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| Deacon John V. Sebastian is at the lectern on the left. Francis Cardinal George, then the Archbishop of Chicago, is on the right . He's wearing the customary red skull cap for bishops. Concelebrating priests are on the far left. The venue is Cardinal George's pastoral church in Rome, the Basilica of St. Bartholomew the Apostle. |
My brother, John, had the privilege of being part of Cardinal George's (the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago (1997-2014) entourage during his every five year visit to the Holy Father. His comments are below. Below that is the text of a very impacting talk by Cardinal George. May Francis Cardinal George (1937-2015) rest in peace.
SERVING AS A DEACON TO FRANCIS CARDINAL GEORGE
IN THE BASILICA OF ST. PETER IN ROME
IN THE BASILICA OF ST. PETER IN ROME
February 19, 2012 Letter. Kathleen and I are back from Rome. While we were there, Rome was the coldest in 3 decades. They also had 8 inches of snow, the first measurable snowfall in Rome since 1985! They went beserk!!!
The plus side to all the bad weather was no crowds anywhere. We were walking distance to the Vatican and walked right in through security. No lines! No gypsies! Great service at mostly empty restaurants too!
I was privileged to deacon for his eminence Cardinal George and for other clergy as well during our stay. We had three Masses at St Peter's, including one above the tomb of Blessed John Paul II. This was made extra special because the altar is next to the Pieta and, right above the altar, is the huge painting of ......ST Sebastian!!!!
I also served as deacon at St Maria Trastavere, St Maria sopra Minerve, St Paul's Outside the Walls, St John Lateran, and St Bartholomew (the titular church of Cardinal George). It was very cool and I felt very blessed. I used the opportunity to pray for my family and extended family too. None of the churches were heated, so I was still cold while wearing tee shirt, shirt, suit coat, alb, and dalmatic.
We were also privileged to be seated near His Holiness (Pope Benedict XVI) at his weekly audience. That was pretty impressive. I noticed that the Holy Father greeted pilgrims from Italy, France, Germany, U.S., UK, Spain, Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary ALL in their native languages. He did, as far as I can tell, spoke with very good accents in each of those languages.
I also served as deacon at St Maria Trastavere, St Maria sopra Minerve, St Paul's Outside the Walls, St John Lateran, and St Bartholomew (the titular church of Cardinal George). It was very cool and I felt very blessed. I used the opportunity to pray for my family and extended family too. None of the churches were heated, so I was still cold while wearing tee shirt, shirt, suit coat, alb, and dalmatic.
We were also privileged to be seated near His Holiness (Pope Benedict XVI) at his weekly audience. That was pretty impressive. I noticed that the Holy Father greeted pilgrims from Italy, France, Germany, U.S., UK, Spain, Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary ALL in their native languages. He did, as far as I can tell, spoke with very good accents in each of those languages.
Kathleen and I sat with Cardinal George at several dinners. Needless to say, one of the recurring topics of conversation was the Bishops' role in fighting for religious liberty for Catholic institutions in the U.S. He had some strong words about some of our national and state politicians!
Father Tom (Loya), thanks for your suggesting we tour the underground tombs beneath the altar of St. Peter's, via SCAVI. That was mind boggling!
Photos. I thought you might like to see the newest altar at St Peter's Basilica, located next to the Pieta. Beneath the altar is the tomb of Blessed John Paul II. You can make out some of the words engraved on the altar. I was awed by the fact that I was at the altar of Blessed John Paul II, while directly above the altar is a huge painting of......St. Sebastian providing a truly spectacular backdrop. Show this to John Paul and Stephanie, will you? Still on Cloud 9.
In His Name,
John
Deacon John Sebastian
More Memories of Cardinal George (1937-2015) by Deacon John
I loved Cardinal George. When I was last his deacon, on an ad limina trip to Rome, I noticed that he was in pain. In his assigned church in Rome (St Bartholomew) we processed up the aisle to an elevated altar. He had to really lean on me for help in getting up those stairs. Yet he never ever complained about pain.
He was also a holy man as is evident from his writings.
The April 25, 2023 Interview of Michael Heinlein by Fr. Mitch Pacwa on His New Book on the Life of Cardinal George was very insightful and interesting. For the video of the interview go to
A few months later, Cardinal George wrote an article in the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Chicago, "The Catholic World". It might very well be prophetic, especially the 2010 quote in bold italics. By quoting Cardinal Mundelein (1937) he is trying to show that history could repeat itself in regard to a silent biased press that did not consider the persecution of the Church as newsworthy.
Cardinal George clarified: "What I said is not 'prophetic' but a way to force people to think outside of the usual categories that limit and sometimes poison both private and public discourse."
Speaking a few years ago to a group of priests, entirely outside of the current political debate, I was trying to express in overly dramatic fashion what the complete secularization of our society could bring. I was responding to a question and I never wrote down what I said, but the words were captured on somebody’s smart phone and have now gone viral on Wikipedia and elsewhere in the electronic communications world. I am (correctly) quoted as saying that "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square." What is omitted from the reports is a final phrase I added about the bishop who follows a possibly martyred bishop: “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.” What I said is not “prophetic” but a way to force people to think outside of the usual categories that limit and sometimes poison both private and public discourse.
October 21 - November 3, 2012
October is the month of the Most
Holy Rosary, a devotion associated in modern times with the apparitions of the
Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima in 1917, during the First World War. Mary asked
for prayer and penance, which she always requests in these private revelations
that echo the public revelation in the Gospel: “Repent, the kingdom of God is
at hand.”
