The Public Eye Full of Grace

Joseph Cardinal Bernardin sits in his fourth-floor office at the Chicago archdiocese two days after a suit against him alleging sexual abuse has been withdrawn. He has got calls from the Pope and the First Lady on his red phone, the only dash of color in the severely plain room. He turns away from his marble conference table to point at the window he looked out on the day before the suit was filed last November. He remembers seeing a few reporters huddled below near the canopy of the Barclay hotel, peering up at his office. Every time he glanced down,...