Author: cfaradmin

It was a quarter-century since the beginning of World War II when Pope Paul VI spoke to the U.N. General Assembly and pleaded with the world to leave its violent ways aside and follow the path of peace.

“No more war, war never again!” he exclaimed.

Another quarter-century later, that message had all but dissolved as war exploded in the Persian Gulf. In response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the Western powers had assembled a ground and aerial combat force the size of which had not been seen since 1945. Led, of course, by the United States, these forces had begun a staggering campaign that would ultimately leave countless dead and displaced.

I could not believe that violence was the only way to address the invasion, nor war the only answer to Sadaam Hussein’s aggression. I have been an activist for most of my adult life, having been blessedly influenced by my dear friend Daniel Berrigan, S.J., whom I met while doing a film about Dan and his brother Philip, in 1981. This activism has led me to picket and pray and, on dozens of occasions, spend brief moments in jail for acts of (quite minor) civil disobedience. The carnage unleashed in the Persian Gulf compelled me to act yet again in hopes that somehow the bloodletting would end.

It didn’t. For all the marching and debating and activism that the peace community could muster, the war continued unabated. It seemed there was nothing we could do but be faithful to a call for peace and echo the words of Pope Paul VI.

My friend Joe Cosgrove thought otherwise. Not only is Joe Cosgrove a dedicated lawyer (now a former judge) and committed peace activist himself; he is in all ways a brother to me. Joe was Dan Berrigan’s friend and lawyer and participated with me in my first civil disobedience arrest and has represented me ever since. “I have an idea,” Joe said. “We can ask Pope John Paul II to bring the issue of the war to the World Court on behalf of the Vatican.”

What?

What seemed to be a wacky idea got even wackier as it was explained to me. The only “country” that had consistently objected to the build-up and carrying out of the Gulf War was the Vatican, with Pope John Paul II issuing plea after plea for the fighting to end. Joe had a simple plan: Since the only parties allowed to invoke the World Court’s jurisdiction are actual nations, and since the Holy See is a recognized diplomatic entity, it could bring an action to the court to challenge the war’s legitimacy under international law. Simple, right? The only problem was that neither of us were particularly close with the pope. But Joe had thought of a solution to that as well.

As a graduate of Notre Dame, with degrees in international studies, theology and law, he had made many contacts relevant to this venture, including someone who was quite close to Mother Teresa, who had also been outspoken about the war. Working with Joe over the course of a few weeks, this friend of Joe’s put him in touch with Mother Teresa, who was going to be in Rome a few days later. She invited us to meet her there and to bring our proposal, which she agreed to share with the pope. Easy as that.

I don’t know what motivated me to agree, but within a day I found myself flying from Los Angeles to New York, where I would meet Joe and head to Rome on this peace pilgrimage. It was about 6 p.m. when I arrived in New York, and while I waited for Joe, my better senses started to take over. How did I get myself into this foolish escapade? I was flying to Rome to deliver a message to Pope John Paul II through the intercession of Mother Teresa of Calcutta so that a suit could be brought in the World Court to stop a raging war in the Persian Gulf. It hurts all sensibility just to write those words! How could this group of ours have the audacity to think we could accomplish anything, let alone something of this magnitude?

Joe arrived a short while later, and I was prepared to tell him and the others that I was backing out. Nice to see you, I’d say, and then head back to the West Coast. But Joe arrived alone. “Where are the other pilgrims?” I asked. “What others?” Joe replied. “It’s just us!”

Now it got even more absurd.

I calmly explained to my dear friend that we were on a fool’s errand and wasting our time if we thought the two of us could do anything worthwhile in Rome. Joe listened carefully but held fast to his plan. He noted the sometimes inherent “foolishness” of the Gospel and the foolishness of thinking that we can, on our own, control anything. “We’re going there to tell the truth, and the rest is in God’s hands,” he said. “Besides, how can we determine what’s in store for us before we even take the first step?”

He was right. Sometimes the most blessed things in life come from unplanned moments. Whatever grace was to come of this trip was to come from God’s grace, not our efforts.

When we arrived in Rome, Joe made a quick call to the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order Mother Teresa had formed many years ago. We were told she was awaiting our arrival, so we gathered our things and hurried to meet her. We arrived at the nondescript door of a structure that had once been a large chicken coop but which now housed the sisters and Mother Teresa when she was in town. This was a place of utter humility, service and prayer. As we were ushered into a room, we saw a small chapel stacked with clothes that were to be distributed to the poor. In a moment, a tiny figure in a white sari with blue stripes met us with a broad welcoming smile. It was the living saint of Calcutta.

