The Brownson Record: Issue Seven, May 2025

Virtutem Forma Decorat

Issue Seven | May 2025

Pope Francis: A Requiem His life and legacy JACK DALY INTERVIEW: Zachary DeCarlo on Cabrini An authentic model for modern humankind DOMINIC WILKINSON At Arm’s Length An encounter with the successor of St. Peter JOHN-PAUL HEIL, PH.D.

Issue Seven | May 2025 The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker

Our Mission As an independent journal for the Mount St. Mary’s University community, The Brownson Record seeks to promote the Catholic vision of the human person in the modern world. Through earnest reflection on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, we constantly seek to understand the Mount’s institutional vocation as a university at once Catholic and American. Consistent with the Mount’s undergraduate mission, we aim to nourish a culture in which issues of political, social, and religious life are encountered with rigorous intellectual and moral standards.

Editor-in-Chief Nolan Williams

Director of Art Adrienne Bradica

Managing Editor Dominic Wilkinson

Editorial Board Taylor Beliveau Anna Dang Seth Eckert Leah Kanik Joseph Maher Audrey Russell

Director of Copy Jack Daly

Faculty Advisors Joshua Brown, Ph.D. Alejandro Cañadas, Ph.D. Joshua Hochschild, Ph.D. John Larrivee, Ph.D. John-Paul Heil, Ph.D. Harry Scherer, C’22 Gavin Hamrick, C’23

Send us an email at brownsonrecord@gmail.com Stay updated with our social media @BrownsonRecord To make a tax-deductible contribution, visit our “Donate” page at brownsonrecord.com

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Table of Contents 4 Letter from the Editor

Nolan Williams Editor-in-Chief

5 At Arm’s Length

John-Paul Heil, Ph.D.

8 INTERVIEW: Zachary

Dominic Wilkinson

Faculty Advisor

DeCarlo on Cabrini

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Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner

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Pope Francis: A Requiem

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Poetry

John Singleton

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A Lost Art

Emma Edwards

Managing Editor

Gavin Hamrick Advisor, C’23 Jack Daly Director of Copy

C’86

C’24

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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Thank you for picking up the seventh issue of The Brownson Record! Many things have changed over the past year here at our mountain home. We have had cause for great joy in the arrival of our new president, Gerard J. Joyce, Ph.D.; our new chaplain, Rev. Justin Gough; and a number of new professors and students to Our Lady’s Mountain. We have also had moments for reflection and sorrow in the passing of Professor Emerita of English Carol Hinds, Ph.D., and the resignations of Msgr.

Andrew R. Baker, S.T.D. as Rector of the Seminary and Boyd Creasman, Ph.D. as Provost.

Amongst the myriad of changes and events of the last year, the Church in particular mourns the passing of our Supreme Pontiff, Francis. For many of my colleagues and I, this is the first time a reigning pope has passed onto his eternal reward in living memory. I can still recall sitting in my second-grade religion class, eyes glued to the projector screen, watching Pope Francis walk onto the balcony of the apostolic palace for the first time, blessing the jubilant crowd both with his Urbi et Orbi and his beaming smile, as described by Jack Daly in this issue.

My friends, colleagues, fellow students, and I would all mature both in our age and our faith as he ruddered the barque of St. Peter. Dr. John-Paul Heil recounts in this issue a particularly close encounter with the Holy Father, and the humanity of a man who seemed above the world rather than in it. His passing cast the Church, and in particular the young people, into mourning. We who had been so used to praying for the health of Pope Francis, now donned black and prayed for his soul. Yet these days of sorrow for the Church have been beautifully mixed with the joy that is Eastertide. We both mourn he who is “a priest forever, in the order of Melchisedek” and celebrate the High Priest, who by His death destroyed death itself. Let us hope, and more importantly pray, that just as Pope Francis, St. Peter, and Our Lord did not keep the world at arm’s length while they were in the world, they may continue to do so in the realm of eternal bliss.

Following in this spirit of joy and sorrow surrounding the Holy Father, Gavin Hamrick discusses the nature of Christian mercy, a virtue which Pope Francis lived out both before and during his Pontificate. Emma Edwards reminds us of the beauty in dolorous artwork in her reflection on Michelangelo’s Pietà. And Zach DeCarlo reflects on the production of Cabrini, a film centered around the work of a saint who dedicated her life to serving the poor and outcast that our late Pontiff so often

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ministered to.

