Providence smiled, and Francis George, former Bishop of Yakima and Archbishop of Portland, was named to head the Archdiocese of Chicago. Providence in this case happened to act through the person of His Holiness John Paul II, servum servorum Christi, with an assist from the Vatican Congregation of Bishops, which vets episcopal candidates for the Holy Father. This time, they not only hit the target, they nailed the bulls-eye. Bishop George is an inspired -- and inspiring -- choice. The 2.6 million Catholics of Chicago will not soon forget their beloved Cardinal Bernardin, RIP, but in their native son, Francis George, they are going to discover a man for all seasons. Or, as they'd say in the old Northwest Side neighborhood where he grew up, he's gonna knock their socks off.

George is, not unlike the man who selected him, that rare combination of scholar and pastor, one whose spiritual ministry is informed by and immanentizes the permanent truths that underlie changing intellectual fashion. In tiny Yakima (a diocese of some 64,000), where roughly half the population is working-class Hispanic, he learned to speak Spanish (bringing to four those languages in which he is fluent), integrated the churches, campaigned for better working conditions, and even eliminated the diocesan debt.

In a little over five years, the Catholic population increased by nearly ten percent. All the while, he kept current with the controversies that animate the scholarly journals and produced a steady stream of learned articles of his own. Visitors to his study marveled at the profusion of books that lined the floor in jumbled stacks. This in a man who championed the cause of migrant workers and worked overtime to eliminate those petty biases and ingrained social habits that often divide the flock of Christendom along class lines.

In the Portland archdiocese, to which he was elevated just last year, George encountered a different set of problems. There, two-thirds or more of the nominal Catholic population aren't even parishioners. This is not altogether surprising in a state that has by far the least-churched population in America. Nor is it surprising that Oregon passed a plebescite in 1994 (albeit by a narrow margin) that gave it the most liberal assisted-suicide law in the world. No sooner had the wax dried on his episcopal seals than George inveighed not only against the new law, but against the culture of death that celebrates abortion and infanticide as sacred rights. Clearly, the new archbishop concluded, the flock in Oregon could use a little instruction in the first things.

For all the importance of the good works that lie at the heart of the Church's social mission, and for all the differences that divide Catholics on everything from religious ritual to political questions, George understands that the Church is the keeper and transmitter of the depositum fidei. He did not hesitate to call abortion and suicide by their proper name, sin, a word that has fallen into a kind of fashionable desuetude in many dioceses of the nation.

George will bring to Chicago, a diocese of great vibrancy but, alas, all too prone to be whisked by the trendy currents of the age, a warm human touch, a self-effacing sense of humor, diplomatic tact, a solid grasp of theology and philosophy, but small patience for fools. The scuttlebutt for years among Church cognoscenti has been that whoever succeeded the courtly Bernardin would have his hands full, indeed, would have to endure a purgatorial passage. Chicago's priests are notoriously independent, its once-full seminaries have emptied, and its laity is divided between demoralized traditionalists and those who treat the authority of Church teaching with somewhat the same respect as they do pronouncements from members of the City Council. Even getting hold of the rudder is going to be a struggle, and steering the listing ship will demand the skills of a master pilot.

In Francis George, we have everything the task requires. He will "dialogue" with everyone without yielding an inch on anything of doctrinal importance. As he said last week, "Everything can be discussed. Not everything is negotiable." -- Precisely the distinction that many of his fellow bishops have forgotten in their well-meant but often self-defeating efforts to reach out to dissenters. George understands that the permanent teaching of the Church has often had to be filtered through hostile cultural screens, but that, in the end, it must remain a permanent teaching. He's going to preach that message not only from the pulpit but in the evidence of his compassionate example. The trendies aren't going to like his devotion to the deepest traditions of the Church, but before long they're going to have trouble keeping up with him. Just you wait and see.