Mary at Fatima also entered into the
history of the modern world when she told three unlettered peasant children
that the Great War then being waged, President Wilson’s “war to end all wars,”
would soon end, but that a greater menace to world peace would arise in Russia,
whose errors would spread throughout the world and bring untold millions to
violent death. In the end, however, Mary promised that her Immaculate Heart
would triumph. This promise, too, echoes the Gospel itself: the risen Christ is
victorious over sin and death.
Eternity enters into human history
in often incomprehensible ways. God makes promises but gives no timelines.
Visiting the shrine at Fatima, pilgrims enter a huge plaza, with the spot of
the apparitions marked by a small chapel to one side, a large church at one
end, an equally large adoration chapel at the other end, and a center for
visitors and for the hearing of confessions. Just outside the main grounds, a
section of the Berlin Wall has been re-built, a stark witness to what Mary had
talked about almost a century ago. Communism in Russia and its satellite
nations has collapsed, although many of its sinful effects are still with us.
Communism imposed a total way of
life based upon the belief that God does not exist. Secularism is communism’s
better-scrubbed bedfellow. A small irony of history cropped up at the United
Nations a few weeks ago when Russia joined the majority of other nations to
defeat the United States and the western European nations that wanted to
declare that killing the unborn should be a universal human right. Who is on
the wrong side of history now?
The present political campaign has
brought to the surface of our public life the anti-religious sentiment, much of
it explicitly anti-Catholic, that has been growing in this country for several
decades. The secularizing of our culture is a much larger issue than political
causes or the outcome of the current electoral campaign, important though that
is.
Speaking a few years ago to a group of priests, entirely outside of the current political debate, I was trying to express in overly dramatic fashion what the complete secularization of our society could bring. I was responding to a question and I never wrote down what I said, but the words were captured on somebody’s smart phone and have now gone viral on Wikipedia and elsewhere in the electronic communications world. I am (correctly) quoted as saying that "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square." What is omitted from the reports is a final phrase I added about the bishop who follows a possibly martyred bishop: “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.” What I said is not “prophetic” but a way to force people to think outside of the usual categories that limit and sometimes poison both private and public discourse.
An earlier Archbishop of Chicago
once tried his hand at reading the signs of his times. On May 18, 1937,
Cardinal Mundelein, in a conference to priests of the archdiocese, called the then-German chancellor “an Austrian paper-hanger,
and a darn poor one at that, I am told.” Why did Cardinal Mundelein
speak in a way that drew applause from the New York Times and local papers and
brought the German government to complain bitterly to the Holy See? The
government of Germany, declaring its ideology the wave of the future, had
dissolved Catholic youth groups and tried to discredit the church’s work among
young people through trials of monks, priests and religious sisters accused of
immorality. Cardinal Mundelein spoke of how the public protests of the bishops
had been silenced in the German media, leaving the church in Germany more
“helpless” than it had ever been.
He then added: “There is no
guarantee that the battle-front may not stretch some day into our own land.
Hodie mihi cras tibi. (Today it’s me; tomorrow, you). If we show no interest in
this matter now, if we shrug our shoulders and mutter … it is not our fight, if
we don’t back up the Holy Father when we have a chance, well, when our turn
comes, we too will be fighting alone.”
“When our turn comes …” Was Cardinal
Mundelein a prophet as well as an administrative genius? Hardly. At his death
in 1939 he was well known as an American patriot and a friend of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he also had a Catholic conviction that no nation
state has been immaculately conceived. The unofficial anthem of secularism
today is John Lennon’s “Imagine,” in which we are encouraged to imagine a world
without religion. We don’t have to imagine such a world; the 20th century has
given us horrific examples of such worlds.
Instead of a world living in peace
because it is without religion, why not imagine a world without nation states?
After all, there would be no American ambassador recently killed in Libya if
there were no America and no Libya! There are, obviously, individuals and
groups who still misuse religion as a reason for violent behavior, but modern
nation states don’t need religion as an excuse for going to war. Every major
war in the last 300 years has been fought by nation states, not by the church.
In our own history, the re-conquest of the secessionist states in the Civil War
was far bloodier than the re-conquest of the Holy Land by the now despised
Crusaders. The state apparatus for investigating civilians now is far more
extensive than anything dreamed up by the Spanish Inquisition, although both
were created to serve the same purpose: to preserve a government’s public
ideology and control of society, whether based on religion or on modern
constitutional order.
Analogies can easily be multiplied,
if one wants to push a thesis; but the point is that the greatest threat to
world peace and international justice is the nation state gone bad, claiming an
absolute power, deciding questions and making “laws” beyond its competence. Few
there are, however, who would venture to ask if there might be a better way for
humanity to organize itself for the sake of the common good. Few, that is, beyond
a prophetic voice like that of Dorothy Day, speaking acerbically about “Holy
Mother the State,” or the ecclesiastical voice that calls the world, from
generation to generation, to live at peace in the kingdom of God.
God sustains the world, in good times
and in bad. Catholics, along with many others, believe that only one person has
overcome and rescued history: Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of the Virgin
Mary, savior of the world and head of his body, the church. Those who gather at
his cross and by his empty tomb, no matter their nationality, are on the right
side of history. Those who lie about him and persecute or harass his followers
in any age might imagine they are bringing something new to history, but they
inevitably end up ringing the changes on the old human story of sin and
oppression. There is nothing “progressive” about sin, even when it is promoted
as “enlightened.”
The world divorced from the God who
created and redeemed it inevitably comes to a bad end. It’s on the wrong side
of the only history that finally matters. The Synod on the New Evangelization
is taking place in Rome this month because entire societies, especially in the
West, have placed themselves on the wrong side of history. This October, let’s
pray the rosary so that the Holy Spirit will guide and strengthen the bishops
and others at the synod as they deliberate about the challenges to preaching
and living the Gospel at this moment in human history.
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