In this Eastertime, where through the ignominious death of the Cross, Our Lord has wrought for us so joyful a season, let us reflect on the life of Pope Francis, keeping first in mind the words of Sirach the Prophet: Behold, a great priest, who in his days pleased God, and was found just; and in the time of wrath he was made a reconciliation. There was not found the like to him, who kept the law of the Most High. Therefore, by an oath, the Lord made him to increase among his people. He gave him the blessing of all nations, and confirmed His covenant upon his head. He acknowledged him in His blessings; He preserved for him His mercy; and he found grace before the eyes of the Lord. He glorified him in the sight of kings, and gave him a crown of glory. He made an everlasting covenant with him, and gave him a great priesthood; and made him blessed in glory. To execute the office of the priesthood, and to have praise in His name, and to offer Him a worthy incense for an odor of sweetness. (Sirach 44:1627; 45:3-20) Nolan Williams, Editor-in-Chief

Photo by Joseph Maher, C’28

John-Paul Heil, Ph.D.

At Arm’s Length Three feet was the closest I ever got to Pope Francis.

I shouldn’t have even been there.

I’d been in Italy for about three months at that point, a quarter of the way through a year-long grant with the U.S. Fulbright Commission to study at a state archive in Modena, located in the central part of the peninsula, in the long, flat plains of the Pianura Padana, the Po River valley, the Italian Midwest. I was staying outside the city proper in a neighborhood bisected by train tracks—the ones passenger trains took to travel south to Bologna, Florence, and Rome. On one side of the tracks was the industrial area, devoted to metal factories and parts development for the high-end Italian sports car manufacturers that call Modena home—Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Pagani. On the other side of the tracks, industry immediately gave way to countryside; to fields and vines cultivated to produce grape must and, eventually, balsamic vinegar, Modena’s most famous culinary export.

Next to the tracks, so close that its foundations rattled whenever a train rolled past, was a rundown and almost entirely abandoned Baroque church the size of a basilica. Neighboring the church was a monastery, occupied by the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, an obscure order started in late nineteenth-century France by Venerable Fr. Léon Dehon, whose cause for canonization was championed by Pope Francis. On the opposite side of the church was the monastery guest

house, where the Dehonians hosted me and three engineering students attending university in town, a ministry they established to offer affordable and Christ-centered housing opportunities in the midst of COVID. It’s an odd thing to go to sleep knowing your bed shares a wall with a basilica, to know that you’re so close to a place where people, for centuries, worshipped and prayed and were buried. The church was now rarely used (the monks couldn’t afford the upkeep and the Eucharist was kept in repose in a much smaller chapel in the monastery itself), but it was still something we contended with regularly. The laundry facilities, for instance, were kept on the monastery side; I viscerally remember how odd it felt every time carting my tub of dirty clothes through the church, stepping over tombs of Modenese noblemen and memorials to long-dead patrons of long-dimmed stainedglass windows to get to the washer and dryer.

But it was, without a doubt, the most serene place I ever lived. In the springtime, I would wake up right before dawn for early morning Mass and see the sun rise over the mist of the dew-kissed fields, the air warm with the smell of soil and grass, the world called back from darkness by the very person whose transubstantiation I was witnessing right in front of me.

This was the seventh and last year of my graduate studies, an experience which had just about broken me. I had no idea what the future held and just enough

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self-knowledge to realize I’d spent so much time throwing myself into my work that I’d forgotten the things that actually mattered—the serious discernment of my state of life among them. My spiritual director at the time recommended I take the Spiritual Exercises, the intense discernment retreat composed by St. Ignatius, to offer thanksgiving to God for my time studying and to ask him for clarity in the direction of my life. Fortunately, the Institute of the Incarnate Word—who’d I encountered while working as an adjunct at the Mount—were hosting a week-long version of the Exercises in their seminary in Montefiascone, outside of Rome, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve of that year.

I went.

I once heard a priest tell me that no one comes out of the Spiritual Exercises without hearing something clear from God, and that was certainly true for me. But to cultivate the attention the Exercises require takes detachment from the world and especially interior silence, which means it’s a given that you can’t touch your phone.

