The Oblate community he called home for 33 years

It was to this religious community that a young Francis George was drawn when he sought to answer God’s call to become a priest. He first applied to Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary but was turned down because of the effects childhood polio had on his ability to get around.Cardinal George began his life with the oblates at St. Henry Preparatory Seminary in Belleville, Ill. He officially entered the order on Aug. 14, 1957, and was ordained a priest for them on Dec. 21, 1963 at his home parish of St. Pascal on Irving Park Road.From there he entered the academic life (see biography on Page 6) studying philosophy and theology. In 1973, at age 36, he was named provincial superior of the Midwestern Province for the Oblates in St. Paul, Minn. In that position he oversaw about 200 Oblates.

Just one year later, the worldwide community elected him vicar general and the 37-year-old Father George was off to Rome to serve as second in command for the Oblates. He held that position from 1974 to 1986.

During this time, he crisscrossed the globe visiting Oblates who were ministering to the poor and he witnessed the challenges to missionary work.

“It’s very different if you’re visiting an Oblate missionary who is in a very undeveloped country where there may or may not be electricity and where the level of education is minimal. Or if you’re visiting an Oblate in a secularized country — like the Netherlands or Belgium — where religion has no place any longer so the role of the priest is looked upon with contempt,” Cardinal George told the Catholic New World.

“I used to visit Oblates in Communist countries. That has its own challenges. I used to visit Oblates in the far north of Canada where the weather was the primary difficulty for them and for everybody else.”

Oblate Father William Woestman, an associate vicar for canonical services for the Archdiocese of Chicago, succeeded Cardinal George as provincial of the Midwestern Province. He taught the cardinal when he was in seminary.

“I was teaching in Mississippi and when he made his first vows he came there to study philosophy. I was on the staff of the school teaching theology and canon law,” Woestman recalled. The school was Our Lady of the Snows Scholasticate.

“Of course he was always an excellent student,” Woestman said. “After he finished his baccalaureate in philosophy, in the summers he was sent to Catholic University to work on a master’s degree in philosophy.”

He had started another bachelor’s in theology at the time as well.

“He was brighter than I was by far,” Woestman said.

Cardinal George returned to the school in Mississippi to teach while he was studying. Woestman said he was “well-liked by everybody.”

Woestman says the cardinal has grown into the many responsibilities that he’s had over the years.

“He’s truly a man of the church with a deep spirituality. He’s a man who has suffered much in his own life, and he still suffers. But that hasn’t stopped him,” he said.

When Cardinal George was starting seminary, Oblate Father Tom Singer was leaving, but they knew each other through their parents.

“There used to be an Oblate club, you might call it, of parents of seminarians. My parents and Francis’ parents hit it off very well,” Singer said from the Oblates center in Belleville. “The Georges were just wonderful people.”

Singer attended the cardinal’s ordination at St. Pascal and says they got to know each other teaching at the seminary in Mississippi and at Creighton University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“The Oblates were helpful in giving him a sense of prayer, and his appreciation of the faith and the universal church,” Singer said. “Piggybacking on that his sense of evangelization.”

Like Woestman, Singer has also seen Cardinal George grow over the years.

“He’s gotten more serious but I’m sure that’s because of the roles he’s had to play,” Singer said. “When I knew him earlier on, he could afford to be more lighthearted.”