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Episode Description
Marking 10 years since the death of Cardinal Francis George, we speak with his biographer Michael Heinlein about his rich life and legacy and how this ever so consequential archbishop almost never came to be. Heinlein reminds us of the late cardinal’s take on “simply Catholicism,” which rejects exhausting political labels.
Msgr. Roger Landry also joins us to share his emotional testimony witnessing Catholic love and mercy at a leper colony in Vietnam. Representing the Pontifical Mission Society in the US, he not only brought essentials for those suffering, but also Jesus alive in the Eucharist. He also helps us prepare for the Triduum as Easter approaches within this Jubilee of Hope.
Bios
Michael R. Heinlein is an editor, writer, teacher, and theologian. He is the editor of Our Sunday Visitor’s SimplyCatholic.com and a regular contributor to OSV news and periodicals. He is the author of numerous books, including Glorifying Christ: The Life of Cardinal Francis E. George, O.M.I, Black Catholics on the Road to Sainthood, and the Teeny Tiny Theology children’s series. An experienced parish minister and high school teacher, he has a degree in theology from The Catholic University of America in Washington DC, and is the former editor of The Catholic Answer Magazine and Simply Catholic. In his spare time he enjoys delving into genealogical research. His greatest treasures are his faith, and his role is as a husband to his wife, Gretchen, and father to their three children.
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. Father Landry traversed the full 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024 and joined the historic Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, an event which coincided with his 25th year in the priesthood. He was recently appointed the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 313 Transcript
| Mary | Welcome to Conversations with Consequences here on EWTN Radio. I'm your host, Mary Fiorito. |
| Betsy | And I'm Betsy Fentress. |
| Mary | And today, we are remembering the life of Cardinal Francis George. As we mark the ten year anniversary of his death, we're grateful to have with us this morning his biographer, Michael Heinlein, to discuss his legacy as chronicled in the book Glorifying Christ the Life of Cardinal Francis George. Welcome, Michael. |
| Michael Heinlein | Hello. Thanks for having me. |
| Mary | Ten years. It's hard to believe that, isn't it? I remember the funeral and the wake like it was yesterday. |
| Michael Heinlein | Yeah. It's really hard to believe there's been so much that's happened in the life of the church nationally and internationally in those ten years. And I can't tell you how many times or you probably know experience that just as much as me, but how many times I thought, what would Cardinal George have to say? |
| Mary | Right. Well, and then locally, too, in Chicago, since his passing, tremendous changes within the archdiocese and dozens and dozens of parishes closed. And, you know, it's a very different church in the one he left for us, for sure. And listeners, for those of you who aren't aware, I was Cardinal George's primary executive assistant for many, many years at the Archdiocese of Chicago. I worked for him as his vice chancellor and then was promoted to the role of executive assistant. So Michael and I have known each other quite a long time since he began to work on the biography. And I myself had the great privilege of working with Cardinal George. So, you know, it can be argued and even though, of course, we knew and loved him and were prejudiced in that regard, that he was really one of the most consequential archbishops of the past century. And yet his vocation almost was halted from the very beginning. Can you tell us a little bit about that, Michael? |
| Michael Heinlein | Yes, that's right. I mean, he's remembered as being the first native born archbishop of Chicago, but that was really, as I like to think of it, a line of divine poetry, because it was Chicago who rejected him from priesthood, although they accepted him into the high school seminary as a student because of his polio disability, which struck him in eighth grade, he was told that he could not be a priest in Chicago. Right. So in his own words, he thought about that for about a day and said, well, to heck with you guys. And he straight tried to find another route and God brought him to a religious congregation called the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Originally a French missionary order that's now global. And they accepted him and they write him to visit his family home in Chicago and said, If you can walk across the room, you can be an Oblate priest. |
| Mary | And of course, he could do that very easily. And the difference with the Oblates Seminary buildings and the Archdiocese of Chicago is that the Oblates had kind of a ranch style building, and so it was a lot easier for him to navigate, you know, going through the classrooms and the living areas and the dormitories. They were located in southern Illinois, but really that day, he he left his family for all intents and purposes. |