This was particularly painful for me as I was waiting on a very important email: months earlier, I’d been told that Pope Francis opened a limited number of tickets to the annual New Years’ Day papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to international pilgrims. I’d applied extremely last minute to get a ticket and knew there was no way I’d get one, but the possibility lingered in the back of my mind with such force that I knew as soon as I opened my phone on the last day of the retreat that there would be no message; that all of it would simply have been a distraction keeping me from prayer. On the final day, the afternoon of December 31, I braced myself for disappointment, finally checked my email, and saw a message from the pilgrim’s office at the North American College in Rome, sent that morning. The Vatican had a very limited number of tickets left for the Mass the next day because a large group had dropped out at the last minute. Would I be interested in attending?

So, on the morning of January 1, 2022, in the early hours of the Feast of Mary, Mother of God, I found myself wearing my required FPP2 mask, crushed up against the side of a wooden barrier, being eyed suspiciously by Swiss guards with holstered pistols, as Pope Francis passed by me so closely that I could see the color of his eyes.

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And he was so small.

It’s a trite observation, but it’s true: when you spend years of your life seeing someone on television, on the covers of magazines and journals, on movie theater screens and in YouTube videos, when you read his books and hear people debate, endlessly, the ins and outs of his thought, you forget that person is real. That he has, for instance, a height, a size relative to your own.

And Pope Francis was significantly shorter than I was.

He was a man, an old man. Even at that time, it was clear he was having trouble breathing and even walking. He was real. He was right in front of me. And he was tiny.

Two years later, I’d have a similar experience about a hundred feet below that spot. I was in Rome with my mother on a spring break pilgrimage, and we walked down deep into the subterranean area beneath the basilica, where Vatican archeologists worked in dark, humid conditions to unearth the neighborhood around the Circus Vaticanus which the first pope would’ve been

on the basis of love for one’s own land, one’s own people, one’s own cultural roots. I cannot truly encounter another unless I stand on firm foundations, for it is on the basis of these that I can accept the gift the other brings and in turn offer an authentic gift of my own. I can welcome others who are different, and value the unique contribution they have to make, only if I am firmly rooted in my own people and culture.

Everyone loves and cares for his or her native land and village, just as they love and care for their home and are personally responsible for its upkeep. The common good likewise requires that we protect and love our native land.

marched through on his way to die. In one of the last rooms, a red light illuminates what the tour guide told us is a shin bone, venerated for almost 2000 years, which DNA testing and bone analysis has confirmed belonged to someone raised along the Sea of Galilee.

And it was just a shin.

St. Peter’s shin.

He too was a man. He had been alive, like me.

He lived on this earth, this same earth, and touched the body of Christ.

He was real, just as Pope Francis was real.

So much of Pope Francis’s thought dealt with the problem of the local versus the universal. In Fratelli Tutti, he remarks:

To be committed to the common good around us means to see others, no matter where they are or where they’re from, with the same sort of love and the same sort of immanent reality that we see in our local land. To be members of the Catholic Church means that we are called to love the parish in Ghana or the basilica in Poland or the pilgrim in Spain or the beggar in Rome, in Mexico City, in Russia, in China, in Ukraine with the same love that we have for our home parish, with the same eyes that see that this person—because there is never truly a faceless group of people, but only persons, individually crafted beings made in the image and likeness of Christ for whom Christ would have made this beautiful world, that beautiful land in Modena, from nothing, and would have suffered and died on the cross for, over and over and over again, enduring his agony and death only for that person. This person has a height and a shin and a physical reality in front of you, just as Pope Francis and St. Peter did and just as Christ does, and that physical reality is good because God has made that person good, and we are called to love that person because that person bears and reflects in some special, irreplaceable, unrepeatable way, the face of Christ.

I may have been an arm’s length away from Pope Francis, but Pope Francis was, if nothing else, a man who didn’t want to keep the world at arm’s length.

Neither was St. Peter. Neither was Christ. Neither should we.

Just as there can be no dialogue with “others” without a sense of our own identity, so there can be no openness between peoples except

Pope Francis at an arm’s length! Photo by John-Paul Heil, Ph. D.

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Dominic Wilkinson

INTERVIEW: Zachary DeCarlo on Cabrini

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On March 21st, Mount St. Mary’s alumnus and movie producer Zachary DeCarlo, C’82, returned to his alma mater and hosted a screening of the award-winning film Cabrini. A month later, he granted the Brownson Record an interview, sharing tales from his time at the Mount and the production of the film.

Mr. DeCarlo, could you please give a brief introduction about yourself to the Brownson Record?