It was immediately clear that to her, no one was a stranger. In an instant, we were her friends, as if we had known one another all our lives. It wasn’t a skill, nor an act; it was just who she was. And it was pure gift. We spoke and shared and laughed (Mother had a keen wit and sense of humor) and told stories about our lives and our families.

Then we got down to business. Although Joe had explained things to her during their phone call a few days earlier, Mother confessed that she had never heard of the World Court, and with that revelation, she asked the most practical and innocent question: “So how do they make them obey?”

Indeed. What a question. Joe said that he had written a brief for the Holy Father that explained that the war violated several principles of international law and that a ruling from the World Court could, perhaps, spark a concerted effort to bring it to an end. Mother was patient but not terribly interested in the polemics. She had given Joe the floor, so she just listened, and when he finished she took the brief and matter-of-factly said that, indeed, she would be with the Holy Father in the morning and would deliver it to him in person. In utter humility, she asked: “What else can I do? I’ve written to the presidents but have not received a reply, so what can I do?”

I thought of all she already had done: the time Mother’s visit to Lebanon caused all warring factions to call a cease-fire while she was there; the Nobel Peace Prize she received for her tireless work with the “poorest of the poor.” I thought of a desperate world that looked to her for guidance and comfort and hope. “All we can do is pray,” she said, something, perhaps, we hadn’t really thought of.

As Joe and I walked back to our hotel, we looked at each other and just wept. We’d been in the presence of something indescribable; we’d planted seeds of hope and peace. At that point, all we could do, as Mother said, was “pray.”

The next day, a few hours after Mother’s visit, Pope John Paul II held his weekly audience and issued one of his strongest rebukes of the war to date. Perhaps something had taken root.

Mother had invited us to join her and her community for early Mass the next morning. Very early. I met Joe in the hotel lobby around 4:30 a.m. and told him what I’d heard on the news: There was a rumor that a cease-fire in the Gulf was imminent. When we arrived at Mother’s chapel, the news was confirmed: The war was over! A liturgy of hope was now a liturgy of thanksgiving and remembrance. Joe and I sat on the floor at the back of the chapel next to Mother who knelt in quiet meditation. When we reached the prayer of the faithful, gratitude for the war’s end was offered by several of the sisters. And after a long silence, a small voice made a final request: Mother asked that we “pray for all those we promised we’d pray for.” For Mother, that was the entire world.

A few weeks after we returned from Rome, we received a letter from the Vatican secretary of state with a message from Pope John Paul, thanking us for the brief Mother had delivered on our behalf and offering us his apostolic blessing. A few days later, on Easter, when he gave his Urbi et Orbi address, John Paul spoke yet again of the importance of international law, this time mentioning several points that were in our brief.

Did Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul or our prayers have anything to do with ending the war? Frankly, that is none of our business. As Father Berrigan often reminded us, we are only required to tell the truth and say our prayers. The rest is in God’s hands.

Pope Francis appoints a woman with the right to vote as undersecretary of the synod of bishops

America Magazine
Gerard O’Connell
February 06, 2021

Breaking with tradition and opening a new door in the synodal process, Pope Francis has appointed a woman, Nathalie Becquart, a member of the Xavière Sisters, Missionaries of Jesus Christ, in France, as one of two new undersecretaries of the synod of bishops. As such, she will have the right to vote in the synod. It is the first time this right has been given to a woman in the synod and raises the prospect that the right could be extended to other women participants at future synods.

Some have questioned whether Sister Nathalie will have the right to vote in the synod, but sources contacted by America point to two reasons for confirming this. First, the apostolic constitution “Episcopalis Communio,” promulgated by Pope Francis on Sept. 15, 2018, states, “The General Secretary and the Undersecretary are appointed by the Roman Pontiff and are members of the Synod Assembly” (Art. 22, No. 3). The members have the right to vote. Second, in an interview with Vatican News, Cardinal Mario Grech, the secretary general of the synod, speaks in Italian of her “possibilità di partecipare con diritto di voto,” which properly translated to English means “she can participate with the right to vote.”

As the other undersecretary of the synod, Pope Francis appointed a Spanish priest, Luis Marín de San Martín, O.S.A., the assistant general of the Augustinian order, and nominated him bishop.

Pope Francis’ nomination of Sister Nathalie to this position is another affirmation of his determination to appoint women to senior positions in the Vatican that do not require priestly ordination. Commenting on this appointment, Cardinal Grech recalled that “during the last synods numerous synodal fathers emphasized the need that the entire Church reflect on the place and role of women within the Church.” He said Pope Francis has frequently “highlighted the importance that women be more involved in the processes of discernment and decision making in the Church” and has increased the number of women participating as experts or auditors in the synods.

