Cardinal George Mundelein

Cardinal George Mundelein (1872 - 1939)

As a Roman Catholic archdiocese, Chicago is a powerhouse of ministry, service, education and outreach through churches, universities, schools, hospitals, orphanages catering to all people. To this last, we owe a great deal to Cardinal George Mundelein, priest, bishop, builder, visionary and the First Cardinal of the West.

George Mundelein was born in the lower east side of New York to German-Irish parents. Educated in New York, Mundelein felt called to the priesthood and studied in Rome where he was ordained in 1895. Moving quickly up the “Purple Ladder”, the young priest was named Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn in 1909, the youngest bishop in the country.

In 1915, Pope Benedict XV named Bishop Mundelein the third Archbishop of Chicago. In 1924 he was named Cardinal, the First Cardinal West of the Alleghenies. Despite the trappings of his office, Cardinal Mundelein was a progressive, pro-union American patriot who was very much connected with the needs of the flock in his care. He initiated a vast building program of churches, schools, hospitals orphanages and when the country was in the throes of the Depression he set up wide networks of agencies to provide food, shelter and money for the worst hit. Chicago went from an archdiocese of little world note to a massive and complex outreach boasting one of the great seminaries in the nation, St. Mary of the Lake.

Mundelein struggled against anti-Catholicism that was still rampant in America and always strove to prove Catholics could be loyal to Rome and the United States. Virulently anti-Nazi, it was Mundelein who famously called Adolf Hitler “That Austrian paper-hanger”. Cardinal Mundelein died in his sleep at the age of 67 in 1939. He is buried behind the main altar of the seminary in the northwest suburban town that bears his name.