As regards to Mount St. Mary’s, I’m an old guy. I went to Mount St. Mary’s in September of 1978 and I graduated in May of 1982 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, with a minor in fine arts and psychology. I absolutely loved my time at the Mount.

I made lifelong friends that to this day are some of my closest friends, and many of us have spouses that went to the Mount. My wife is one of them. We began dating long after the Mount, 10 years after the Mount, but married and raised three children. Again, I owe that to the Mount. I owe the love of my life to the Mount, so it was a very special place, and is a very special place to me. For instance, to come back to the Mount a few weeks ago to do the screening was very special to me.

So after the Mount I went back home into Reading, Pennsylvania and worked my way into a corporate career of technology services. I started out in the business of selling voice systems, and then that went into voice data which then migrated into technology services. I spent 30 plus years doing that. I came out of that in 2016 and started a consulting practice in that arena.

In 2020, in the heart of COVID, the executive producer Eustace Wolfington, who is my father-in-law, called me into his office and sat me down and said “I’m going to do this movie, and you’re Italian and I need a good Italian on my team”. I said “What does that mean?” I said “Yes, I’d love to help.” And so the rest is history. It’s been a journey now for some almost five years with the reproduction and fundraising because we are a full 501c3, so everything we do is with the momentum to raise funds for the benefit of charity, including paying the debt of the movie.

My journey continues, our mission, her mission, Mother Cabrini’s mission, keeps us quite busy, and that mission has taken off into an interesting path.

What happened in March of last year, a local Catholic Philadelphia philanthropy foundation whose mission it is to give Catholic education in the archdiocese, came to us and said, “We love the movie. We’d like every high school student in the archdiocese to see this movie”. And they brought another foundation along with them, so the two foundations funded, taking almost 20,000 students to a theater over a course of a number of days last March, busing them to and fro.

That just was an amazing, eye-opening event, and so we realized that we needed to do that at scale across the country, and so that’s one of the things I’ve been working on since then and we’ve been to a number of different dioceses.

How did you avoid it being marked as just a religious film? How did you navigate not trying to present it as simply that?

Well, it was a very conscious decision on the part of the executive producer, Eustace Wolfington. He wanted to make a universal film, a film that touches everyone, a film that appeals to everyone. There’s a film called Gandhi, played by the great Ben Kingsley who won an Oscar for his role as Gandhi. He didn’t have to be a Hindu to appreciate the man or the movie.

That was our mission: to make this movie across the board universal, so we tested our thinking in front of Muslim audiences and Hindu audiences and Hebrew audiences and agnostics and atheists and Catholics and Protestants, of all walks and so forth, different demographics, ages, genders, and political affiliations.

It has a uniquely similar reaction by everyone because the goal was to not preach, not to throw it in your face that it’s a Catholic woman. This is an amazing entrepreneur – tenacious, audacious, with love in her heart and soul for the Sacred Heart, her love of humanity – who happened to be a nun.

There’s 2 percent of the contrarian view that said, “We didn’t pray enough,” and “There weren’t enough signs of the cross,” and “There wasn’t enough of her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” 2 percent, but the other 98 percent of those of us that believe said, “Listen,

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the Holy Father saw it, and he liked it, so I think that puts a stamp to it.” But most importantly, the rest of the non-Catholic world has embraced it because it is a humanitarian story. We like to say, Dominic, her life is a homily. There is a poem by Edgar Guest, and it goes like this:

I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I’d rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.

The eye’s a better pupil and more willing than the ear, Fine counsel is confusing, but example’s always clear; And best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds, For to see good put in action is what everybody needs.

I soon can learn to do it if you’ll let me see it done; I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run.

And the lecture you deliver may be very wise and true, But I’d rather get my lessons by observing what you do; For I might misunderstand you and the high advise you give, But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.

There’s a business side that would say, “No one would see it.” No one would go to see it because there wouldn’t be anybody that would distribute it. Our mission is not only to get a hundred million eyes to see it, but our mission is to impact lives so that those lives can impact the world that they live in. So that might mean filling the pews, it might mean more service focused in your daily life, it might mean a vocation, it might mean more volunteerism, so if we can do those things by this vehicle then we’re doing well.

Some themes in this film are obvious to the viewer, such as resilience through prejudice and leadership.

From what you have seen, what elements of the film are viewers likely to miss?