| Michael Heinlein | Yes, that's right. Is 5 hours away from home. And he was there for six years. And he had to learn, you know, how to relive his life because he was a very active young boy, playing often with the neighborhood kids, riding bikes through the through the city and taking the bus downtown through various activities and shenanigans and so on and so forth. He loved to play softball on the streets. He loved. |
| Mary | Baseball. He loved the Chicago Cubs. Yeah. |
| Michael Heinlein | He learned he had to learn how to relive life with crutches and with a disability right home. |
| Mary | And then with a very heavy leg brace on top of it. But I remember being at a presentation with him once when he was asked, in a way like the Pharisees, trying to catch catch Jesus, you know, off guard with one of their questions, a younger man said to him, You know, my pastor always says that there are two kinds of priests, the ones that want to help the poor, and then the ones who want to be bishops. And which one were you? And I remember he thought about it for a second. He wasn't angry with the question, but he said, you know, when I was 13 years old, I made two very conscious decisions. First, that I would never come back to Chicago because my order at the time did not return men to their home cities. And second, that I would never be a bishop, because at that time the religious sort of priests were not made bishops. And he said, Yet here I am, the bishop of the city that I was born in. So, you know, God can do all things right with those who cooperate with as well. But I remember just being so struck by that. He knew both those things were off the table, or at least he thought they were when he joined. |
| Betsy | Do you think that him not being an archdiocesan priest was an advantage As the head of the Chicago Diocese? |
| Michael Heinlein | Well, it certainly gave him a very unique background as an American bishop in general, because he didn't have the normal upbringing, so to speak, that an American bishop has in terms of their academic training. But their experience, most of them are experienced in chancery work. Well, he never had that because he wasn't religious. He did have experience in administration with his congregation. Provincial and later elected vicar general. But he he didn't have the the pedigree that most American bishops had. So he, in fact, as vicar general for 12 years of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, traveled the globe visiting dozens of countries, and he saw the church for what it really was outside of a very narrow scope of the United States. And he slept on dirt floors and was detained at borders and was shot at in parades. And he saw Catholicism for what it truly was in its fullness. So he brought that experience then to the three American dioceses he served as bishop. And lastly in Chicago. And I think that that was a great experience and a very unique experience that he could bring. |
| Mary | And then, of course, he didn't have any particular friendships with, like his classmates from the seminary, you know. And so I think when you're coming in to be archbishop, he was from Chicago, He grew up in Chicago. So he certainly knew the neighborhoods and the parishes and sort of the way of life here. But yet he could be, you know, equally friends with all of the priests who were under him because he wouldn't have had any of those experiences of going to school with them and being ordained with them, etc., etc.. So he could not be accused of the favoritism. I think that you sometimes see in those kind of situations. Well, Michael, as you mentioned, he was stationed in three different diocese in the United States. First, he was in Yakima, Washington, which is a very kind of rural diocese, a lot of migrant workers, and then was made the arch bishop of Portland, Oregon, where he stayed for only nine months before he was named to Chicago. How unusual is that that someone would remain in a in a major city like Portland for less than a year? |
| Michael Heinlein | Pretty unusual. He had chosen the grave he'd be buried in. He certainly wasn't expecting the move whatsoever. I think that, you know, of course, it was precipitated by the the untimely death of Chicago's Cardinal Joseph Bernadine, who died in his late sixties. So it wasn't on the radar screen that Francis George might be moved along somewhere else, but he was in Portland already at the time Cardinal Bernadine died. And as as the process moved along of identifying candidates, his name was at the top of the list internally. But not many people in the media, for instance, expected that Cardinal Bernardin would be replaced by Francis George. |
| Mary | Right. And I think just that made a lot of sense because he'd only been in Portland for nine months and and his name just wasn't very well known, you know, in the same way that some other kind of bigger names in the church would have been at the time. And I do remember that The Chicago Tribune, this was back when everybody read printed papers for the most part, had ten different front pages marked up for the different, you know, alleged candidates for archbishop. And his was number ten. And but it did it did leak out to one reporter as as I think you learned when you wrote your biography. Can you tell us a little bit about that? |
| Michael Heinlein | Yeah, there was a CBS reporter in Chicago, Jay Levine, who caught wind that Francis George was going to be the first native born archbishop of the Windy City. And so he went he went with that coverage, went live with it. And he I think quite a lot of flack for it because believed him and thought it was a pipe dream. But he ended up being right. And the CBS cameras were there to catch him getting off the plane at O'Hare Airport. |
