Vatican City, Jun 30, 2020 / 08:40 pm (CNA).- Last Saturday, June 27, many churches witnessed the ordinations of dozens of priests and deacons, in ceremonies that were far from typical. Even while some parts of the world “reopen” after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing was required, and cameras provided live streaming so that family, friends and loved ones could participate by TV, tablet or smartphone.
On this occasion, I had the joy and honour of ordaining, in the Gesù Church in Rome, two Jesuit priests and eighteen deacons from all over the world—from Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Austria to Rwanda-Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, China, Bangladesh and India—wearing masks and connecting online with parents, relatives, friends and fellow Jesuits. Physical presence was not possible as Italy slowly recovers from this health crisis; the borders are still closed and travel restrictions are still in place.
The following reflections expand upon the homily I pronounced just before the ordination of these twenty candidates for the priesthood and the diaconate.
Breath of life
As a priest or deacon “to be”, you may feel a bit incomplete because you cannot share this very important moment with your loved ones. You might feel anxious, too: we’re living in the unknown and in unchartered territories for the Church, for all of us. And as you prepare yourself for ordination, you might ask: what does this mean for me, right now and right here?
Perhaps the answer can be found on Easter evening, when the apostles had locked themselves into the upper room for fear of what was happening “outside”. (Even nowadays, our Church sometimes feels fearful and closed in on itself.) Suddenly Jesus becomes visible, audible, tangible among them. “Shalom!” is his first word, “Peace be with you!” He shows them his wounded hands and pierced side. These permanent signs of his Passion proclaim and prove God’s tenacious love. And then, amazingly, Jesus sends them out into the same world they were so afraid of.
How does he do this? With this tremendous gesture: he breathes on them. Just like in the beginning: God breathed his breath of life into Adam. By breathing on his disciples and giving them his Spirit, Jesus lifts them to a new order. That is, he ordains them as heralds of the Gospel “to the ends of the earth”, as it says in the book of Acts.
You are about to receive this deep and generous and transforming breath of life, the Spirit of the Father and the Son. You will be able to say, repeating Isaiah, “the spirit of the Lord is upon me”, to heal and to comfort, to liberate and to reconcile, to raise up and make glad. And to be a herald of the Gospel, a minister of reconciliation and of liberation, in the world of today and tomorrow, where everything seems to be constantly and rapidly new.
With your ordination just moments away, let me remind you that we are all witnessing a bigger moment now, where the whole Church and your family and friends, are encouraging you to choose the uphill path of the “new” rather than the downhill path of the “safe”.
Renewal is nothing new
Our Church has a long history and, from the beginning, it has coped with new conditions, for instance through its Councils. Vatican II proclaimed that the Church must consciously embrace the world. We must discern and “scrutinize the signs of the times”. But while discernment is part of the Jesuit life, style and training, it is not exclusively Jesuit property, nor is it a prerogative of the ordained.
Why is this so? Because of baptism. According to Vatican II, every member of the Church enjoys the dignity of having been baptized and therefore shares in the mission and ministry of the Church. Ordained ministry does not exhaust or monopolize this ministry, for it is the Church as a whole that is “ministerial” and “missionary”. All its members share in that responsibility. This expands the role of the laity — a work in progress, according to many engaged Christians. Today’s ministers are ordained to foster the active inclusion of God’s people in the life, mission and responsibilities of the Church.
Vatican II embraces the world as the privileged place of announcing the Good News. In doing so, it restores its priests to the world, inviting them to leave the comfort zones called “sacristies” where, like the disciples on the first Easter evening, they had been shut in for fear of what was happening “outside”. Now the world, with its problems and struggles, with its contradictions and its values, with its opportunities and obstacles, is essential to the service of those who will be ordained today.
The courage of witness
Do not expect a map of the unknown land ahead to which you are being sent. It is a daunting prospect to enter uncharted territories. As I said earlier, ministers of the Church need to have the courage of witness, to choose the uphill path of the “new” and not to take the downhill path of the “safe”. May you always have friends and family and companions in the Church to constantly ‘en-courage’ you, even if they can only be with you in spirit.
Keep in mind that discerning the meaning of Christ’s call to us today is a task of the whole Church, not of a chosen few. Don’t try to dominate or own this discernment; instead, accompany others and put yourselves at the service of the discernment of the whole Church.
In doing so, you will be participating in the synodal practice that is gradually growing in the Church. Let us try to walk together with ever greater enthusiasm. Your huge contribution depends on looking honestly and listening sincerely, without thinking that you already have the best answer or all the answers. Try to draw on many people and listen to many voices. However small or large your network is, you will find that it requires both humility and courage to recognize that one cannot do everything on one’s own.
Don’t expect it to be easy, don’t expect it to be without controversy, don’t expect to be rewarded, don’t expect to be liked by others, don’t expect that the critics will acknowledge your difficult struggles, don’t expect quick success. But be confident that you won’t be alone if you let others walk with you.
This is something to pray for, today and always. Ask God to help us see the world as Jesus does, especially in this very difficult time.
The Covid-19 pandemic is showing us the complexity and contradictions of our social and economic systems, where the gap between wealth and poverty is growing out of all proportion, and where so many feel abandoned and thrown away, excluded and unwanted.
Would Jesus not weep for the refugees and migrants who do not receive medical attention because they are “foreigners”, many of them crowded into irregular settlements, who have lost what little they already had and live today in despair? Would Jesus not see the indigenous peoples who are discriminated against for food aid, the prisoners who have been abandoned to the mercies of the virus, and the more than 3 billion poor people worldwide?