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I could probably have an hour-long conversation with you on that, but the easiest one is that we have her look at the camera three times. The first time she looks at the camera is when she’s walking with her sisters in a very dark section of Five Points. She turns around and looks at the camera and says, “See everyone, this is who we came to serve.” The historical fact of that is that they were from Northern Italy and that demographic was not familiar with the poverty that existed in Southern Italy and certainly were not familiar with the poverty that they experienced when they got to the ghettos at Five Points. So these women who happened to wear veils were very appalled and scared, so we look right in the camera and tell them, “See everyone, everyone counts, this is who we came to serve.”

Another classic is in the boardroom, where she’s raising the idea to get the hospital. Behind her on the wall is a picture in a round frame of the father of our country, George Washington, our first president, and of course she is the first American saint. As the camera pans back, the reflection on the shiny table top is her reflection with the halo of the frame of the Washington portrait behind her. Some folks catch it… very intentionally done.

Speaking of other themes, especially in this more politically turbulent time, how did you navigate the more progressive themes such as women leadership and immigration with a potentially more conservative, Catholic audience?

So, you used a great word, we absolutely focus on women leadership because the other word with the “E” (empowerment) has political tones to it, it was not about being political. She was absolutely a pantheon of women’s leadership, every hospital she opened, every orphanage she opened, every school she opened, she put women in charge of those. Again, it was a great sign that women could indeed be leaders, that doesn’t mean you have to be politically active, or political activists.

Today we are in the midst of a story every day, story after story of immigration. Well, she is the patron saint for all immigrants across the globe. We like to say she was about the immigrant, not about the immigration,

not about the policy, because there really weren’t those policies back in the late ninteenth century. What mattered to her was the care for the individual at the time she encountered them, so care for the immigrant.

That’s very timely, it’s timely that we’re talking about healthcare in today’s world where healthcare is such an issue, we’re talking about education being such an issue today. Those tenets that she brought to education, healthcare, leadership, immigrants, they are all very timely conversation topics.

In 1973, Martin Scorcese and Loretta Young wanted to make this movie and they didn’t get it done. In the 50’s Sophia Loren and her husband Carlo Ponti wanted to make this movie and they didn’t get it done. Why were industry folks not able to get it done, but we’re not film makers and we did get it done? We truly believe that God Himself wanted the movie to be made at this time, for this time, so that people in this time could witness this story. At least that’s what helps us sleep at night.

How did the production of the film attempt to make it authentically Italian?

One of Eustace’s concepts was that it had to be authentic.

It had to be a period piece that was authentic and real, that looked great and sounded great. Our music is fantastic. In the movie our score, our composition, our opera, and our pop music they wrote is fantastic. The reality is that a third of what is going on was in the spoken Italian language, so 35% of our dialogue is in Italian to make it authentic. Everyone but one actor that speaks Italian in our film is Italian and we had to bring them in from Italy which was also a Herculean effort during COVID. In your panel at the screening at the Mount, you mentioned 10 days filming in Rome. Could you explain more about that and how that experience was?

I wasn’t blessed enough to make the trip in December of ‘21, but I will tell you that Rome was experiencing a number of weeks of bad weather prior to that. Shooting began on December 5th, it was the first day without rain. They wrapped on the 20th, and it was the last day of nice weather, and then it began to rain again. Mother Cabrini gave us a wink and kept Rome dry for those two weeks.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Gavin Hamrick

Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

In the weeks following our Lord’s glorious Resurrection on Easter Sunday, it starts to become clear that something new is possible: forgiveness. The Apostles had witnessed the humiliating death of their God, the man they followed, and yet few stuck around to see things through, and all of them fell short in promises they made to Him whom they called Lord. By Divine Mercy Sunday, we find them fearfully locked away in the upper room. Yet the Resurrected Jesus, when He first appears, does not condemn them. Instead, He greets them with a simple, transformative blessing: “Peace be with you” (John 20:19).

At a time when they least deserve it, Christ offers His disciples the peace of His forgiveness. Without it, the Apostles would have every reason to remain locked in that room, afraid and ashamed until death. But now, a new way of living has become possible, and with it a new law: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:23).

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

But there were many then, and there are many today, scandalized by the mere possibility of that forgiveness. Some, like French existentialist Albert Camus, encourage man to simply make his peace with the absurdity of human existence—an existence where man is forced to endure suffering without purpose or redemption. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” he wrote.

