A Higher Calling
Then, on October 13, 1983, Father Rodríguez was summoned to the diocesan office. “I thought, ‘maybe I’m in hot water. Maybe I’m being called in for something I did,’” said Bishop Rodríguez. “When I received the telephone call from the apostolic delegate informing me I had been named an auxiliary bishop of Chicago, I was, to put it mildly, taken by complete surprise.”
Ordained to the episcopacy on December 13, 1983, Bishop Rodríguez – the first North American Claretian bishop and the first Hispanic bishop for the Archdiocese of Chicago – spent more than 10 years in Chicago working to measure up to the words of Pope John XXIII that kept coming back to him after learning he had been named bishop. “Pope John appealed to his brother bishops by saying, ‘A bishop who is himself holy will most certainly have a following of holy priests whose holiness will, in turn, redound to the religious perfection of the whole diocese.’”
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A Higher Calling
