New bishop follows Spirit’s track

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

When Bishop George Rassas was a boy in Winnetka, his first love was trains. He couldn’t imagine a better way to spend his life than working as an engineer on the Chicago & North Western Railroad.

But to hear the new bishop tell it, his parents had other ideas for George Jr., the oldest of six kids in the family.

“They would say, ‘Wouldn’t you like to be a doctor like your father? Or a lawyer? Or you could be a priest,’” he said in an interview before his Feb. 2 episcopal ordination. “I really didn’t like blood, so I didn’t want to be a doctor, and I was so young, I didn’t really know what a lawyer did. But we had priests in the family, so I kind of knew what they did.”

Now, 38 years after being ordained a priest, he has been ordained again, this time as a bishop.

In an interview before the Feb. 2 liturgy, the archdiocesan vicar general said he was calm and happy with the way his life has turned out, following a path drawn for him by the Holy Spirit.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he said.

Bishop Rassas, 63, sees the hand of the Lord in the missionaries who gave vocation talks when he was in elementary school at Ss. Faith, Hope and Charity in Winnetka. He also sees it in Sister Celine, the Sinsinawa Dominican who taught eighth grade and served as principal. (Did she have a last name? “Not that I ever knew,” Bishop Rassas said.) She walked into the classroom carrying a postcard, and told the class that any boy considering the priesthood would have to take the entrance exam at Quigley Preparatory Seminary.

“I thought, ‘Is she talking to me?’” the new bishop said. “I had been thinking about it. So I went home and said, ‘Mom, I think I have to take the entrance exam at Quigley.’ And she said OK.”

For her part, his mother, Frances Rassas, said that with five priests in her family, it didn’t come as a shock.

“I was happy if it was for him,” she said. “I never would have pushed him into it.”

Even so, Bishop Rassas said, he never expected that he would be one of the 10 percent who started at Quigley to eventually be ordained. When he was, thanks in great part to the “wonderful, wonderful role models” he met among the priests and nuns, he never really expected to be a bishop.

Of course, he never expected to become vicar general of the archdiocese—a post he took last year.

Even then, he said, Cardinal George told him not to expect to necessarily be named to the episcopate.

But he had a feeling his name was in play as a potential bishop last year, after Cardinal George asked the Holy Father to appoint two more bishops for Chicago. The procedure calls for three names to be submitted to the Vatican for each opening; the Vatican then does background research, but those asked to write letters on the candidates’ behalf are not to tell anyone—especially the candidates. At the time, Rassas was asked to write letters for four other candidates.

But, knowing the four candidates for whom he wrote letters, “I was surprised I was the one who was asked,” he said.

Then he had to keep quiet over the Thanksgiving holiday before the formal announcement Dec.1

As a priest, Bishop Rassas always lived and worked in parishes, even when he worked at the Pastoral Center as associate director of the Catholic Family Consultation Service and later as director of the Office for Family Ministries. From 1990 to 2005, he served as pastor of St. Mary Parish in Lake Forest.

For the last year, he has lived at the cardinal’s residence while serving as vicar general, and he misses the contact with parishioners, he said. Some of that will return once he is ordained a bishop and begins going to parishes for special Masses and confirmation liturgies.

“I will be out with the people at special events, and those important moments when the church comes together to celebrate,” Bishop Rassas said.

The new bishop also comes together regularly with his family. His parents—Frances and George Rassas Sr.—are still members of Ss. Faith, Hope and Charity, where they have worshiped for more than 50 years. Many of his five younger brothers and sisters, eight nieces and nephews, five grandnieces and nephews and lots of cousins were expected to attend the Mass.

But despite the pomp and circumstance, his mother said she expects her son will remain the same.

“If he isn’t the same, it won’t be for lack of his family trying,” said his mother, adding that she thinks it’s good for priests to have lots of family members around them. “He’s a very quiet, unassuming guy. He’s always been a good kid. …I’m sure he will be good at his job. He’s very conscientious, and he has a good sense of humor.”

Bishop Rassas also has confidence, but not so much in himself as in God.

“I’m sure its going to be really challenging in many ways, but I’m very much at peace. Always, the Lord has been with me and showed me the way.”