Significantly, Cardinal Grech said: “With the appointment of Sr Nathalie Becquart, and the possibility that she can participate with the right to vote, a door has been open. We will then see what other steps could be taken in the future.” This suggests that the possibility of giving women a vote in future synods is under consideration. It is something that has been requested for some time, including by several cardinals, bishops and other synod participants.

Cardinal Grech added, “The appointment of Sr Nathalie Becquart as Under-secretary will thus help us to remember in a concrete way that on this synodal way the voice of the People of God has a specific place and that it is fundamental to find ways to encourage the effective participation of all the baptized along this way.”

“This perspective has characterized the way in which Pope Francis has interpreted the Synod in his entire pontificate,” he said.

Commenting on the appointment of Father Luis Marín de San Martín, the cardinal said, “He has a vast experience in accompanying communities in decision-making processes and his knowledge of the Second Vatican Council will be precious so that the roots of the synodal way remain always present.”

“The fact that both under-secretaries are religious, each one having matured in a specific spirituality, says how important it is that the synodal Church take into consideration the various charisms present in the Church as well,” Cardinal Grech said. In addition, he said, “these appointments highlight the importance that the journey of a synodal Church be accompanied by a group that works together: the structure and the way the General Secretariat works must itself be synodal! Working together as a team allows the laity greater participation within the dynamics of responsibility.”

The cardinal drew attention to the fact that “synodality” is the theme for the next synod of bishops, which will be held in October 2022. Both new appointees have impressive curriculum vitae as outlined by Vatican Media.

Sister Becquart was born in 1969 in Fontainebleau, France. She gained a master’s degree in management at HEC Paris, studied philosophy and theology at the Centre Sévres of Paris and sociology at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and specialized in ecclesiology at Boston College, with research on synodality. While working as a volunteer teacher in Beirut, Lebanon, she took philosophy and theology courses at St. Joseph Jesuit University. After working as a consultant in a marketing and advertising agency for nongovernmental orgnanizations and Christian groups in Paris, in 1995 she joined the Xavières sisters, a religious congregation with roots in Ignatian spirituality.

On January 22, baseball great Henry Aaron died in his sleep at age 86.  Aaron grew up in poverty amid the worst abuses of the segregated south, only to become the baseball player who smashed the hallowed home-run record of Babe Ruth.  Hank Aaron wasn’t as loud as some other stars, on or off the field. He was a steady presence, a fixture in right field, a mainstay at the All-Star Game, and a terror at the plate. His path was often difficult, and his name is sometimes overlooked when rattling off the greatest to ever play the game.

In 1959, two years after winning the MVP, Aaron and his wife and children were baptized and received into St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, under the instruction of Fr. Michael Sablica, a priest who was vocal in his support of the civil rights movement and believed the Catholic Church could be a powerful tool for social justice. Hank Aaron described him as “more than just a religious friend of mine, he was a friend because he talked as if he was not a priest, he was just good people.”

Throughout his career, Aaron was known to keep a copy of Thomas à Kempis’ devotional classic The Imitation of Christ in his locker.  Aaron said in his Hall of Fame induction speech, “The way to fame is like the way to heaven. Through much tribulation.”

– Andrew Petiprin, Word on Fire Institute

Catholic bishops sign a statement to LGBT youth: ‘God created you, God loves you.’

America Magazine
Michael J. O’Loughlin
January 25, 2021

A group of U.S. Catholic bishops, including a cardinal and an archbishop, have signed a statement of support for L.G.B.T. youth, telling them, “God created you, God loves you and God is on your side.”

“As we see in the Gospels, Jesus Christ taught love, mercy and welcome for all people, especially for those who felt persecuted or marginalized in any way; and the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that LGBT people are to be treated with ‘respect, compassion and sensitivity,’” reads the statement, released by the Tyler Clementi Foundation, an organization that fights L.G.B.T. bullying in schools, workplaces and faith communities.

Among those signing the statement were Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark, and Archbishop John Wester, who leads the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

“All people of goodwill should help, support, and defend LGBT youth; who attempt suicide at much higher rates than their straight counterparts; who are often homeless because of families who reject them; who are rejected, bullied and harassed; and who are the target of violent acts at alarming rates,” the statement continues.

A group of U.S. Catholic bishops, including a cardinal and an archbishop, have signed a statement of support for L.G.B.T. youth, telling them, “God created you, God loves you and God is on your side.”