I cannot imagine Jesus waiting in an upper room or a sacristy; he would urge us to join him in the margins of the margins, where the courage of life and hope is most needed.
May we enlighten the world with the truth of the Gospel, and propose effective and genial solutions, not just to the present emergency, but to the enormous sufferings of God’s people and of our common home.
Pope Francis speaks often of joy: “The Joy of the Gospel” (Evangelii gaudium) and “Rejoice and be Glad” (Gaudete et exsultate) and “The Joy of Love” (Amoris laetitia). May you experience abundant grace, consolation and joy in carrying out the charge that you are about to accept in your ordination. Peace be with you!
Cardinal Michael Czerny, as a member of the Jesuit community, has worked in Canada, Latin America, Africa, and Rome, in the service of faith and the promotion of justice. Since 2017, he has been Under-Secretary of the Vatican’s Migrants and Refugees Section. In 2019 Pope Francis elevated him to cardinal. Card. Czerny is also a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
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Themis Vatican makes a laughingstock out of justice for victims of sexual abuse.
It’s just a good thing that Rupnik doesn’t say the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. If he did, he’d have been dismissed, defrocked, and defenestrated overnight.
1. It might be noted that secular media in Italy have recently turned the heat up on the foot-dragging in the Rupnik case, e.g., Rupnik dogged by a reporter through Fiumicino Airport.
2. Somebody might also ask what Cardinal De Donatis is up to (Francis’s former Vicar General for Rome, now Major Penitentiary) since it’s alleged he is allowing the Centro ALetti crowd to move into a monastery northeast of Rome from which the elderly traditional sisters are being relocated.
It takes time to confirm not just a mountain of evidence, rather mountains of evidence. Perhaps the Vatican has discovered a new range.
It’s beyond me why, if he did indeed commit these crimes, he hasn’t been tried in a civil court found guilty and sentenced. Once defrocked he should be handed over to the civil authorities for consideration. Why has he been allowed to slip through civil loopholes? It seems that “ there is something rotten in the State of Denmark “!!!
That occurred to me also. But there might not have been sufficient evidence and coraboration to try him in a criminal court.
Answering both of your posts here,. The offenses that have been the focus of attention, where religious sisters came forth and testified against Marko Rupnik, occurred in Slovenia back in the early 1990s, not in Rome or Italy. Other offenses may have taken place in Italy later, but the Jesuit internal investigation that provided the substantive information about Rupnik’s actions focused on events during the early years of the Loyola Center, co-founded by Rupnik and Ivanka Hosta who are both Slovenian. Slovenia also declared independence arounds the same time, so one can imagine that the legal system was still a work in progress. The three women who have gone public, Gloria Branciani, Mirjam Kovacs and Sister Samuelle, have an excellent, thoroughly experienced lawyer, Laura Sgro, who would presumably file civil charges if she figured out a way to do it. Also, keep in mind that many more women have told their stories to investigators but have not gone public. There are dozens.
The thing is, when we wonder why these acts of sexual abuse and violence don’t seem to have been reported to the police, we can ask the same question about the offenses by Theodore McCarrick, which included seminarians as well as legal minors such as James Grein. We can ask the same about most of the abuse by priests, until relatively recently. It just seems to have been very rare to report abuse by priests to law enforcement, until tbe abuse scandal broke open twenty years ago. Especially within religious communities, seminaries and other religious institutions. People in those institutions may have genuinely believed that if they reported the incidents to their superiors, as they had been guided to do, the offenses would be dealt with in time. Their trust was abused as well.
A lot of the information about the accusations about Rupnik, followup actions, background details, etc. are, already out there and accessible to anyone who wants to learn more. For instance, The Pillar and the National Catholic Register have both published several detailed timelines beginning around two or three years ago.
Did any of the alleged crimes take place within the walls of Vatican City? If not, isn’t he subject to other civil authorities?
The handling of the Rupnik case so far has been appalling. Should he be found not guilty it will be the final nail in the coffin of Vatican credibility.
A fact that so many are glossing over in the Rupnik affair is the fact that he was already found guilty! It was the punishment that was lifted, but as far as can be seen the trial itself was not vacated, the evidence not deemed false. As a canonist I can note that the DDF could have simply had the penalty reinstated but that would have meant getting Francis’ permission. Even if the first trial had been vacated, there is a procedural norm that allows it to be given another hearing if it can be shown that a gross violation of justice occurred. Even with a new trial, one can import all the evidence from the first one, and either go just with that, or add a little bit of the supposedly new cases. This would have significantly expedited matters. Even more, the cases that bought upon the new trial are not of a different kind, but rather additional instances of the same crimes. This makes the claim that they needed a whole new trial, taking years to gather new evidence, a crock. The notion that they need to come up with new categories of crimes, as though there’s nothing already existent to try Rupnik on is also false. There’s also no reason for the length of time except by deliberate delay. Such cases- and in fact ones dealing with much lesser matters that they could be set aside for now to address Rupnik- are often handled in less time than has transpired. So, this is all a bunch of baloney and there should be no doubt that ultimately Francis is protecting him.
Thank you for this in-indepth information. It helps to make sense of some of what I have read… well, maybe “sense” isn’t the word because nothing with the handling of the Marko Rupnic case makes sense. But it provides much insight.
Francis is at the top of the heap of Rupnic’s network of protectors and enablers who have run interference for him and helped him escape consequences for years– beginning with the group of women who came with him from the Loyola Center when he left and moved to Rome, and who then became ensconced in the Aletti Center and in positions in the Vatican organization. I hope that one day, some diligent investigator untangles that network, but that person will have to be tough and fearless, and hopefully, driven by faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.