Final Thoughts Cardinal’s Book Explores The Burdens Of His Final Years: Facing Cancer And Dealing With Abuse Charges

In Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s final hours of consciousness, a close friend showed him the galley proofs of his memoirs, completed less than two weeks earlier.

“The two of us were sitting on the edge of his bed,” Monsignor Kenneth Velo recalled. “I said, ‘Cardinal, the book has been typed. It’s ready for the printer.’ And I … fanned it in front of him. He looked at it and nodded with great delight.”

As the hours passed and the cardinal became comatose, his loved ones kept vigil around his bed. Several glanced at the galley proofs of “The Gift of Peace, Personal Reflections.”

The 68-year-old cardinal’s written words recalling the final years of his life comforted the bereaved as they walked out of his home early Nov. 14, 1996, with his casket. For dealing with life’s burdens, including death, is the book’s focus.

The 158-page book, released last month, is No. 2 on this week’s New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.

Inside the small scarlet book is a four-page handwritten letter from Bernardin to his “dear friends.”

In the letter, dated Nov. 1, 1996, Bernardin says his book is “a reflection on my life and ministry during the past three years, years that have been as joyous as they have been difficult.” He begins with the false allegation of sexual abuse against him in November 1993 and ends with his battle against pancreatic cancer.

The book reads like a journal, with a tone as gentle as he was. Its language is never flowery or pretentious.

In Part One, “False Accusation,” Bernardin says he was “startled and devastated” by the sex-abuse allegation by Steven Cook, a former Cincinnati seminary student dying of AIDS.

“It became clear to me that certain critics of mine had played a role in urging Steven Cook to take on the role of plaintiff against me,” Bernardin writes. And he reveals that Cook originally was pursuing a case only against his seminary teacher and later targeted Bernardin at a priest’s urging.

Yet Bernardin speaks only compassionately of Cook. He writes of Cook’s tearful reconciliation with him and the church, and of giving Cook a Bible and a 100-year-old chalice: “Steven took the Bible in quivering hands, pressed it to his heart as tears welled up in his eyes.”

The two kept in touch and, six months later, when Bernardin was diagnosed with cancer, he received a letter from Cook.

The rest of the book focuses on what Bernardin says may be the ultimate burden - death itself.

While his faith lightened that burden, he also credits his father, who died of cancer when the cardinal was 6. He recalls an incident where his father, who had undergone cancer-related surgery on his left shoulder, picked him up after he fell.

“As he held me in his arms, I could see blood soaking through his shirt,” he writes. “He paid no attention to himself; all he wanted was to be sure I was all right. My father’s ability to transcend his own illness and share in the joy of his family and friends now inspires me as I try to do the same.”

While Bernardin recovered from surgery, he began visiting others in Loyola University Medical Center’s cancer center, later to be named after him. He started getting letters, phone calls and faxes from patients and their loved ones. Later, he returned to the hospital for 10-minute radiation treatments, staying up to five hours to visit with patients and their families.

“I recognized with a sense of humility that I’d quietly become the ‘unofficial chaplain’ to cancer patients,” he writes. His prayer list for the seriously ill grew to more than 700 names - too many to recite, so he clutched the list in his hands when he prayed.

Throughout his very public ordeal, Bernardin was open about his health problems. “My decision to go through my cancer in public has been to share a simple message: faith really matters,” he writes.

He was not without his own fears: “I found the nights to be especially long, a time for various fears to surface. I sometimes found myself weeping, something I seldom did before.”

But Bernardin found strength through what he calls “God’s special gift to me.”

“In turn, my special gift to others is to share God’s peace, to help them deal with illness, troubled times.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CARDINAL EXPERIENCED ‘BEST, WORST OF TIMES’ Excerpts from Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s book, “The Gift of Peace, Personal Reflections” (Loyola Press, $17.95):

“To paraphrase Charles Dickens in ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ ‘it has been the best of times, it has been the worst of times.’ The worst because of the humiliation, physical pain, anxiety and fear. The best because of the reconciliation, love, pastoral sensitivity and peace that have resulted from God’s grace and the support and prayers of many people.”

“Still, letting go is never easy. … “It is clear that God wants me to let go now. But there is something in us humans that makes us want to hold onto ourselves and everything and everybody familiar to us. My daily prayer is that I can open wide the doors of my heart to Jesus and his expectations of me. “So I now let go more freely.”

“He (former accuser Steven Cook) was the sheep who had been lost, and, as a shepherd, I knew that I had to seek him out.”

“I have come to see God’s presence in even the worst situations.”

“It is the first day of November, and fall is giving way to winter. Soon the trees will lose the vibrant colors of their leaves and snow will cover the ground. The earth will shut down and people will race to and from their destinations bundled up for warmth. Chicago winters are harsh. It is a time of dying. “But we know that spring will soon come with all its new life and wonder. “It is quite clear that I will not be alive in the spring. But I will soon experience new life in a different way.”