“The Catholic Church values the God-given dignity of all human life and we take this opportunity to say to our LGBT friends, especially young people, that we stand with you and oppose any form of violence, bullying or harassment directed at you.”

Archbishop Wester said in a phone interview with America that he signed the statement because he wanted L.G.B.T. young people to know “you have worth, you have value and you’re a child of God.”

A former high school teacher, Archbishop Wester said bullying can be especially toxic for young people who are trying to come to terms with their sexual orientation, especially when either they or others misinterpret church teaching on homosexuality to convey the notion that being gay itself is sinful.

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is “objectively disordered” and condemns sexual acts between people of the same sex as sinful. But at the same time, it says that gay people “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

Archbishop Wester said young L.G.B.T. people may sometimes misinterpret church teaching about homosexuality and incorrectly think they are somehow cut off from God’s love as a result.

Archbishop Wester said that he signed the statement because he wanted L.G.B.T. young people to know “you have worth, you have value and you’re a child of God.”

“We have our teachings, which we prize and cherish, but those teachings need to be understood in the proper context of love and mercy,” he said. “Sometimes people can make equivocations, ‘Well if it’s a sin to engage in a homosexual act, then I must be terrible person.’ The church doesn’t doesn’t teach that and it’s important [young people] don’t get that erroneous impression.”

He added, “I think it’s tragic that young people in the L.G.B.T. community are bullied and made fun of,” calling it “another form of bigotry and prejudice that we see in our country today.”

Bishop John Stowe, who leads the Diocese of Lexington, Ken., told America he signed the statement because he has heard from alumni and students in his diocese’s Catholic schools who said bullying of L.G.B.T. students can be a serious challenge.

“Sometimes offensive remarks were left unchallenged or even laughed at by faculty,” Bishop Stowe said in an email. “I have heard from other L.G.B.T. Catholics that what other students experienced as the best years of their lives were often traumatizing experiences for them as they experienced social rejection and concerns about God’s love for them and whether they had any hope of salvation. Too often these students have felt isolated, sometimes even afraid to get support from parents and family.”

Last year, Bishop Stowe and Archbishop Wester appeared in a video offering support to the L.G.B.T. community. They had been scheduled to attend a conference about pastoral care and L.G.B.T. people, organized by James Martin, S.J., that was rescheduled because of the pandemic. (Father Martin, an editor-at-large at America, assisted the Tyler Clementi Foundation in contacting bishops who might be interested in signing the statement.)

“I think it’s tragic that young people in the L.G.B.T. community are bullied and made fun of,” Archbishop Wester said, calling it “another form of bigotry and prejudice that we see in our country today.”

Other bishops who also signed the statement have previously expressed support for L.G.B.T. Catholics, including Cardinal Tobin. In 2017, he spoke to a group of about 100 L.G.B.T. Catholics who gathered at Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and in 2019, he told NBC News that he found the church’s language around homosexuality to be “very unfortunate” and “hurtful.”

Bishop Robert McElroy, who heads the Diocese of San Diego, also signed the statement. In 2016, he supported the idea that the church should apologize to L.G.B.T. people for historic mistreatment and calling for church teaching on the topic to use “language that is inclusive, embracing [and] pastoral.”

Bishop Steven Biegler of Cheyenne and Bishop Bishop Edward Weisenberger of Tucson, as well two retired auxiliary bishops, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit and Bishop Dennis J. Madden of Baltimore, also signed the statement.

The Tyler Clementi Foundation is named for the Rutgers University student who died by suicide in 2010 following an act of online bullying. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are bullied and attempt suicide at higher rates than their heterosexual peers. Trans students report higher rates of bullying, suicidal ideation and attempts at suicide than non-transgender students. The C.D.C. says schools can help combat suicide by encouraging respect for students and working to reduce bullying and harassment.

Jane Clementi, Tyler’s mother and the co-founder of the foundation, told America the foundation seeks affirmative statements from religious leaders to L.G.B.T. youth because she has “seen firsthand how important it is to have positive messages in religious communities to influence people.”

“I hope that a young L.G.B.T. person will read this statement and feel supported, know they are not alone and know that there are members of their faith community that support them,” Jane Clementi said.

“I hope that a young L.G.B.T. person will read this statement and feel supported, know they are not alone and know that there are members of their faith community that support them,” Ms. Clementi said, adding that she hopes the parents of L.G.B.T. children will not feel isolated if they belong to faith traditions that historically do not support L.G.B.T. people.

