Religious in archdiocese found inspiration, challenge in Pope Francis

By Sean Gallagher

When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected bishop of Rome on March 13, 2013, he was the first member of a religious order to be elected pope since Pope Gregory XVI was chosen by the College of Cardinals on Feb. 2, 1831.

Pope Gregory, who established the Diocese of Vincennes, Ind., in 1834, which later became the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, had previously been a Benedictine monk.

Cardinal Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis after his election, had previously been a member of the Society of Jesus and was the first Jesuit to be elected bishop of Rome.

When members of religious orders become bishops, they cease to be members of their order. But two Jesuits who serve at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis said that they saw clearly how the pope’s many years of life as a Jesuit still shone through in his ministry as universal shepherd of the Church.

In fact, Jesuit Father Adam DeLeon, assistant principal of Brebeuf, saw this in the new pope’s first public appearance on a balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

The new pontiff, who had taken the name of Francis, asked for the prayers of the people who filled St. Peter’s Square and those following the papal election on television and on the internet around the world. He then bowed to receive those prayers.

For Father DeLeon, this was characteristic of the Jesuits’ “reliance on prayer and the necessity of prayer” in their lives.

“In that moment, every person I knew and every person I didn’t know was praying for this man right in that moment,” Father DeLeon said. “He united us in prayer. That was so beautiful. That was so beautiful that he asked for that prayer as he begins his ministry.”

Father DeLeon, along with leaders of religious communities across central and southern Indiana, recently spoke with The Criterion about Pope Francis’ leadership of the Church and how he affected the life and ministry of their communities in the archdiocese.

‘It was more than I could take in’

Although he had been a member of the Society of Jesus, Cardinal Bergoglio took as his papal name the founder of the Franciscans, St. Francis of Assisi.

This astounded Conventual Franciscan Father Martin Day, provincial of his order’s Province of Our Lady of Consolation, which is headquartered in Mount St. Francis in the New Albany Deanery.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Father Martin recalled. “How could that be anything but a blessing for us? It was more than I could take in, and I couldn’t wait to learn more about this person who was already on day one amazing me.”

And Father Martin did just that as Pope Francis moved forward in his leadership of the Church. He saw this in the pope’s teaching documents, which he said showed forth many Franciscan qualities.

His 2015 encyclical letter “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home,” was strongly rooted, Father Martin said, in how St. Francis “considered himself a fellow creature with all the other members of creation, not lording it over them, but praising God with them, each according to their nature.”

Father Martin said that Pope Francis’ living out Franciscan qualities in his life and ministry as the bishop of Rome was a welcome challenge to him and his fellow Franciscans.

“Lucky for us, Pope Francis exuded humility, which made it so much easier for us to acknowledge our own weaknesses and failings and ways in which we have fallen short,” he said. “When the pope began his pontificate with the acknowledgement that he was a sinner, he did so in such a way that you knew that he was not just saying that, but really knew it was true.

“It gave me the courage to recognize that truth about me, too, and to not let it paralyze me, but energize me to keep going, to keep walking the path … into a future full of promise.”

Franciscan Sister Maureen Irvin, the leader of the Oldenburg Franciscan sisters as their congregational minister, was likewise challenged by Pope Francis.

“Some of the things that he wrote about hope and joy cause us to examine ourselves,” she said. “We’re in the Jubilee Year of Hope. Are we really pilgrims of hope? How can we be that in our world today with so much suffering and all of the problems that we have in society?”

Sister Maureen, like Father Martin, also saw Franciscan qualities in Pope Francis’ teachings on care for creation, something that she thinks will have a lasting effect on the Church and the world.

“It’s not like people have read it and put it on the shelf,” she said. “There seem to be a lot of groups, parishes and organizations that are trying to keep ‘Laudato Si’ “going and to improve on it.”

Hospitality and synodality

Two Benedictine leaders in the archdiocese found much to be inspired by in the leadership of Pope Francis.

Benedictine Archabbot Kurt Stasiak of Saint Meinrad Archabbey in St. Meinrad, spoke about the light that Pope Francis shed on his 1,500-year-old religious order’s charism of hospitality.

“His emphasis on the needs of the marginalized helped us try to be more aware of the marginalized, of the wounded in the Church and the world,” Archabbot Kurt said. “His famous image of the Church as a field hospital has had some kind of an impact upon our hospitality. We’re more aware than ever of what we can offer to people who come looking for strength, looking for spiritual sustenance.”

Benedictine Sister Julie Sewell serves as prioress of Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove. She saw a connection between the emphasis that Pope Francis placed on solidarity and hospitality.

“We feel at home with his teachings on this topic,” Sister Julie said. “In the monastery, all guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.

“Guests can arrive at any time, and this is not an inconvenience but an opportunity for encounter, for sharing Christ with those who come to our door. It is listening to the stranger, really hearing them, listening with an open mind and heart—it is synodality.”

Synodality—the spiritual practice of the faithful listening prayerfully to each other to discern where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church—was a focus of Pope Francis in the last few years of his ministry as bishop of Rome.

Providence Sister Dawn Tomszewski, the superior general of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods in St. Mary-of-the-Woods, sees synodality as the “greatest legacy” of Pope Francis.

His death, Sister Dawn noted, “certainly shifts the responsibility to us to carry out his deep desire that we be a listening Church, a collaborative Church, a Church worthy of the Christ who called it into being.

“Radical inclusion, shared belonging and deep hospitality are recognized as the result of the listening that is at the heart of the synodal process,” said Sister Dawn.

Supporting ‘a brother who’s got a difficult assignment’

Although when he became a bishop, he was no longer strictly speaking a member of the Society of Jesus, Pope Francis kept in close touch with Jesuits both in Rome and around the world during his many apostolic journeys.

Jesuit Father Chris Johnson, who is the superior of the members of his religious community that serve at Brebeuf, says that this connection that the late pontiff maintained with his order gave its members “a warm feeling, a feeling of being in the family, an ability to support a brother who’s got a difficult assignment.”

Father Johnson saw Jesuit qualities in Pope Francis in his continuing its tradition of taking the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.

One of the first Jesuits, St. Francis Xavier, a co-patron saint of the archdiocese, did this in missionary work in India, Malaysia and Japan before dying on the shores of China.

While popes before Pope Francis travelled widely, he often visited countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and Mongolia, where the number of faithful remain tiny.

And not only did Pope Francis travel to such places—some of the men in the College of Cardinals who will elect his successor come from some of these countries as he greatly expanded the countries represented in it.

“Bringing in cardinals from these far-flung places recognizes the universality of the Church,” Father Johnson said. “I think that it’s going to have ramifications that are going to be different than anybody is expecting or even he would have expected.

“There was a certain courage in that. He wasn’t trying to put his stamp on the Church ideologically so much as to bring more people in.” †

 

See more news regarding the death of Pope Francis