Cardinal Bernardin said it also at the end of his days, and he truly was your brother and brother to many others as well. As I explained to the priests last night, I cannot, I should not claim such intimacy now. But not far from here, in the library of the University of Chicago, I once did research in the papers of George Herbert Mead, who was chair of the philosophy department there in the thirties and who created the discipline of social psychology. Mead used Christianity in his scheme of emergent evolution by saying that it prepared the human race for universalism. Jesus, according to Professor Mead, generalized neighborliness.
Christians are to look on everyone as a potential neighbor.
Perhaps Professor Mead's theory came less from Jesus than from living here, for Chicago was and is a city of neighborhoods. Wherever it came from, it gives me an opening. And so, for starters, if it is all right with you, I will say that I am Francis, your neighbor. In any place, at any time, the bishop must see to it that the whole Church makes visible the gifts Christ wants his people to enjoy. The Church exists where the gifts of Christ are shared.