39 Facts About Joseph Bernardin

Joseph Louis Bernardin was an American Cardinal of the Catholic Church.

Joseph Bernardin served as Archbishop of Cincinnati from 1972 until 1982, and as Archbishop of Chicago from 1982 until his death in 1996 from pancreatic cancer.

Joseph Bernardin was born on April 2,1928, in Columbia, South Carolina, to Joseph Bernardin and Maria Maddalena Simion, an Austro-Hungarian born immigrant couple, from the village of Fiera di Primiero, now located in the Northern Italian region of Trentino.

Joseph Bernardin was baptized and confirmed at St Peter's Catholic Church in Columbia.

Joseph Bernardin's father died of cancer when Bernardin was six.

Joseph Bernardin took responsibility for his younger sister, Elaine, while his widowed mother worked as a seamstress.

Joseph Bernardin then transferred to Saint Mary Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland.

Joseph Bernardin graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy in 1948, and subsequently enrolled in The Catholic University of America to complete his theological studies.

From 1966 to 1968, Bishop Joseph Bernardin served as rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1968, Joseph Bernardin resigned as auxiliary bishop of Atlanta to become the first General Secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, a post he held until 1972.

Joseph Bernardin served the Metropolitan See of Cincinnati for nearly ten years.

Joseph Bernardin worked to improve relations between Catholics and Jews, strove for better understanding between the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations, and made pastoral visits to both Poland and Hungary.

Joseph Bernardin was appointed the twelfth Bishop and seventh Archbishop of Chicago on July 10,1982.

Joseph Bernardin found an archdiocese in disarray, its priests disheartened by years of arbitrary administration and charges of financial misconduct.

In 1989, Bernardin was awarded the F Sadlier Dinger Award by educational publisher William H Sadlier, Inc The award is presented annually in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the ministry of religious education in America.

In 1983, Joseph Bernardin delivered commencement addresses and received honorary degrees at the College of the Holy Cross and Notre Dame.

In 1995, Joseph Bernardin was granted the University of Notre Dame's highest honor, the Laetare Medal, given in recognition of outstanding service to the Roman Catholic Church and society.

In 1990, Joseph Bernardin received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Joseph Bernardin was posthumously inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln by the Governor of Illinois in 1997 in the area of Religion.

Joseph Bernardin removed more than 20 priests and established a new review board to assess allegations, made up primarily of lay people.

Joseph Bernardin's reforms concerning this issue soon served as a model for other dioceses across the nation.

In June 1995, following a string of international visits and pilgrimages, Joseph Bernardin underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer.

Joseph Bernardin turned over the day-to-day administration of the Archdiocese to his vicar general and auxiliary bishop, Raymond Goedert.

Joseph Bernardin then began to focus much of his ministry on the sick, and became the "unofficial chaplain" to Chicago cancer patients.

Joseph Bernardin arranged for his personal papers and administrative files to be transported from the Residence and Pastoral Center to the Archdiocese of Chicago's Archives and Records Center.

Joseph Bernardin said goodbye to 800 of the diocesan and religious clergy of the Archdiocese at Holy Name Cathedral weeks before his death.

On November 14,1996, Joseph Bernardin died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 68.

Joseph Bernardin was interred in the Bishops' Mausoleum at Mount Carmel Cemetery, following a Funeral Mass celebrated by his friend, Cardinal Roger Mahony, and a wake for priests at which his friend Father Scott Donahue spoke.

In 1981, Joseph Bernardin became head of the new NCCB Ad Hoc Committee on War and Peace, formed to draft a pastoral letter on nuclear proliferation.

In relation to his work on the nuclear question, Joseph Bernardin was featured on the front cover of a 1982 issue of Time Magazine entitled "God and the Bomb".

Joseph Bernardin became a mediator between the diverging parties in the changing Post-Conciliar Church.

In 1996, Joseph Bernardin inaugurated the Catholic Common Ground Initiative and was among the authors of its founding document "Called to Be Catholic: Church in a Time of Peril," released August 12,1996.

Joseph Bernardin is noted for his interest in the concern of young adults, which was in part evidenced by his involvement in the nascent Theology on Tap lecture movement in the early 1980s.

Joseph Bernardin was lauded for his anti-pornography work, his leadership of the US bishops, and the presidency of the Catholic Church Extension Society.

Joseph Bernardin attended the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1993.

Joseph Bernardin condemned violence in Lebanon, Israel, and Northern Ireland and called for the Catholic Church to become a "peace church".

Joseph Bernardin was an influential figure in the Catholic Church in the United States following the Second Vatican Council; George Weigel called him "arguably the most powerful Catholic prelate in American history".

Weigel accused Joseph Bernardin of creating a "Joseph Bernardin Machine" to appoint bishops who dominated the American hierarchy for decades, and of being the exponent of a "culturally accommodating Catholicism".

Joseph Bernardin deemed the defeat of Bishop Gerald Kicanas by then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan for the presidency of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in November 2010, as "the end of the Bernardin era".