| Mary | And it was a great moment. |
| Betsy | He recounts that in the documentary that's on the formed app about Cardinal George, which both of you were in, I might add. And really, I really enjoyed seeing that. I wanted to ask what makes him such a consequential cardinal? |
| Michael Heinlein | Well, I think going back to his experiences, broad experience in the church, in administration, but traveling globally and seeing the reality of the church in so many dozens of countries, I think that formed him. But then also his own personal experience of suffering can't be discounted here, because I think that that gave him a heart for other people and really enabled him to be a phenomenal pastor, which was something that was often not caught on the media circuit, of course, But he had a unique combination of skills also throw in there to his his incredible intellect. He had two earned doctorates, one in philosophy and one in theology. And so he was able to kind of weave all this together in in such a unique way that he was a man whose skills were sought after by many in the church. And so you look at that. But then you also have to consider, too, that this was a man who never thought he would be a bishop, as Mary said earlier. So he didn't have any careerism about him. He just wanted to serve. And that came across in the way he exercised his ministry. He was one of a kind in so many ways. He was really a diamond in the rough. |
| Mary | And that's one thing, I think just because he was so down to earth that people don't realize how incredibly gifted he was intellectually. And, you know, when he was at Cambridge for a while, he, you know, moved with very, very distinguished scholars at Harvard. And, you know, at Princeton and had many friends who worked in academia, who all recognized his brilliance. And he could speak five languages fluently. You know, I remember he told me once that when he would have his meetings with Saint John Paul the second, they often spoke to each other in French because it was the cardinal's best foreign language and it was also John Paul's best foreign language. And so that's that's how he could he could seamlessly move from one language to another without even a moment's hesitation. But, you know, he he could also tell you that the baseball statistics from the latest, you know, the latest Cubs opener or something like that, it was he was just very broad in the many things that he was interested in and could speak intelligently about. |
| Betsy | I wanted to ask you, but I was just going to add follow up about the John Paul, the second friendship. |
| Michael Heinlein | Was John Paul, of course, who had named him the cardinal archbishop of Chicago. He had been someone that Cardinal George admired and got to see very closely from the time of his election because Cardinal George was vicar general of this congregation living in Rome at the time John Paul was elected. And so I found many times that he was writing in those those early days of the pontificate, of how much he admired Cardinal, of whatever Pope John Paul. The second and I think he had met him on a visit to Poland previously as a delegation for his congregation. So, John Paul, the second was certainly someone who he saw as a great model, as a as someone to follow in the footsteps of. I will never forget. There was a CNN documentary, and I think it was there was a clip of it in the documentary you just mentioned a bit ago, Betsy. Cardinal George was interviewed by CNN after the funeral of John Paul, the second. And Cardinal George was recounting how John Paul, the second's body, was brought in to Saint Peter's Basilica following the funeral mass. And as was the custom, when the pope was alive, the cardinals, all one by one, started to remove their red kettles in honor of the Holy Father, even though he was deceased. And as Cardinal George is recounting this, he broke down into tears, which is something, Mary, he never did. Right. |
| Mary | Rarely. Rarely. |
| Michael Heinlein | Yeah. So I think that really spoke of the depth of the great love, respect and admiration he had for John Paul the second. |
| Mary | Well, they were peers in many ways. And of course, he was made a bishop by John Paul the second. But they sort of, for lack of a better phrase, came up in the church together. So, you know, they had had all this personal interaction and I think a genuine admiration, mutual admiration and friendship. And I know he Cardinal George had always said to me that there will never be an American pope because it simply would consolidate too much of the world's power. You know, in one particular country. But a lot of commentators said if he had been a cardinal in another country, he very well would have been the Holy Father, or quite likely. |
| Betsy | That's really interesting. I wanted to ask you, Michael. In your book, you point out how he dismissed liberal Catholicism as an exhausted project that no longer gives life. Can you describe his simply Catholicism? |
