Rest in Peace, Francis Cardinal George

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.

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.”

He also said, " I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”