cover image I Am Your Brother Joseph: Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago

I Am Your Brother Joseph: Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago

Tim Unsworth. Crossroad Publishing Company, $9.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8245-1667-3

Hard on the heels of Cardinal Bernardin's own moving memoir, The Gift of Peace (Loyola), comes this anecdotal tribute to Chicago's beloved prelate. Unsworth, a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter and a personal friend of Bernardin's, sketches the life and, particularly, the very public death of the bishop who took Chicago by storm in 1982 when he introduced himself to the priests of his new archdiocese as ""your brother Joseph."" As leader of America's second largest diocese, ""Bernardin set an entirely new style, one marked more by gentle leadership than feudal authority,"" says Unsworth, who admires the cardinal as fiercely as he deplores authoritarian hierarchy. This passionate memoir might have gained coherence from more editing, but nothing could improve Unsworth's exuberant storytelling, already known to the readers of his previous books, for example Catholics on the Edge and Here Comes Everybody! The portrait that emerges here is of a prince of the church who, through prayer and personal pain, learned to make humble personal ministry his priority. (Feb.)