Cardinal George reflects on 50 years of priesthood
December 19, 2013
In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, Cardinal Francis George discussed a range of topics, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the clerical sexual abuse scandal, and Pope Francis.
Commenting on Pope Francis’s recent apostolic exhortation, Cardinal George said that the Pope is “a South American; they have a very different sense of the present economic order than [we] have because we profit from it, and they don’t very often.”
“But what he’s saying is the social teaching of the Church,” he added. “You have a right to private property. We’re not socialists. But private property has a social mortgage, and so that has to be controlled, as [it] is in this country, with good legislation, the courts, the culture, etc., and yet we’ve seen inequality grow in very troubling ways in our own country now.”
““You don’t start with rules,” he added. “You start with a relationship. You start with Christ. Use everything that you can to help people encounter Jesus Christ. That’s what the Pope is saying all the time. Let’s start there. Be sure that you’re there.”
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