This is not the first faith outreach effort by the Tyler Clementi Foundation. It is organizing a campaign aimed at leaders in the Southern Baptist tradition and has tried to combat faith-based conversion therapy programs. On its website, the foundation says, “Treating LGBTQ people as less valued, preaching at LGBTQ people, and calling LGBTQ people’s sexual orientation or gender identity ‘sinful’ are all potential examples of religion-based bullying.”

There are about 430 bishops in the United States, and with just eight signing onto the statement, Ms. Clementi, who was raised Catholic and who today attends a Protestant church, said she hopes others will sign on as well.

“We’re trying to start a conversation,” she said, noting that the statement “does not go against any Catholic teaching, which I have come to know as being a message of love, mercy and inclusion.”

“That is so important for the church to shine to the world,” she added.

Friends, the appalling events in Washington DC today are a disturbing sign of a breakdown in our democratic system and compel us to a national examination of conscience regarding the civic life of this country. (I encourage you watch the talk I offered last year to a bipartisan group of Senators, Representatives, and Capitol Hill staffers about political life as a vocation, the relationship of the Divine Law to positive law, and the call of justice. – Bishop Robert Barron

We might have had different plans for this year, but were they really supposed to happen? We all wonder whether we’re actually following God’s will for us, but the reality is that, unless we are directly going against the Lord in some way, we are doing his will by just living our life. Wherever this year has taken us, whatever it has us doing, is exactly where God wants us to be. This is one of the joys of being a faithful Christian: as long as we are following the laws of the Lord, we can never be outside his will. This is true even today, as everything we thought we knew about this year was turned on its head. We may have had radically different plans and expectations for where we’d be now, or what we’d be doing, but it wasn’t the will of God. God has us exactly where he wants us, and as long as we remain faithful to him, we’ll follow the path that he’s paved for our lives. So, what if we’re not following the Lord? This is what the call of repentance is all about: if we’re not following the Lord, then we get to change the course of our lives and turn toward him through confession and penance. And you know when a perfect time for this is? Christmas! Because of Christmas, our lives don’t have to be a lost cause or a dead end. Because God gave his only begotten son to us, we can turn our lives around and aim them at the light of Christ. It’s through the incarnation that eternal life with God became a possibility and that repentance was born. Because Christ came to earth, we can use our lives to follow the will of God, even after steering off course. We now have a future, through the power of our Father’s love. – Fr. Mike Schmitz

Fr. Mike gives us some advice about how we should respond to the coronavirus pandemic. He begins with the story of the recent pilgrimage he took to Israel amid the coronavirus outbreak. Israeli authorities were quarantining people in the country and canceling all flights except for citizens. Fr. Mike had to rush with his pilgrims and tour company to figure out what to do about their scheduled pilgrimage. At the very last minute, the tour company found a flight to Istanbul that allowed eight pilgrims, including Fr. Mike, to flee Tel Aviv. After successfully making it back home, he found that the original flight they had booked home was never cancelled. Moral of the story: everything’s a gamble. Some people, deeply convicted to speak the truth, may believe the reaction to COVID-19 is all for nothing, and that there is no need to cancel flights and even Masses. To those people, Fr. Mike asks, are we just being a critic toward those who have to make difficult choices? Worry, anxiety, fear and living in the what ifs won’t solve anything. Faith in God is the answer, faith that everything will turn out all right in the end. Some say this virus is a result of our faithlessness, and a call to repentance. Others say our reaction to it is an example of faithlessness. One thing is for certain: this is a call to faith as all adversity should be, but it is also a call to repentance as it should remind us of our frailty and mortality. How coincidental that we should be reminded of these things during Lent, which begins by telling us “You are dust and to dust you shall return,” and “Repent and believe in the gospel.” We can find a positive and negative side to any situation. How can we find the blessings amid this adversity? Pray, be grateful, and cover your mouth when you cough. – Fr. Mike Schmitz

[The following is an article from TIME magazine on the new generation of men selecting the vocational call to the priesthood; published June 22, 2017]

When 19 college guys go to Jamaica for spring break, they usually hit the bar and the beach. Not Nicholas Morrison and his friends. Their trip to Montego Bay this March was far more medieval.

Every morning they rose at 5:30 a.m. and prayed. Then they visited abandoned children with disabilities and dug an irrigation trench to protect the kids’ homes from flooding in the coming summer rains. The young men joked as they moved 100 lb. boulders without machinery, naming one rock “Happy Birthday” and another “JP2,” a nickname for Pope John Paul II. Their chosen spring-break hashtag? #SemsOnMission.

