For 3,500,000

In big, Gothic Holy Name Cathedral, on a silver and black pall, garbed in pontifical vestments of purple and white, lay all that was mortal of George William Cardinal Mundelein, late Archbishop of Chicago. For three long days last week, in long slow lines, ten times ten times ten thousand mourners shuffled past his bier. When 20 archbishops, 70 bishops, countless priests and monsignori marched down Michigan Boulevard in the Cardinal's funeral procession, ten times ten times ten thousand mourners lined the route. These citizens could count themselves honorary pallbearers of Cardinal Mundelein. For, instead of designating a handful of big names as honorary pallbearers, Auxiliary Bishop Bernard James Sheil, appointed administrator of the archdiocese after his superior's death, had named Chicago's whole population, 3,500,000 "common men and women who provide the life blood of the city's greatness."

In the brilliantly spotlighted Cathedral Bishop Sheil and the Apostolic Delegate to the U. S. and three other Illinois bishops chanted prayers, asked absolution for the Cardinal's soul. His body was laid to rest in the great seminary he had built, St. Mary's of the Lake, in the handsome Colonial chapel which he had copied from a Congregational church in Old Lyme, Conn.

Short, baldish, kindly Bishop Sheil last week was sworn, by a judge, as a corporation sole--a one-man holding company authorized, by act of the Illinois Legislature, to run Chicago's Catholic affairs. Appointed interim head of the archdiocese by its board of consultors, the bishop may serve six months or more, for the Vatican takes its time about filling important posts. Chicago-born, an able pitcher 33 years ago at St. Viator's College, dynamic Bishop Sheil became a diocesan official 15 years ago, has been a bishop for ten. His fame is more than local: in 1930 he founded, and today heads, the Catholic Youth Organization, official body for 7,000,000 Catholic youngsters.

No U. S. prelate is a greater friend of labor than Bishop Sheil. Last winter he gave the American Newspaper Guild his full support in its strike against the Chicago Hearst newspapers, and last summer he sat with John L. Lewis at a C. I. O. rally for Chicago packing workers (TIME, July 24). Bishop Sheil is 51, a year younger than was Archbishop Mundelein when he was made a Cardinal. Auxiliary bishops sometimes, but not always, succeed their superiors. Last week most Chicago Catholics hoped that this one would.

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