This Man Bernardin - Hardcover

When, in 1982, Joseph Louis Bernardin replaced John Patrick Cody as the Archbishop of Chicago, he inherited a diocese whose foundations had been rocked by internal strife and public scandal. Soon after his arrival, however, Bernardin began to weave his magic pastoral spell on Chicago Catholics with his grace, warmth and accessibility, and he breathed new life into a Church. In this beautifully rendered new book, Chicago Sun-Times photojournalist White draws upon his extensive archives to compile a luscious photographic essay on Bernardin's life and ministry. Through 186 black-and-white photographs, we follow the archbishop from his childhood in Columbia, S.C., through his seminary days and into his ministry to the sick, the poor and the wealthy. Selections from Bernardin's own lectures and writings introduce each chapter, and Bernardin biographer Eugene Kennedy's brief essays in each chapter provide biographical and historical context for White's photos. The portrait of the Archbishop that here emerges is one of an enormously popular messenger of the gospel whose love and compassion for others arises out of an intense devotion to God and family.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, archbishop of Chicago, radiates gentleness--a quality that, in his brief (though rather orotund) text, Kennedy harks back to again and again, and that is visible throughout this photo album. Except for a few family-album-type shots of Bernardin as a child and young man, the photos are the work of Chicago Sun-Times photojournalist White and have the off-the-cuff immediacy of news photography. That immediacy coupled with Bernardin's gentle spirit produces in this book the portrait of a genuinely humble man who is also a great man--one who advanced the cause of peace by leading the American bishops in their stand against nuclear arms, who publicly showed courage and grace in facing surgery and chemotherapy for cancer, and who answered false accusations of sexual abuse as nearly no other contemporary public figure would have--with mildness and love. Ray Olson