Cardinal Bernardin's Stations of the Cross Transforming Our Grief and Loss into a New Life

Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, archbishop of Chicago, was long considered the leader of American Catholicism and was so widely respected throughout the world that he was thought to be the only American who could conceivably become pope. His life took another path, however, after he was falsely accused of sexual abuse in 1993. Vindicated and poised to embark on a broad program of renewal, he was stricken with pancreatic cancer in 1995. Between his first diagnosis in June 1995, until the recur-rence of his cancer in August 1996, a period of fourteen months elapsed. There are fourteen stations of the cross in the Catholic devotion com-memorating Christ's crucifixion. In the last months of his life, Bernardin lived out those stations, from being judged unjustly by the Cardinals who wanted to eliminate his influence, to his bearing of his own cross, and from his last meeting with his mother to his public death. In his own life, Cardinal Bernardin reproduced the passion and death of Jesus. Eugene Kennedy, Bernardin's longtime friend, delivers here a powerful meditation on the Catholic stations, based on scriptural scholarship, and the stations Bernardin lived.Kennedy, Eugene is the author of 'Cardinal Bernardin's Stations of the Cross Transforming Our Grief and Loss into a New Life', published 2003 under ISBN 9780312246457 and ISBN 0312246455.