| Michael Heinlein | Yeah. You know, from the first day he arrived in Chicago, he started talking about how Catholicism isn't liberal or conservative, that Catholicism is concerned with true and false. And he really hated the political labels that we put on the faith. And he worked hard to show that they shouldn't be labels that we apply. So he embodied what he articulated as simply Catholicism, which, you know, when we look at things through the lens of the American political spectrum, Catholicism takes from both sides, as it were. But really those sides only pick and choose from the truth and from the fullness of the faith as revealed to us by Jesus Christ. And that's what Cardinal George tried to exude in his own ministry as a bishop, but also tried to get across to the average people, the people in the pew, and how to live the faith and how to perceive the world. |
| Mary | And Michael, one of the things about him that's so striking is that young people loved him. Students loved him. High school students in particular. He always went to World Youth Day. He always went to the March for Life. And he felt that those were very important moments for the bishop in his role as bishop to be present to young people. Can you speak a little bit about that and the impact that he had on vocations, for example, in the archdiocese? |
| Michael Heinlein | Yes, I can remember a story I just heard recently. I wish I had heard it before I published the book or I would have included it. You speak of how he was always at World Youth Day, and one of his Oblate confreres recently told me of the Cologne World Youth Day in 2005, how he saw Cardinal George do something quite extraordinary in that all the American bishops, dozens of them who were there, had an air conditioned tent ready for them to go have their luncheon. And there were a group of kids from Chicago who saw Cardinal George and shouted out, Cardinal George, come here. And he went over and talked to them. And then he said, just a second. He went and grabbed his lunch and went sat outside on a curb with them. Now, Mary, you mentioned from the time he was in his forties, he had a very heavy aluminum brace on his right leg because of his polio disability. And he sat right there on a concrete curb with them in the heat where I guess it was very hot and he would just enjoy being with other people. And so I think it was that personal interaction that he was so good at that really enabled other people to see the genuineness of the faith and want to give more of themselves to the church's mission. So you speak of vocations. There are, you know, so many young men entering the seminary and their his time in Chicago and other dioceses wanting to send a man under his formation at Mundelein Seminary that at the time he was archbishop of Chicago. Mundelein, I believe, was the largest attended seminary in the United States. |
| Mary | Yeah. And then, of course, he was also respected and loved by his brother bishops in a really kind of unique way. And I think, you know, in that documentary, Betsy mentioned Archbishop Plastic, he spoke about how when he would get up, when Cardinal George would get up to do an intervention or two to speak at one of the bishops conference meetings, everybody put their pens down, everybody put down their phones or their laptops, whatever they had. And they listened because they knew what Francis George was speaking. It would be something they wanted to hear. |
| Michael Heinlein | Yeah, that's right. And when the bishops were faced with that really thorny, pesky issue of the HHS mandate. And it was Cardinal George that they turned to for leadership. And he had just had an operation and treatment for cancer, bladder cancer, where he had his bladder removed. And within a year they elected him president of the bishops conference and put quite a weight on his shoulders with that cross. But they needed him and they really turned to him as someone who could get them and shepherd them through that. That very pesky issue. |
| Betsy | Speaking of another pesky issue that nobody likes to talk about, he was really a leader in helping secure the zero tolerance policy for the clergy. How at the time that stance was widely supported, but how did he weather that storm and what kind of response did he have from fellow bishops? |
| Michael Heinlein | You know, that's a very interesting question because, you know, here we are 20 some years down the line and zero tolerance is being questioned quite a bit more often than it was accepted back then. He was certainly a leader in that. He felt that bishops couldn't govern if they didn't have that as the main option on the table back in 2002. But very interestingly, I found he also felt that bishops should have been held to the same standard. And we know that that didn't happen. So his voice wasn't heard on that. |
| Betsy | Exactly. |
| Michael Heinlein | But he he also, according to minutes, I found, of private meetings at the Vatican, he faced a lot of criticism internally at the highest levels of the Holy See for his advocacy for zero tolerance, particularly there was a cardinal prefect of the Congregation of Clergy at the time who really went to task on Cardinal George for his advocacy on behalf of enshrining zero tolerance in the law. And he did not back down, and he made it quite clear there would be bishops who would resign if that didn't happen and that there would be great scandal brought upon the church. So he he really knew that this was an issue that the church had to confront head on because it it cut at the very heart of the church's mission. |