Morrison and his friends are Catholic seminarians, studying to become priests. Philosophy majors at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., they live and study at the nearby St. John Paul II Seminary, which opened six years ago to meet a growing demand from millennial men who want to join the priesthood. It has reached capacity at 50 students and is already expanding, for the second time. “The four years I have been there have been totally incredible,” says Morrison, 22, a 2017 graduate from Maryland who is headed to Rome to continue his studies. “I’m much more confident that this is something that the Lord wants me to continue to pursue.”

The precise way that Morrison and his generation choose to pursue their calling is what sets them apart. Products of the 21st century, they use Facebook and Snapchat, and text their friends funny GIFs. Some brew their own beer, protest at Black Lives Matter rallies or go to the shooting range with Marine buddies. Some are comfortable with legalizing recreational pot. They are more likely to wear their clerical attire than jeans in public, faster to share details of their prayer life than to keep them private and keener to give their Friday nights to the homeless than to Netflix. When it comes to politics, they are hard to pin down as liberal or conservative, and not all think preaching antiabortion homilies is a good idea. Instead they speak openly with their supervisors about their struggles with chastity, and some even discuss their struggles with sexual orientation. Perhaps most important, there are more of them now than there were before: 1,900 men under age 30 were enrolled in graduate-level Catholic seminaries in 2016, up from 1,300 in 2005, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). In June the next wave of graduates will finish and pack up to move to churches across the nation.

This shift comes at a time when Pope Francis, who became the Pontiff in 2013, is calling for a new kind of priest to serve in parishes around the world. His predecessor was known as a scholar, but Francis is renowned as a pastor for the people. For the first time in 30 years, the Vatican this past winter revised its global guidelines for educating priests and modeled it after Pope Francis’ example of humility and vision for accessible and genuine leaders. He is open to the idea of studying how some married men can be ordained to serve in a priestly function, to serve in rural areas short on ministers. Next year he will call the world’s bishops to Rome for a summit to discuss youth, faith and vocational discernment. As they prepare, he is asking Catholics “not to yield to discouragement” but to pray for the new priests to be “living signs of God’s merciful love.” Millennial priests are the cutting edge of his effort. The Pope makes a point to visit young seminarians when he travels to different countries, as he did in Philadelphia in 2015. “Pope Francis has been a game changer,” Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago says. “He’s made people rethink their aspirations for the priesthood.”

Francis’ papacy is just four years old, and the millennial priests are not a homogeneous group, but already they share a mission. Forget the old stereotypes of the priesthood–reserved men, removed and dogmatic, who present themselves at the lectern to guide their congregations. The generation heeding the Francis call looks a lot like Father Chris Seith, the parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mercy in Potomac, Md. Seith, now 28, does CrossFit, rides a bike through the halls of his parish’s Catholic school donning a goofy fake mustache and gondolier’s hat to greet all the students, and bakes cakes on Catholic feast days to encourage people to celebrate holy days as real parties. Pope Francis’ mission of mercy and first major writing, The Joy of the Gospel, guides his purpose. “Joy is contagious, energy is contagious,” Seith says. “I just want to be the face of that joy.”

To find a Pope Francis–style pastor in Chicago, you need look no further than Father Matt O’Donnell. O’Donnell, 30, was the youngest-known pastor in the archdiocese’s history when he got the job to lead St. Columbanus Church four years ago, just months after Francis’ election. The parish is mostly African American, and it sits between two of the most violent neighborhoods on the South Side. In February, when an 11-year-old girl was shot and killed blocks away, O’Donnell went to the scene to find her family.

The neighborhood is not Catholic, and neither was the girl. But O’Donnell offered to help her mother with funeral costs, and then he attended the memorial. “I get to be a pastor for a whole lot of people besides those who just come on Sunday morning to mass here,” he says. “My hope is that people realize that St. Columbanus is a place that’s trying to provide more opportunities for the community around economic development, jobs and food insecurity.”

The rise of millennial leaders like O’Donnell comes at a critical moment for the Catholic Church in the U.S., where congregants are declining as a share of the population. Even among millennials who are Catholic, only about a quarter attend church weekly, and three-quarters of younger millennial Catholics support same-sex marriage in defiance of church teaching, according to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center.