Others react with anger and spite, living in rebellion. Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, confronted with the suffering of innocent children, understandably lashes out: Is there in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive? I don’t want harmony, for love of mankind I don’t want it.

I want to remain with unrequited suffering. I’d

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rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation, even if I am wrong…

It’s not that I don’t accept God, Aloysha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket.

These men have an acute sense of the suffering of the world, a moral sensitivity we might even consider admirable. But they close the door to forgiveness, for others, and most importantly, for themselves.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Camus and Ivan’s lamentations place the blame outward, whether on God, others, or apparent absurdity of the world. Lost is the personal reality of sin, evil, and suffering. Sin is not a theological idea, but a lived reality we all participate in. Without starting from a place of recognizing our own evil, we resign ourselves like Sisyphus to the meaningless rolling of the boulder up a mountain of our own making.

Camus, Ivan, and their modern successors reject the possibility of forgiveness when they critique the nature of reality without first acknowledging their own sin. Their omission not only weakens their critique but perpetuates the evil and suffering they ostensibly lament by closing the door to the only thing that can bring real peace: the grace and forgiveness of God which makes another way of living possible. Sisyphus does not need to trick himself into being happy, lash out at the divine, tremble in fear, or bitterly persist in rebellion against reality. He simply needs to ask forgiveness for himself.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

But asking for that forgiveness is hard, even for the Christian. “Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee,” St. Augustine famously wrote in his Confessions.

Pain is continence—knowing good as you persist in evil.

Ignorance ought to be considered its own punishment, but the psychic torment of knowing the truth and still falling short is a greater pain. “Every disordered soul is

its own punishment,” wrote that most penitential father of the Church.

The Christian has started to accept the connection between suffering and his need for forgiveness. But to offer up or endure external suffering, the kind called out by Camus and Ivan, is one thing. To find meaning in the suffering he has learned he inflicts on himself is quite another. Like some sort of perpetual motion machine, can suffering even be meritorious if it is the product of one’s own fault?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Similarly, the sinner may be struck with fear in the face of a promise that all can be made right in him.

He may tell himself he is afraid because he worries restoration is not possible or such a transformation is an insult to his reason and experience. Or he may fear because he knows what such a promise will mean—pain, self-denial, sacrifice, humiliation, etc. He knows to be with God in Heaven is to be made perfect, so rather than surrender himself to the being made, he rationalizes his rejection with despair. He may even entertain himself with the idea that his despair is a sign of his penitence, of his moral sophistication and sensitivity.

While it is beyond this author’s ability to probe the depths of the soul, it seems worth noting that accepting that “the unexamined life is not worth living” is not enough, lest one merely become a more theologically sophisticated Camus or Ivan. The painful observation of one’s own pathologies and evil must lead one to seek out forgiveness. No amount of introspection will suf-

fice; we must not “refuse to be treated out of wickedness” like Dostoevsky’s underground man. We must act.

We must confess. We must seek the peace of Christ’s forgiveness continually—not as an abstract spiritualism but in a frequent encounter with him in the sacrament.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

In the parable of the prodigal son, after the lost sheep squanders his father’s money, a severe famine hits, leaving him in destitution. Many of us would be tempted to lash out against the famine and the God that would allow nature to, seemingly without reason, strike the earth. Others of us would resign in despair to living among the swine, reasoning we could never once again be restored as our father’s son. Yet, dying from hunger, the lost son takes the concrete decision to respond to suffering by returning home, in the hope of his father’s peace and forgiveness. Let us forever seek to do the same and let us forever be prepared to welcome our neighbor in kind.

‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found’ (Luke 15:21-24).

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Holy Rus by Mikhail Nesterov

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Jack Daly

Pope Francis: A Requiem 14

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His Holiness, Pope Francis, the 266th Bishop of Rome, head of the Body of Christ on earth, left this world for the next this Easter Monday. His passing concludes a pontificate of joy and determination, unstained by an age which sought to make controversy out of everything.

On March 13, 2013, the world came to know a bespectacled Argentinian on a balcony in Rome. He was a smiling white pillar, almost shy amidst the red and gold of an Italian dusk. Jorge Bergoglio became the first of the name “Francis” to occupy the chair of Peter and the first New World prelate to do so, as well. The Church was eager to get to know him, and within the coming months we received an indelible impression of his humility, his love of poverty, and his care for the troubles and suffering of his people. Catholic schoolchildren were read stories like Pope Francis Takes the Bus, and there was no population of the faithful that he did not address with special attention. Most famously, the pontiff declined to live in the typical papal apartments, insisting that the simpler atmosphere of the guest house, the Domus Sanctae Marthae, was better suited to the spirit of his office.