| Mary | Well, to that point, Michael, when he was in Yakima, he once warned that the vow of celibacy, if it was half heartedly accepted, can create a void that would then be filled with a priest's own compulsions. Is that what you think he meant by that? Or can you expound on that a little bit? |
| Michael Heinlein | Well, I think he saw a lot of issues, both as provincial in his order and vicar general in his congregation, then as bishop. You know, Yeah. I mean, it's not just sex abuse, but it's all sorts of addictions that priests are confronted with when they don't really embrace the call to celibacy and really find that is a life giving vocation. So, yeah, I think to your point, that was he had that vision he could see. And then even later on, as I wrote in the book, there was a private memo he sent to a priest in Chicago who said, If any of you are living a double life, leave the priesthood for the good of the church. How many bishops would say that? Right. But he did. |
| Mary | And several came forward. Yeah. And he did really great. Yeah, he did it. And he did it in a very fraternal kind way. Just if this is too hard for you, if you're living a double life, you need to come and talk to me. And he wasn't condemnatory. He wasn't, you know, angry, but just come for the good of the church and let's help you find a path out. |
| Michael Heinlein | Because there is this inauthenticity in the priesthood was really causing the church to hemorrhage. |
| Betsy | He just sounds so approachable. And I loved in that documentary, everybody from the fire chief to people associated with the Chicago Bears. Can you speak to to that that people felt comfortable? Obviously, they did. Based on what Mary just said, coming to him about all kinds of issues. |
| Michael Heinlein | You know. Yeah, you hear the bishops all respected him and wanted to hear from him. You hear of the people who would be at a regular parish on a regular Sunday, who would stay and talk to him, and he would stay and talk to them until the last person left. He he as busy as he was in as many places as he had to be. He was always very present. And as Mary said, he could talk to people at their level and what they were interested in. And he he was a renaissance man so he could actually engage at some depth in any kind of topic with folks. And he had a phenomenal memory for remembering people and making connections and recalling names ten years down the line. And he, as I found in talking to so many people about him, he was so authentic and a man of such pure integrity that he was really the in my mind, like what senior and said as someone being fully alive in the faith. He was really a fully alive human being. And I think that that just came across to people in so many different ways. |
| Mary | You know, as you're saying that, Michael, I remember his press secretary and I used to joke a lot of the civic and social events in Chicago, at least at the time when he was archbishop, were either at the Union League Club or the university club. And the joke was he knew the name of every Mexican waiter and busboy in both of those clubs. He remembered them by name. He would greet them, and before he would leave one of these big events, he would he would thank the waiters and the busboys. They all loved him. And I think we saw a lot of that at his funeral, just scores and scores of sort of, as you might say, everyday people coming to to venerate his body, to pray for him. And with him. It was really beautiful. It was like the whole city sort of came together. |
| Michael Heinlein | Yes, absolutely. And I remember some of the images of the average everyday people reaching out to touch his hand in a casket or or touch their rosary to him or a handkerchief or something and try to make some sort of a third class relic or something. They really, truly did love him and the city poured out. I remember the Kennedy, you know, being shut down for him and then going. They peeled off and went past his home parish and the people lined through his old neighborhood along the streets. Pictures of him in home windows during that time and things. It was really remarkable. |
| Mary | Yeah. And so he's buried not at the bishops mausoleum where Cardinal Bernadine and his predecessors would be, but he chose to be buried next to his parents at All Saints Cemetery and Displays. Can you speak a little bit about why he might have made that decision? It was very unusual. |
| Michael Heinlein | It was. I mean, he, of course, being the native son of Chicago, the first one to be archbishop, I think he had some interest to be among his own people and certainly to be among his parents was was quite an honor, I think, for him. He loved his parents and wrote them weekly when he was traveling Globe as vicar general of the Oblates, which in those days was no easy task, of course. But here he is now lying among his own people. He's not locked up in the mausoleum that's opened one day a year. He's accessible to the people like he always was in life. And you see that? You see flowers and candles and handwritten notes and all sorts of things. And you also hear from people who live in the neighborhood there, often people driving to his grave asking where he's buried. The cemetery leaves big orange columns out in front of his grave here ten years later so that people can still find him easily. He's accessible and he's sought after even to this day. |
