Cancer cure hope pancreatic patient terminal

The announcement of an "important" news conference jolted Chicago's media corps to an upright and locked position. My first call came about 10:30 a.m. on Aug. 30. It was from a TV reporter who wanted to know what it was all about.

I didn't know, but her report that this announcement was going to be "a deeply personal" one caused us both to guess it was likely that Chicago's archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, would announce that his cancer had returned.

(In June 1995, about the time Bernardin announced that he had pancreatic cancer, some 27,000 other Americans were discos Bring the same thing. Today, 80 percent of them are dead. According to oncologists, only 25 percent of pancreatic patients live from two to five years. Ironically, not long after Bernardin made his heartbreaking but hope-filled announce meet, Michigan's Dr. Jack Kevorkian presided at his 39th assisted suicide. The man had pancreatic cancer.)

The room at the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center was jammed, mostly with TV cameras and their crews, some of them broadcasting even as the cardinal spoke. Bernardin viewed the mobbed room, responded with his faintly melancholy smile and observed: "Next time we'll use the United Center" (site of the recent Democratic National Convention.)

He now uses an antique gold-handled cane, dated 1906, given to him by his friend Matt Lamb, a retired funeral director turned artist. He is slightly bent, partly because of a terribly bad back. A few weeks ago, he announced that he would undergo surgery to correct a stenosis (constriction) in the lower back. Now this surgery has been canceled.

At his latest news conference, America's senior active archbishop looked a bit wan, perhaps older than his 68 years. When I first met him in 1976, he looked like a well-dressed licorice jelly bean. He was then the archbishop of Cincinnati and president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. I was at DePaul University at that time, and the university had decided to give him an honorary degree. DePaul had guessed wisely that Bernardin would be the next cardinal-archbishop, an appointment that didn't come until Cardinal John Patrick Cody's death in 1982.

At that time, Archbishop Bernardin weighed close to 220 pounds. He entered his recent news conference at 156 pounds. But his voice was strong and his humor intact. Long-time church mice even noticed a sparkle in his eyes that wasn't quite there years ago. Close watchers agree that the "new" Bernardin had emerged from the combination of a certain loss of, ambition, the searing pain of untrue allegations of sexual abuse and the news from one of his physicians, Dr. Ellen Gaynor, that the cancer had returned with a vengeance. Five nodules had grown on his liver in under three months. He has about 12 months to live.

"Yes, I'm scared," he said later, "but I'm a man of faith." Still later, he painted a picture of someone in bed, alone, awake and in pain at 2 a.m. It is that oppenness that has caused tearful women to run up and embrace him. Ring-kissing has all but vanished. Hugs are in.

His statement shocked even those who had picked up the leaks a few hours before. "I can look at death in two ways: as an enemy or a friend. I choose to view it as a friend," he said. "I know that there will be tears, but I am at peace."

Religious news conferences are often assigned to journeyperson reporters who know less about religion than they do about the theory of relativity. No paper would send a reporter as comparably ignorant in sports to cover a baseball game. Bernardin had to answer some questions that were so painfully shallow that some of the better informed reporters gasped in pain. "Questions like these give us a bad name," a well-informed reporter whispered to me.

In 1965, Chicago lost Cardinal Albert Meyer to a brain tumor at only 62. New York buried Cardinal Terence Cooke, also 62, in 1983 after a long battle with leukemia. But this announcement was unique. America's most influential bishop was announcing his own death for the world to see and hear.

Thirty years ago, when he was named auxiliary bishop of Atlanta, he was only 38. In 1966, bishops rarely announced that they were even sick Only when they were dead was an announcement made, and often the cause of death was not mentioned. Bishops were mythic people. Chanceries routinely denied everything, combining the denial with criticism of those who were asking.

There were exceptions. "It's not up here," one remarkably frank bishop told his audience years ago, as he pointed to his lungs. "The cancer is down below, but we're not supposed to say that." Further, the Vatican doesn't want to start any infighting for a vacancy until they've got it under control.

Bernardin deals in leadership, not authority. In making the announcement, he was again setting a model for his fellow churchmen, many of whom will not even talk to the press.

Bernardin likes the media. He is a writer. The peace pastoral he oversaw and the work he has done on other pastorals will live long after him. So will his recently announced Catholic Common Ground Project that he hopes will narrow the moat between conservatives and liberals. His thoughts on nuclear war have found their way into John Paul II's encyclical. Recently, when his "seamless garment" metaphor was mentioned, the crowd broke out in applause.

His style is so low key that it is barely perceptible. He is a leader in an episcopal club that prefers to use authority rather than demonstrate leadership. As such, he is sometimes viewed as a Hamlet. He remains a priest, often more comfortable with his fellow clerics than with laity. But, perhaps more than any major bishop, he has opened his ears and heart to the laity

The cardinal doesn't spend any time swatting flies or making neat piles of files. Yet, he is extremely well-organized, almost compulsive. His insistence on hearing all sides has led to some criticism. He discovered early on that Chicago is a tough, sweaty city, with a bright, well-educated priest corps. He inherited a clergy whose morale had reached rock bottom after 17 years of an eccentric, ambitious careerist who avoided federal prosecution by dying in 1982.

Bernardin's predecessors had built churches; his job was to close them. Building was easy; closing was like a death in the family. Even after listening and deciding, his home was picketed after virtually every closing.

Bernardin's openness was apparent at the news conference. He referred all questions about his condition and life expectancy to his oncologist. He even scheduled a news conference at Loyola University Hospital in Maywood, Ill., where he has been a regular patient for the past year. (The cancer treatment center at Loyola will soon be named after Bernardin.)

The cardinal promised to keep everyone informed. The only questions he refused to answer were those dealing with his successor. He labeled all such questions as "premature."

The cardinal said that he had his doctors' permission to travel and hinted that he would like to make one more trip to the Vatican and to see his relatives in the Dolomites, located in the Trentino region of Northern Italy.

Bernardin's father immigrated to Barre, Vt., with his four brothers. With two of his brothers, he went to Columbia, S.C., to work in a quarry. He returned to Italy to find a wife and married Bernardin's mother. The future cardinal was conceived in Italy but born in Columbia. By the time he was six, his father had died of cancer. His mother raised Joseph and his sister by sewing for the military. At 92, she is now living at a Catholic nursing home not far from the cardinal's residence..He remarked with sadness that he had hoped to outlive his mother. He may yet. She has no idea of his condition. Much of her mind has gone ahead of her, but her son visits her daily.

On the sidewalk outside the Pastoral Center, the conversation among media types continued. Much of it had to do with his successor but only the best informed could pull names out of the papal hat.

It was generally agreed that the next Chicago prelate will be an archbishop. The last bishop to be appointed was George Mundelein in 1915. All others since have been archbishops elsewhere before coming to Chicago and catching the red hat.

The U.S. church has 64 archbishops. Twenty of them are retired; eight others are archbishops outside the United States. Seven are active U.S. cardinals and not likely to be shifted to Chicago. That leaves only 29 to pick from, and a number of these are on the edge of retirement. The names that surfaced immediately were Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati. James P. Keleher of Kansas City, Kan., (a Chicago native), Justin F. Rigali of St. Louis and Thomas J. Murphy of Seattle (another Chicago native.)