in humanity and to bring people together” at a time of transition “in his church, his community, his nation and the world.”
Bernardin also says he is dedicating the honor to the realization of his prayer that the nation “will honor and protect all life, especially the unborn and the vulnerable.”
Sept. 17, 1996
Meets with convicted serial killer Ray Lee Stewart hours before Stewart is executed at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet. Though he was not Catholic, Stewart said he wanted to pray before the execution with Bernardin.
Sept. 25, 1996
Travels to Rome to meet with Pope John Paul II, who is rumored to be ill, to discuss Bernardin’s terminal illness. He later tells reporters the Pope favors a quick transition to a new archbishop after Bernardin dies.
Oct. 17, 1996
Announces he is discontinuing chemotherapy.
Oct. 31, 1996
Turns over the day-to-day operations of the Archdiocese of Chicago to his vicar general, Bishop Raymond Goedert, 67, one of Bernardin’s closest and most trusted associates, saying he will “drastically cut back” his public appearances immediately.
Nov. 1, 1996
Writes the introduction to his autobiography, “The Gift of Peace: Personal Reflections by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin,” which is released in 1997. It becomes a New York Times nonfiction bestseller.
Nov. 12, 1996
Writes a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to reject arguments that a dying person has a right to commit suicide with a doctor’s help. He also writes assisted suicide is “the killing of innocent human life.”
Nov. 14, 1996
Dies at 1:33 a.m. in Chicago after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer; he was 68. Bernardin is entombed in Bishops’ Mausoleum at Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery in Hillside, along with many other leaders of the archdiocese, including Cardinal John Cody; William Quarter, the first bishop of Chicago; and Patrick Feehan, the first archbishop.
April 8, 1997
Pope John Paul II names Archbishop Francis George, of Portland, Oregon, to head the Archdiocese of Chicago, succeeding Bernardin. (George became the first Chicago native to head the archdiocese, which encompasses Cook and Lake counties.)
Nov. 14, 2021
More than 50 people tour the Bishops’ Mausoleum at Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery in Hillside, where Bernardin is entombed, on the 25th anniversary of the cardinal’s death.
Sources: Tribune archives and reporting; Archdiocese of Chicago; Catholic Theological Union