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Knights bestow highest honor on Cardinal George

By Joyce Duriga | Editor
Sunday, February 8, 2015

Knights bestow highest honor on Cardinal George

Cardinal George speaks to the media after receiving the Gaudium et Spes award from Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. (Karen Callaway / Catholic New World)
Supreme Knight Carl Anderson presents Cardinal George with a check for $100,000. (Karen Callaway / Catholic New World)
Cardinal George speaks to guests at a luncheon after receiving the "Gaudium et Spes" award at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago. (Karen Callaway / Catholic New World)
Supreme Knight Carl Anderson speaks to the media about the "Gaudium et Spes" award he presented to Cardinal George. (Karen Callaway / Catholic New World)

Doctors have exhausted all options in Cardinal George’s cancer treatment. The cardinal shared that information with news media during a Jan. 30 press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago, following a luncheon where he received the Knights of Columbus’ highest honor, the Gaudium et Spes award.

“They’ve run out of tricks in the bag, if you like,” Cardinal George said.

He’s doing physical therapy because his muscles atrophied during chemotherapy, when he was exhausted and unable to get around much, he said. That situation is typical when undergoing chemotherapy, and especially with polio survivors because their muscles are overworked, he said.

“But basically, I’m in the hands of God, as we all are in some fashion,” he said, adding that he hopes to eventually get off the crutches he’s been using since October.

“In some ways, this particular disease, in my case, has not been following the usual pattern in the past. It probably won’t follow the usual pattern in the future,” the cardinal told reporters.

Like anyone with a terminal illness, he has good days and bad days. If he has enough stamina the cardinal said he will attend the consistory of cardinals at the end of the month, but he hasn’t made up his mind.

“Rome is not an easy city for people who are disabled in the best of times,” Cardinal George said.

Since his retirement as archbishop of Chicago he’s been keeping regular appointments and hearing confessions at Holy Name Cathedral on Thursdays when he’s available. Hearing confessions was one of the things he said he looked forward to most in retirement.

Prior to the press conference, Supreme Knight of Columbus Carl Anderson presented Cardinal George with the Gaudium et Spes award. The award was established in 1992 and is named for the Second Vatican Council’s Apostolic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Past recipients include Mother Teresa and Cardinal John O’Connor of New York.

Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, the Knights of Columbus chaplain, read the award’s citation, which said in part: “Both in his brilliant speeches, homilies, letters and books, and in the brave witness to the faith that he has shown to the world — in sickness and in health — Cardinal George has proven over and over again one of the leading voices in the Catholic Church in the United States.”

The award comes with a $100,000 gift. Cardinal George said he was giving $60,000 of it to the archdiocese’s To Teach Who Christ Is campaign scholarship fund, which benefits children in Catholic schools. The remaining $40,000 will be divided and donated to various charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Cardinal George has been a member of the Knights since 1991 and has twice delivered the keynote at the order’s national convention.

In his remarks upon receiving the award, Cardinal George told those gathered:

“This award is for you as well as it is for me because you share the joys and the hopes, the anxieties and the griefs of all of the people whom you know and all of the people whom you don’t know but you know you are called to love because God is love,” he said. “And we are made in his image and likeness.”

Topics:

  • cardinal george
  • knights of columbus
  • gaudium et spes

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