He was hospitalized with a severe infection January 19 just hours after he had delivered the keynote talk for an adult education day on social justice in LaGrange. Despite emergency surgery to save his life, he never recovered from complications. Ironically, a few days before he took ill, the U.S. Catholic Historian, the quarterly of the U.S. Catholic Historical Society, published an issue devoted entirely to Monsignor Higgins' thought and influence on U.S. Catholic history. It was only the fourth such festschrift done by the journal, and it said that it was the first dedicated not to a historian but to "a maker of history."

The son of a Chicago postal worker who was a staunch labor supporter and student of papal social encyclicals, George Higgins was born in on January 21, 1916. He entered Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago when he was 13. He said that he chose the confirmation name Gilmary in tribute to John Gilmary Shea, a preeminent historian of the American Catholic Church, who was the University of Notre Dame's first recipient of the Laetare Medal in 1883, awarded to a Catholic for significantly improving society. His many honors included receiving the 2000 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, and at graduation ceremonies May 2001, Notre Dame awarded him the Laetare Medal.

Ordained in 1940, he continued studying at the Catholic University of America, where he was awarded a doctorate in labor economics in 1944. He was invited to serve as a summer replacement for a staff member of the National Catholic Welfare Conference who had become ill. He remained in Washington for the rest of his life as a leading national and international figure in labor relations, social justice and interracial, ecumenical and Catholic-Jewish relations. He served the U.S. bishops' national conference as a social action official for 36 years, 1944-80, most of that time as department director. For decades, he was the author of the bishops' annual Labor Day message.

Monsignor Higgins was honored as a papal chamberlain with the title of monsignor in 1953 and a domestic prelate in 1959. He later served as "peritus," or expert adviser, during the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and was a daily member of the U.S. bishops' press briefing team. Vatican II's declaration on relations with non-Christian religions marked a historic turning point in Catholic views on Jews and Judaism. According to Dr. Eugene Fisher, associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C., Msgr. Higgins was "perhaps the most crucial link between world Jewry and the Council fathers" in the development of the council document, Nostra Aetate. He was on the drafting commission for the Council's decree on the laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, and, as a close collaborator with the American Jesuit theologian, Father John Courtney Murray, he was involved in the development of the Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae, both promulgated in 1965.

From 1945 to 2001, Monsignor Higgins wrote "The Yardstick," a Catholic press column syndicated by Catholic News Service. While often devoted to labor issues, the column also commented on new papal documents and the application of Church teaching to a wide range of justice and peace issues including civil rights, racism, and ecumenical and interfaith concerns. In 1984 he received the highest honor of the Catholic Press Association, the St. Francis de Sales Award, for "The Yardstick."

Monsignor Higgins was a founding member of the United Auto Workers' Public Review Board and chaired it from 1962 until 2000, when failing health made the monthly trips to Detroit too difficult. AFL-CIO President John F. Sweeney said, “He has been an irresistible force in bringing labor and church together. ... We respect him for his strength, we revere him for his conscience, we stand in awe of his intellect, and we thank him for his love.”

Involvement in the labor movement and social action brought Monsignor Higgins in contact with many Jewish leaders. He was a staunch and vocal advocate of better Catholic-Jewish relations long before Vatican II. He was also a charter member of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee formed after the Second Vatican Council. He called the "absolutely phenomenal" advances in Catholic-Jewish relations since the Council "one of the greatest joys of my life."