The church also faces an overall priest shortage in the U.S. The number of priests in the country has dropped from 58,600 to 37,200 over the past 50 years, and a whopping 3,500 parishes did not have their own pastor in 2016, according to CARA. That means that while young priests like O’Donnell might in the past have worked for a decade or two as an assistant before leading their own congregation, young priests now must take on more responsibility sooner and with fewer resources. No generation may ever be able to repeat the post–World War II priest boom, when droves of men were ordained at the average age of 28 and fewer laypeople could serve in leadership roles. But the share of men under age 29 who enter Catholic seminary has risen 15% in the past 15 years, according to CARA, and the average ordination age has fallen from 37 to 34.

The new priests represent a cultural change in the church. For the first time, the next generation of Latino Catholics in the U.S. is larger than that of white Catholics. Only seven in 10 of the newest priests in the U.S. are white, compared with more than 9 in 10 U.S. priests overall, according to CARA. In Chicago, where 44% of Catholics but only 14% of priests are Latino, church leadership is recruiting young priests with brochures that read, Sé un líder. Sé un héroe. ¡Sé un sacerdote! (Be a leader. Be a hero. Be a priest!) As part of their studies, seminarians often learn Spanish. In Silver Spring, Md., Father Mario Majano, 30, says many immigrants question the choice to become a priest because of expectations that the next generation should help the family advance economically. “How can I be a source of stability for my family in a different, good way?” Majano recalls thinking about his decision to become a priest. “I wish we had more young Hispanics.”

All this leaves bishops looking to millennials for new leadership. Bishop Timothy Senior, who leads St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, near Philadelphia, says, “The style of the priesthood absolutely has to change” to elevate “servant leadership.” In Chicago, Cupich, 68, invited O’Donnell and Father James Wallace, 31, to be on the steering committee for the archdiocese’s strategic outlook plan, called Renew My Church, to explore how parishes should function in the future. They hosted a dinner in February for the archdiocese’s other young priests to discuss how to make the church more vibrant in their city. “The demands on their leadership are going to be altogether different from their predecessors’,” Cupich explains. “What distresses them the most is that there might be a leadership sometimes that says, We’re just going to kick the cans down the road and not deal with them. We’re not going to worry about buildings that have huge capital needs or shrinking numbers of parishioners.”

Pope Francis has encouraged the shift. He tells church leaders to put their community first, avoid clerical bureaucracy and, above all, evangelize with kindness. In November he elevated two key American archbishops to cardinals: Cupich, who is responsible for the largest Catholic seminary in the country, Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake; and Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., who leads the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee that is responsible for new priests. Both are important players for ensuring that the Francis vision takes root.

For young priests in Cupich’s Chicago, that vision already comes naturally. St. Columbanus, for example, is named for a 6th century Irish saint, but recently O’Donnell decided to rebrand to better serve his neighborhood. He put up new mosaics that imagine the church’s namesake with a black and brown face. Now he keeps the church baptismal font heated and full of water, ready for converts at any moment. “Pope Francis, he has made me excited again about becoming a priest,” O’Donnell says. “He models to me what I want to be as a priest, the ability to be creative, imaginative and not get stuck in what ‘has to be.’”

For many of the new generation, Pope Francis is just one of several key role models. It takes at least five years to be ordained, so most of the millennial priests of today chose their path before Francis was elected, and they owe a lot to the Popes of their youth, including John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Students at a recent Mundelein Seminary roundtable praised Pope Francis’ simplicity, calling his spirituality raw, hands-on and organic, a sentiment they say fellow millennials appreciate. But when they named their biggest spiritual influences, they did not name Popes or Vatican officials. Instead, they talked of pastors back home, mothers, friends and women like St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

The newest priests see the priesthood as a rebellion, if an unusual one. Seminary programs often offer a technology fast, for a week or a year, and young men are quick to say how much they enjoy it. Like Pope Francis, many will take a selfie, but they caution against friendships that exist mainly on social media. The priesthood has largely resisted cultural change brought on by new family structures and a changing sense of community–most millennial seminarians have been Catholic since birth, have parents who are still married and celebrate the Eucharist every day. “They know they are going countercultural, but it is not out of ignorance,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, who founded the St. John Paul II Seminary, says. “There has to be some vision, some purpose, some goal.”

The next priesthood is bound by this strong sense of mission. Some seminarians may trade knowledge of bishops like baseball cards, but by the time they are in churches, they are more focused on outreach. Father Dominic Clemente, 27, of Chicago, started his church’s first ever youth program, filmed videos for the church’s website and hopes to develop a new relationship with the Muslim Community Center down the street.

