Rev. Monsignor George E. Tracy, Ph.D.
In a meeting with Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa presented Monsignor Tracy to the Holy Father and Cor Christi Trinitate as a work she would like established in the Church under Monsignor’s direction. Following a discussion, the Holy Father blessed Monsignor, concluding with the words, “You do this work for Church.”
The Reverend Monsignor George E. Tracy was raised in Connecticut, New York City, and Washington D.C., and was a Priest and member of the Diocese of Portland, Maine.
After attending Dartmouth his freshman year, where he nurtured his continuing love of song by signing tenor in the “Injunaires” men’s singing group, Monsignor Tracy transferred and later graduated from Georgetown University, with a B.A. degree in Political Theory. Following graduation, he began a career in international banking in New York on Wall Street. He also became involved in many Manhattan Church projects. During this period, he made an eventual decision to return to academic life hoping to broaden his education in a way that would allow him to be a servant to both Church and State. His goal was to enter the Diplomatic corps. He earned a Pontifical Degree, Ph.L. at the Jesuit Weston College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Religion at Boston College analyzing the theology and philosophy of Reverend Bernard Lonergan, S.J. Monsignor began teaching at Boston College in 1965 and later in his career joined the faculty of the Jesuit Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Missouri, and Saint John’s University, New York City. Monsignor Tracy held an academic position as Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University, England, and was a Life Member of Saint Edmund’s College. He was also Adjunct Professor of Theology at Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, and at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland.
In 1976 Monsignor Tracy, then a lay Associate Professor at Rockhurst, met Mother Teresa of Calcutta at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia. Both were speakers at that Congress. A life long friendship developed. She was God’s gift through whom he found our Lord’s call to the Priesthood. In 1978, Mother invited Monsignor to Calcutta to serve her community as a lay volunteer. During this period of service, she directed him to a long period of prayer in order to claim Christ’s call to the priesthood as his vocation. Mother urged him to begin a work as a priest that would bring the undivided love of Christ to leadership persons throughout the world “who suffer from the spiritual poverty of the affluent West, as the values of business, family life, medicine, law, politics, government, and diplomacy have been eroded to the point of creating and fostering spiritual bankruptcy in the world.” Mother counseled her lay volunteer to build a community for the Church that would both restore the hearts of leadership within the unity of the hearts of Jesus and His Mother and reestablish a virtue ethics, through which, leadership would transform the world in its moral life.
Following Ordination to the Priesthood in June of 1984, on the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monsignor’s first pastoral assignment was as a United States Navy Chaplain to the Marine Corps. He reveled in the camaraderie and deprivations associated with serving the spiritual needs of his fine Marines, completing eleven years of active and reserve military duty. In fact, while serving in the Philippines, he was introduced to His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila (who was famous for his instrumental assistance to Corazon Aquino in leading the “Bloodless Revolution” that ousted the corrupt Ferdinand Marcos as Philippine President). At the beginning of this new friendship, Cardinal Sin asked Chaplain Tracy to assist him in presenting seminars to the military and business leadership of the Philippines. This path also included an invitation for Chaplain Tracy to give a seminar about the work of Cor Christi Trinitate to the Bishop’s Conference in Tokyo, Japan. During this period, Cardinal Sin encouraged Chaplain Tracy to pray to be able to fulfill Mother Teresa’s desire that he begin the community of Cor Christi Trinitate… “at this time of the Second Reformation, as the presence of Christ is again being denied in our world.”
Cor Christi Trinitate, as a new work in the Church, has its members in the United States, London, Poland, Central and South America.
While bringing his message on personal contemplation and the healing of spiritual poverty, Monsignor Tracy wrote a book that discussed the spirituality of Cor Christi Trinitate along with an autobiographical treatment of the roots of his calling to the priesthood and the work of Cor Christi Trinitate. In this book Monsignor Tracy included the first 36 of his remarkable “Dialogues” with Christ. The book received the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur of the Holy Roman Catholic Church in 1998.
Monsignor Tracy was born in Hartford, Connecticut on January 31, 1935. The son of William E. Tracy and Laura Tracy (nee Lynch). He passed away on September 5, 2009 and it was remarkable that his death came on the twelfth anniversary of the passing of his beloved mentor, Mother Theresa.
Text of Mother Teresa’s letter to Msgr. George E. Tracy
Missionaries of Charity 54A A.J.C. Bose Road, Calcutta 700 016
4 January 1994
“As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me.”
Dear Father George,
The Cor Christi Institute is a beautiful gift of God to the Church. Use it to bring about conversion, through your retreats, in the hearts of the people so they can live a life of intimacy in love with Jesus and Mary.
This beautiful work given to you by Jesus, here in Calcutta where you found your call to be His priest in the spirit and charism of the Missionaries of Charity, is a true gift of God.
Father George, go to all the spiritually poor. Those who suffer from spiritual poverty are those for whom Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor is often hidden from view in the affluence of modern society.
Please, Father, give your retreats to priests and religious as well as to the laity. The renewal of the priesthood is most important. Only through holy priests will we have a holy people. Form priests and laity to work with you and live as Jesus did in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. He lived there for thirty years in simplicity and poverty.
Give your life as a victim priest to Jesus for the Church. Be one with the Holy Father, and always one with the Fathers, Brothers, and Sis-ters of the Missionaries of Charity. We will always be a home for you.