Shortly after I was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago by Pope John Paul II in 2003, I received a packet in the mail from a man whose hobby was tracing the genealogy of bishops, not in the sense of family ancestry, but in the terms of episcopal lineage. The fact that every Catholic bishop follows in an unbroken chain by the imposition of hands going back to the times of the apostles is called apostolic succession. Since I was ordained a bishop by Francis Cardinal George, this means that my lineage as a bishop traces back through him. Cardinal George was ordained a bishop by the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, who in turn was ordained by Cardinal Jean Villot, Vatican Secretary of State, from 1969 to 1979. The fact that Cardinal Villot was French means that my episcopal lineage traces back through France. Although the records hit a dead-end after several centuries, there is no doubt in my mind that my apostolic succession goes back to the original apostles. It only means that meticulous records were not kept from the outset, but the early church relied heavily on oral tradition for handing down the faith from generation to generation.