US Ad limina: George on meeting with Pope

“In our hearts there is a great sense of unity with the Holy Father, [the Ad limina] is a moment where we feel the effective collegiality, the unity of our mission, when we return refreshed, ready to help our own people”, says Cardinal Francis George, who led a group of 11 bishops of the Chicago province to their audience with Pope Benedict XVI Thursday morning.

The pastors from mid-west US Region VI began their Ad limina pilgrimage with the solemn celebration of mass at the tomb of the Apostle Peter, before making their way to the Apostolic Palace for their meeting with the St Peter’s successor.

Speaking to Alessandro Gisotti shortly after their midday audience with Pope Benedict, Card. George reveals that the bishops shared their main concerns with the Pope; immigration, education, the role of the faith community in the local political sphere and the protection and promotion of marriage, which has recently been the focus of news following Washington State’s legalisation of same-sex marriage. Listen:

“At a federal level right now our present administration is violating conscience rights in such as way that if your con science doesn’t conform to what the law says there will be no exceptions”, says Card. George. “Before that in order to preserve religious liberty there were religious exceptions and conscience exceptions around abortion around homosexuality around all the moral problems that the secularized society regards as essential and that the Church says no there is a different anthropology here a different sense of freedom. We could always maintain that distinctiveness because we had the exceptions given in law. What the present administration is doing is remove the exceptions just as they removed the protection in law of unborn children 39 years ago, now they’ve removed the protection of law from the Churches’ mission and they can continue to do this. Its’ frightening in many ways in what we thought was a free country that so easily the consciences of individuals and the institutional conscience of our major hospitals and universities can be so easily violated”.