| Mary | But, you know, it also speaks to his commitment, to his vow of poverty. So unlike a diocesan priest, because he was a religious sort of priest, he had a vow of poverty and he lived that very seriously. And I know that when he was looking at the mausoleum, I know part of that decision was because he felt it wasn't consistent with his vow of poverty that he felt obliged to even in death. |
| Michael Heinlein | That's probably true. Even his sister, Margaret, told me he even asked her for the deed to the plot, which she had as the eldest child. |
| Mary | Well, Michael, this has been such a gift to have you with us this week of the anniversary of Cardinal George's death. To learn more about Michael Heinlein and his terrific biography of Cardinal Francis George Glorifying Christ, the Life of Cardinal Francis George. You can go to o v Catholic bookstore dot com. So that's our Sunday visitor o savvy Catholic bookstore at Ecom. Or you can still find the book on Amazon. Yes, Michael. |
| Michael Heinlein | Amazon or wherever else you can find books. Yeah. |
| Mary | And to learn more about the Catholic Association, please visit the Catholic Association dot org to follow everything we do in radio, TV, print, online and in our local communities. Thank you for joining us. |
| Michael Heinlein | Thanks very much. |
| Betsy | Welcome to Conversations with Consequences on EWTN Radio. I'm your host is Betty Fentress. |
| Mary | And I'm Mary Fiorito. |
| Betsy | And we're happy to have once again Monsignor Roger Landry with us, a member of our TCA team and a national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies. And today, he joins us not only to mark Holy Week and the trip with him, but to discuss a whirlwind trip he had last week beginning in Vietnam, serving countless Catholics there and Bangladesh. Monsignor, thank you so much for making time for us. |
| MSGR Landry | Great to be with you, Betsy. And Mary. |
| Betsy | Tell us about Vietnam. We saw some really moving videos. The National Catholic Registry posted. We were all in tears, by the way, but share some of your highlights. On that. |
| MSGR Landry | Trip. I was in tears, too, seeing so much faith there as the National director of the Difficult Mission Societies. One of my tasks is to travel to the 1124 missionary territories across the globe to see the investment that American Catholics through the society. The propagation of the faith, through the Missionary Childhood Association, has made in the churches that are either too young to poor or too persecuted to survive on their own. And so we went to Vietnam, where the church has suffered under communism, especially after 1975, and we had a chance to witness the church there on the there. There was a lot happening there, but two memories that I'd shear would be First, an extraordinary visit to a leper colony in Kon Tomb in the central highlands of Vietnam. The Vietnamese are an ethnic race, but there are lots of tribes that are not ethnically Vietnamese, and they are kind of on the existential peripheries there in Vietnam. On tomb, you've got many of these tribes and a few of the tribes are infected with leprosy. Americans may wonder, how is it possible that there are any lepers today when we've got a cure for Hansen's disease? |
| Betsy | Right. |
| MSGR Landry | And the answer to that question is essentially that the drugs don't get to the people because of corruption that intercepts them or because of so much distrust that has built up over the course of time through the ways that the medical establishment have treated those with leprosy, such that even when the drugs are accessible, they're afraid to take them, because what's in that syringe, what is the potential poison in that pill that they're taking? And so, unfortunately, the consequence of it is that you've still got many with leprosy. But nevertheless, having flown up to Kon Tomb, we got up very early. We had a 5:00 mass in the morning in a packed church full of young people, full of the lepers in that community who were capable of coming to mass. I was so touched that they were asking me to preach even though I needed a translator. And even when you were speaking to the children and asking, Do you want a short homily or a long homily, the kids were saying, We want a long homily, which is exactly that music to my ears. I just wish Americans would say the same. But, you know, as you're celebrating that mass and then distributing Holy Communion for reasons I haven't totally figured out, most in Vietnam receive Holy Communion on their hands very devoutly, but they receive on their hands. And as I was distributing the Lord to the people coming up at the mass, some were normal, the young children coming on up, but then others were coming with hands that had no fingers on them. And then others were coming where they just had stumps on their hands and then they'd need to really stumps for hands and then the need to receive on their tongue. It was extremely moving to see just how devout they were and how grateful they were to be touched by the eternal word of God. But that was just a warm up for what was happening. Later, with priestly vestments, we walked through the village to those lepers who were too infirm to be able to come to Mass. One of the houses we entered. There was a guy already sitting on his bed with his wife. His eyes were