Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago, had long been considered the leader of American Catholicism and was so widely respected throughout the world that he was thought to be the only American who might become Pope. His life took another path, however, after he was falsely accused of sexual abuse in 1993. Vindicated and about to embark on a broad program of renewal, he was stricken with pancreatic cancer in 1995. His destiny, as those close to him soon sensed, was not to become a P