Hello and welcome!
I hope you all are having a happy, safe and restful 4th of July!
In anticipation of the U.S. Bishops’ Spring Meeting, held in San Diego this year, there were a number of virtual meetings that I attended. Among them were the Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism and the Committee for Africa.
We also had a virtual meeting of the Pontifical Mission Societies with the board of directors, members of the staff, and the new president, Msgr. Roger Landry.
Msgr. Landry gave a very good report, and we’re confident that the Pontifical Mission Societies are going to make great progress under his leadership.
On June 11, I met with Dmitri Solzhenitsyn, the grandson of the famous Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Dmitri’s grandfather is a great hero for so many people in the world for the way that he courageously opposed totalitarianism and for his commitment to the Christian faith.
Dmitri is a Harvard graduate who is working for McKinsey but has taken a sabbatical to work on a book on Catholic-Orthodox relations. He is very passionate about this topic; his mother is Catholic, and his father is Orthodox.
It was an opportunity for me to talk to him about my own experience working on the USCCB dialogue with the Orthodox and particularly our relationship with Metropolitan Methodios and the Greek Orthodox here in Boston. He was also very happy to hear that I had an opportunity to speak with the Ecumenical Patriarch when I was in Rome for the installation of the new Holy Father.
We had a very good discussion about Orthodox-Catholic relations, and I look forward to reading his book when it is published.
The next day, I attended an event at the Museum of Science for the Friends of Caritas Cubana, a group founded here in Boston by Consuelo Isaacson and Micho Spring. They have been instrumental in raising considerable funds each year to support the works of Caritas Cubana, the Church’s social service agency in Cuba.
For the longest time after the Marxist Revolution, the Church was unable to carry on any kind of ministry to the poor. But since the time of Cardinal Ortega, the Church has begun to carry out works of mercy with food pantries and food distribution, particularly for the elderly and for children, and also help with medicine. The funding for all of this has come from the Friends of Caritas Cubana.
This year, they decided to honor me for my long involvement in Cuba. For 40 years, I’ve been going to Cuba and have been involved in negotiations there with the government to accept more priests into the country, and later on as a visitator for the seminaries, and, of course, in the more recent negotiations for the liberation of prisoners.
They gave me an award called the “Rosa Blanca,” named for a lovely little poem by José Martí, which speaks about growing a white rose both for the friend and the enemy. I think it’s very appropriate because part of the thrust of Caritas Cubana is trying to bring about reconciliation and dialogue between the Cubans on the island and those in the diaspora.
This is the original in Spanish:
Cultivo una rosa blanca
en junio como enero
para el amigo sincero
que me da su mano franca.
Y para el cruel que me arranca
el corazón con que vivo,
cardo ni ortiga cultivo;
cultivo la rosa blanca.
And here’s an English translation:
I cultivate a white rose
in June as in January
for the sincere friend
who gives me his frank hand.
And for the cruel person who tears out
the heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns;
I cultivate a white rose.
I was very happy to see some members of the Suarez family at the celebration. Melchor and his wife, Susan, live here in Massachusetts, and Manella, who used to work with me at the Centro Católico, came up from Washington for the event.
On the evening of June 21, I was happy to celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi Mass with three Neocatechumenal Way communities from the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
The next day, June 22, I joined the Daughters of St. Paul for their Profession Jubilee Mass, held on the feast of Corpus Christi itself. We celebrated the anniversaries of one sister celebrating 70 years of religious profession, Sister Mary Agnes Coniglio, and three celebrating their 50th anniversary: Sister Catherine Bernadette Bennett, Sister Dorothy Anne Guyer, and Sister Kathleen Thomas Lang. They also had one sister whom they were celebrating in memoriam, their classmate, Sister Karen Joseph Hamm. One of the jubilarians, Sister Dorothy Anne, was at the residence helping out when I arrived in Boston 22 years ago, so I thanked her for all of her kindness to me when I was just starting out in Boston.
I told them that they had made a very egregious omission — that there was one 60th anniversary of religious profession that was not mentioned: mine! I will be professed 60 years on July 14. But I told them that I had not revealed it until that moment because I was afraid they would make me wear a corsage!
That same day, I went to St. Anthony’s in Cambridge, where they were celebrating Corpus Christi and their patronal feast, which was the 13th.
I was not able to be there for the Mass, but I got there to have the blessing of the St. Anthony Bread and to lead the Eucharistic procession for Corpus Christi with the parishioners.
The church is not particularly Portuguese in its architecture, but the shrines indicate the popular piety particularly of the Azorean Portuguese parishioners who built the church.
There are shrines to St. Michael the Archangel, as most of the people are from the island of São Miguel; the Santo Cristo, which is the big procession and feast every year; Our Lady of Fatima; and, of course, St. Anthony, the Portuguese saint who is the patron of the parish.
It was a lovely celebration, and I was very grateful to have been invited by their pastor, Father Michael Harrington.
Finally, while I was recently in New York for a meeting on safeguarding with some religious sisters, I came across this sculpture, which reminded me that this is the Jubilee Year of Hope.
But I also thought it was rather amusing that next to that sculpture of “HOPE” there was an advertisement for a psychic. So, it seems some people are putting their hope in the wrong places.
Until next time,
Cardinal Seán