By 2015, these initial themes were crystalized with his second encyclical, Laudato Si’, a landmark work of the Church’s social teaching within the twenty-first century context of systemic injustice and wide-ranging ecological crises.

Pope Francis will perhaps be chiefly remembered as a champion of the poor and a symbol of the universal Church’s globalization. As the first pope to come from the Western hemisphere, he elevated over one hundred cardinal-electors to the college, including many from countries which previously lacked representation. The pontiff made countless visits to unfrequented parts of the world, even to the most distant and downtrodden parts of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. The first pope from Latin America, he was a symbol of regions where the Church is still young and growing; growing despite the social crosses of poverty and violence. He became the first pontiff to visit Iraq in 2021, standing in the exact spot in which the terrorist group ISIS had vowed to kill him years prior.

His pontificate was marked by an indisputable indefatigability. He frequently gathered the people of the earth to himself through his three World Meetings

of Families and three World Youth Days. Never was his flock too much for him, and never did he let the great challenges of our time exhaust him. Rather, he was the father the world needed. The last twelve years have produced countless pictures of him embracing the young and destitute across the globe in his arms. The great energy and breadth of his heart allowed him to address the ecological, economic, and political needs of the Church even unto death. He was a great imitator of the care shown for “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40) that Christ exemplified in His earthly ministry.

In his most recent encyclical Dilexit Nos, promulgated in October of last year, the Holy Father elucidated for the faithful the importance of the Heart of Christ and our devotion to It. True to his style, the letter is deeply human. He reminds us that our “worship of Christ’s person is undivided, inseparably embracing both his divine and his human natures” (68). He picks up this theme of unity later, reminding us that we must stand in solidarity with the least of our brothers and sisters, asking “would it please the heart that so loved us, if we were to bask in a private religious experience while ignoring its implications for the society in which we live?” (205).

Here his imitation of Christ, and Christian hunger for the hearts of the downtrodden, was on full display.

In this path, the pope followed closely in the footsteps of his patron, St. Francis. The saint is perhaps most popularly remembered for his connection to the natural world, an affinity reflected in the pope’s many exhortations to care for the created world, which found their culmination in Laudato Si’. However, both of their strongest passions were for the poor and suffering, in whom they saw the face of Christ.

Last November, on the World Day of the Poor, he urged us to a greater commitment to social justice, saying, “[O]ur faith should lead us to open our eyes to the sufferings of the world and the misfortunes of the poor, and so exercise the very compassion of Jesus Christ.” May we, inspired by his example, strive to become a more Franciscan Church, embracing poverty and bringing justice and care to a world which needs it now more desperately than ever.

Although the years he gave us were defined by joy, he left us thirsting for peace. The Holy Father’s fi-

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nal appearance on Easter Sunday was water mixed with gall. Finding only enough strength to wave, the pope’s address was delivered by an aide to the crowd, jubilant on their shepherd’s behalf. The brief message called for peace in Gaza and Ukraine—an expression of his concern for the physical wellbeing of the world’s most vulnerable populations, even as his own had declined. It was a touch of Good Friday on the day of our Lord’s Resurrection; a mixing of the two, needed in a world where it is so easy to forget and painful to remember. If he seemed troubled at all, it was not by the failing health of his body but by the fact that the father was still unable to shield his most vulnerable children. Yet in that last care he took, he joined human and divine suffering and glory. Like the two men he strove to imitate, he showed us his wounds, wounds which were first and foremost the injustices and violence endured by his forgotten members in body and soul.

For a brief time, we have been orphaned. Even though this period of vacancy is smooth thanks to the governance of the bishops and the direction of heaven, the Church on earth still experiences a bewildering feeling of headlessness. It is a reminder of the essential

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role that Christ’s vicar plays, and the unity that only he can bring. It is paradoxical that we should grieve him while the words of the Gospel, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5) still resound in our minds—in a year of Jubilee, no less. But this union of joy and grief is characteristic of the lives of the faithful on earth. These occasions let us peek into the mystery of Him who died and so conquered death.