Wallace, the 31-year-old on the Renew My Church team, calls himself socially progressive, but for him that means he’s not afraid to play dodgeball with the kids, do a shot of Jameson with off-duty cops at a St. Patrick’s Day party or sit on the front lawn with a cigar and an extra lawn chair so people will come and talk. “The big talk is evangelization … How do we go out and get people to fall in love with Christ?” says Wallace, of Edison Park in Chicago. “For a certain generation of priests, they weren’t trained with that concept, so evangelization is just totally foreign to them. It’s not that they are opposed to it; it’s just not on their radar.” Wuerl, 76, says the young generation is far more open about their prayer life and their encounters with God than he was at their age. “If you define humility as simply recognizing the truth, they are very humble people, because they have no problem talking about their own failures and their own accomplishments,” he says.

Sexuality, and their willingness to wrestle with it openly, also sets millennial priests apart from their predecessors. Pope Francis has reiterated that marriage is not an option for priests, and seminarians are required to refrain from sexual activity. But seminary leaders say young men are not afraid to confess struggles with pornography, and they discuss how their sexuality fits with their pledge of abstinence. “I think they’ve embraced that sense of, ‘I’m here to live a chaste life, whatever my sexual orientation might be,’” Father John Kartje, president of Mundelein Seminary, says. “That conversation doesn’t have an asterisk on it for one person as opposed to another.” Adds Father Jeffrey Eickhoff, who leads St. Gregory the Great Seminary near Lincoln, Neb.: “In some sense, scandal has happened, priests have failed. There’s not so much stigma that priests are perfect anymore.”

The child sex-abuse scandal defined the church of their parents, and young men are eager to turn the page. Seith, the Maryland CrossFitter, was a young teenager in 2002 when the scandal broke. When he applied to seminary, his program required that applicants complete a background check and a comprehensive psychological evaluation, and curriculums trained seminarians on how to report abuse. He says his classmates from dioceses like Boston, where the abuse numbers were particularly high, confronted more of a stigma than he did. But he also personally knew an abuse victim, and that makes him want to set the best example of a priest that he can, especially in his work at his local Catholic school. “We talked about, How do we make sure we are approachable and people can trust us?” he says of his training. “We want to make sure the kids know they are really loved.”

Even in a new era of openness, millennial priests have limits. They believe what the culture does not, that sex outside of heterosexual marriage is sinful and that Jesus rose from the dead. Young priests embrace institutions and rituals their millennial peers eschew. “People say, ‘Well, I can worship God in my bedroom, I can worship God from the bar, I can worship while I’m lying down watching Netflix,’” Father Michael Trail, 27, of Oak Forest, Ill., says. “But taking that solid time out of your week just to thank God for the way that he’s come in your life, that only happens with structure.”

Many young priests even take this conservatism to a new level. For some, the old mass of their grandparents is now hip and exotic. Students at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary host outreach events that replace Christian rock music with a very solemn, high mass, complete with incense. Many choose to wear their collar even on their off-days or when out at a bar to stand out, while their rector, Bishop Senior, says his seminary classmates 30 years ago would wear jackets and ties to fit in. In a speech to Polish Jesuits, Pope Francis even encouraged young seminarians to be less rigid, to avoid narcissism and to discern “shades of gray.”

Wallace says that unlike older priests, his peers are less willing to identify with a political party. Eickhoff, whose seminary draws from mostly red states, says young men are conservative on moral issues like marriage and abortion but push back against President Trump on immigration. And while pockets of church leaders may hope Rome’s pendulum will swing right after Pope Francis, these young men are more politically independent. “I don’t think we are in an age here in the United States where the young men are going archconservative,” says Father Robert Panke, rector of St. John Paul II Seminary.

In the months ahead, Pope Francis plans to spotlight this next generation. He has dedicated the next triennial bishops’ synod at the Vatican in October 2018 to discuss youth and vocation, which will cover both calls to the priesthood and to marriage. He has asked bishops worldwide to survey young people in advance, and the Vatican is planning a website for youth to submit reflections for the event. After the synod comes the 2019 World Youth Day in Panama, which he hopes will cement the synod’s reforms. At age 80, Francis knows that the future of the church depends on the direction millennial Catholics choose. “The church and society need you,” he told young people in a recent video message. “With your dreams and ideals, walls of stagnation fall and roads open up.”

For now, church leaders in the U.S. are hopeful that the Pope’s efforts will stick. “I say to the priests here, anytime you’ve had a bad day, just go up to the seminary and see this next generation coming along,” Cardinal Wuerl says. The millennial priesthood is ready for the spotlight. “If we can keep those doors open for at least 100 years, we will be good,” Clemente says. “Hopefully the next guys behind us will use those open doors to continue welcoming people in.”