already full of tears. As we were entering into this dark room. And then we said the prayers that are always said When you bring Holy Communion to the sick, You begin with an hour, Father, and then you do the behold the lamb of God, and then you pray, Lord, I am not worthy to receive you. And as he was mouthing those words, you could just tell that he meant everything that he was saying. As I gave him Holy Communion on his tongue, as his tears were even greater. And with all this guy sufferings that he was able to appreciate even more that the one who had healed so many lepers in the Gospel was coming and being his food and even greater gift basically, than a cure of leprosy was what Jesus was giving. And it almost seemed like this man captured that. And then the next visit that we went to, it was a house that was surprisingly pretty nice. It was relatively new. It was not at all opulent, but yeah, right. A little carpet and there were two rooms and there was a little hallway and the deacon who was accompanying us, who normally brings Holy Communion to the lepers, he told the woman that Jesus was here. And so she crawled down her hallway and he wanted to help her at some point because it was difficult for her on all fours to crawl down her hallway. But she refused because she just wanted, with eagerness to get to the Lord, she said. And so on all fours. She kept moving herself down there, and because she couldn't stand in any way, the other priest with me, Father Tree Farm from Palm Beach, Florida, who's got this beautiful foundation called the Saint Joseph Mission Charity that really helps out with a lot of the care for the lepers there and raises money among Americans to make it possible. He and I knelt down on the carpet right next to her as we went through the same prayers and gave her Holy Communion. And again, she received with extraordinary love and faith. I'll never forget it. After that, we were able to give new sandals to the lepers because one of the big issues is if their feet get bloody at all, they're able to pass leprosy through their fluids. And so for their sake and the sake of everybody else, you just want to make sure that they've got good sandals on their feet so that they're able to get along. But every foot is different. For some it would be like a size six on one foot and in the other like a size two because they had lost most of their foot. But every single one of these sandals is tailor made to fit each of their feet, and they are so grateful. So we give them new sandals every two months, and then we give them some food and some rice that they are able to carry back with all the trailers to just see how grateful they are to be carrying a bag of rice when they've got leprous feet with sandals of different sizes. Just all of it was overwhelming. |
| Mary | Yeah. Monsignor, how was it that Catholicism became so, you know, established in Vietnam? Because so many of the Asian countries are not, you know, don't have this kind of Christian population, much less a Catholic one. Do you know anything about the history of the church there? |
| MSGR Landry | Sure. So the main reason why there are Christians there is because of the French missionaries who in the beginning in the 17th century and particularly in the 18th, brought the gospel to certain regions of Vietnam because of their faith, many came to know Jesus. And then there were multiple waves of persecution, and the blood of the martyrs really was the seed of generations of Christians there. Overall, in Vietnam, the official statistics are that only 7% of the population is Christian. That number has been static at 7% since 1975. It seems that the population is of Christians is much higher, but for the sake of cooperation with the government, the number has stayed at seven so that nobody's afraid that Christians are growing in a communist country. We were able to visit the most populated Christian area, which is the diocese one lock in southeastern Vietnam, just outside of Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, which is 33% Christian. And there you were able to see the Vietnamese really organize a church. The seminary had 380 seminarians in it. It was extremely high functioning. And they were building marian shrines everywhere, not necessarily opulent, but beautiful and attended by everybody. And one of the curious things, one of the most beautiful things about the church in Vietnam was what you call the Eucharistic movement for young children every day. And every parish that we visited in these parishes was huge. That fit about a thousand people in one sitting. There were 800 children for daily Mass, not just because the Pontifical Mission Society from, the United States was there. That is their daily situation, because that Eucharistic movement gets these young children as they're preparing for Holy Communion. And then after they've received Jesus for the first time to really commit to living a Eucharistic life, and part of that is to walk by themselves to the church closest to them every day in order to be able to receive Jesus or be in His presence. And so you're seeing something that's going to be a way for the future, not just for the church in Vietnam, but for the church throughout the globe, because those young Vietnamese Catholics are on their way. That's why the seminaries are packed, because so many of them come from this Eucharistic movement. That's why there are so many vocations for religious sisters. And I really think that the Vietnamese are going to be able to evangelize Asia because they have the real Asian soul, which is contemplative, and they're yearning to be able to share that treasure with others. And so I have great hope for the church in Vietnam, which we were able to see firsthand. |