As many of our Mount community move on this spring, whether as university graduates or as deacons preparing for the priesthood, we are each visited by a similar mix of emotions. In this great time of change in our lives and in the Church, we must pray for the Cardinals and for the repose of our Holy Father’s soul, yet may we be assured that his pastoral care is not bound only to this side of eternity.

Poetry Whispers of the Eucharist John Singleton

Eat my flesh and drink my blood A teaching hard to hold Like Canaan’s curse from Noah’s flood To Abrahamic fold

Fr. Patrick in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, photo by Brett Snow, C‘22

To sacrifice the innocent Tempts every civil start Sin crouches at the filament Of every human heart Civilizations fall At the sounding of a song That childless children’s call Unheeded by the strong Some strange defense is cast In the breaking of the bread Lifting up the small and last Raising souls amidst the dead

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Emma Edwards

A Lost Art The academic year of 2021-2022 was my sophomore year of undergraduate studies at the Mount. During this time, our guide and protector at the University was taken down from her perch and regilded in glorious gold.

I remember this year vividly; it was a time of turmoil, sorrow, and angst—not just for me, but for everyone on the university campus. Many of the faithful attributed this strange atmosphere to our missing Mother. Even those who were unfamiliar with Mary’s significance to the Church were taken aback by her disappearance. It was common to hear students, faculty, administrators, and visitors alike expressing, “It’s so strange without her here,” regardless of their religious background. I share this not to suggest a narrative of idolatry but to highlight how very attractive our Mother is. There is something powerful about a beautiful woman, especially a beautiful mother. Her presence was profoundly missed that year.

When she finally returned, there was a grand celebration.

Beauty is a quality I have consistently aimed to incorporate into everything I do. I graduated in May 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education and a minor in Music. My preferred medium is ceramics, an art form that is often messy and raw. Throughout my studies, I frequently found inspiration in Mary. Her authentic beauty touched my heart, and her experiences provided solace for my own. In her presence, I reflected on themes of sacrifice, sorrow, and joy as I created tirelessly.

The Pietà is a work that embodies true beauty for me. A replica of Michelangelo’s famous masterpiece is nestled along a path at the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. This piece is simply stunning. In a moment filled with agony, toil, demise, and disappointment, Mary remains trusting in both her Maker and her Son. She holds Him with love, accepting His purpose and will.

We need art; even more, we need sacred art. We could not understand the gravity of this moment between Mother and Son fully without a visual depiction. This is how our minds naturally comprehend information.

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Unfortunately, beauty has slowly become a lost art. Over time, we have seen buildings arise that do not please the eye. Recent trends have led homes to shift from being well-decorated to merely functional. The arts are often defunded, leaving developing minds with little space to practice creativity freely. The list of concerns could extend for pages in every aspect of human life.

There is something important missing. If we do not practice creating beauty visually, we will not be able to embody it in our character and soul. Furthermore, if our youth do not learn and appreciate its value, we are unlikely to see much beauty in the future. The practice of making beautiful things brings us closer to the Creator.

It is through the time spent on these creations that we understand the intricacies of detailed work.

When an artist creates something visually stunning, it often draws the attention of many others. For example, Michelangelo’s Pietà features intricate details such as pronounced ribs, gentle expressions, wrinkles, and individual strands of hair. This level of craftsmanship leaves viewers in awe, making the figures seem so lifelike that one wonders how they do not breathe. It is truly captivating, much like our golden Mother perched on our mountain, which attracts visitors from around the world.

People come to admire the faces that embody the purest of beings.

We are naturally drawn to raw beauty. Ignoring it can lead to a decay in our hearts, making us feel hardened, dark, and bitter. In contrast, engaging with beauty brings us peace, comfort, and a sense of balance, which is especially important in the ceramic medium. The arts have always served as a means to express human emotions, both past and present. Today, they act as valuable tools for rest and healing. Since we were created in the image and likeness of the original Creator, it is not surprising that participating in creative acts brings us a sense of calmness.

Embrace the pursuit of visual beauty. Its absence, as seen in the case of our Mother, can be profoundly felt.

Emma Edwards

Photo by Leah Kanik, ‘27

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“Never was his flock too much for him, and never did he let the great challenges of our time exhaust him. Rather, he was the father the world needed.” ~ Jack Daly, Pope Francis: A Requiem

Photo of the dome of the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception entitled Emitte Spiritum Tuum by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.