| Betsy | Well, you were southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, Correct. And there is a particular devotion to Saint Martin. You want to tell us about that. |
| MSGR Landry | So I was shocked, actually, to find out when I asked one of the parish priest there in Vietnam, who are the greatest of the Vietnamese intercessors beside us, the 117 Vietnamese martyrs who have been canonized and without missing a beat at all, they said Saint Martin de Poor, as I said, is that because of an influence of Dominicans, because Saint Martin was a Dominican? For those who don't know Saint Martin, the poorest, lived in the 1600s in Peru. Why was he so in Vietnam? And the explanation is that when the south of Vietnam collapsed to the communists, the southern, the Catholics in Vietnam were afraid that they were going to become enslaved. And so they developed this devotion to Saint Martin to pause who was a freed slave so that he would be able to intercede for them to stay free so that they would be able to escape from South Vietnam and come to freedom, or so that they'd be able to live their faith and freedom and so they built a huge shrine to Saint Martin to pause. And that devotion is still extremely strong. Buried there on that sanctuary is a priest, father Joseph Trinh tr A and H who is a martyr. The confessional. I wrote an article about him in the National Catholic Register soon after his death in early 2022. He was macheted to death while hearing confessions in his church close to Khartoum. And so I think that he's clearly going to be raised to the altars and I hope will become one of the patrons of the sacrament of confession. We have no record of any other priest ever being killed while hearing confession. We have several priests were killed because they heard confessions and refused to violate the seal of confession. But he was killed in the very act a young priest at 40 years old while hearing confessions. And they're behind his tomb in that sanctuary of Saint Martin de force is a whole wall full of ex photos from those who came to him asking for miracles and having their prayers heard. And so we've got a priest who is a farmer, Turgut says the technical term, a great wonder worker, a miracle worker. God's raising him for the notice of us all. And so I was really honored to have a chance to be able to visit his tomb. When we were there at the Sanctuary of Saint Martin. |
| Betsy | The extraordinary. |
| Mary | Well, Monsignor, once you left Vietnam, I know that you went to Bangladesh, which, of course, is served largely by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which is the religious community that Cardinal Francis George belonged to. What was it like? I believe you were there for Palm Sunday celebrating mass in Bangladesh on Palm Sunday. |
| MSGR Landry | Bangladesh is a very poor country material, but discovered that the 400,000 Catholics in a country of 170 million were really very rich in faith. So we had the privilege to celebrate the Christmas. 3 hours after we arrived. We arrived at 230 in the morning in Bangladesh, and the Christian mass was at 630 in the morning. So we we went there a little bit groggy for that mass. But what a beautiful experience it was for me to be with all the priests in Bangladesh. As together we renewed our promises and everywhere I went they wanted to hear from me. And so at their Christmas they heard from the national director of the Commission Societies about how the Christian Mass supports our mission. Likewise, on Palm Sunday, we went to the most vibrant numerical parish in the capital city of Dhaka, where 3000 people were there together with the papal Nuncio, is an American from Norwalk, Connecticut. Archbishop Kevin Randall has been a friend of mine for a while. As we were able to celebrate with them Christ's triumphal entry at the beginning of Holy week and you were able to see just how profound the Christian faith is in the midst of all the challenges in between those events starting and finishing in Dhaka, the capital, we were able to go south to two dioceses that are very poor to inspect some of the works that have been funded by the Commission Society and learn what the continual needs are. The priests don't receive any salary whatsoever in Bangladesh. They survive exclusively on mass stipends. And, you know, I was able to bring some mass stipends with me. But you can only take so much cash with you across the border. And I was $5,000 were the masses in Vietnam, 5000 Bangladesh. But they need so much more in order to be able to sustain. And the priest don't spend the mass stipends on themselves. That's the way they fund a lot of their charity to the poor families that are in their parishes. And so I was able to see those works. And at every stage that we went, what was what kind of blew me away was the welcome we would receive ten times in the diocese of Khulna. The first day we were in the South, we would be received by a huge crowd of people singing songs, putting reeds of flowers over our neck, dropping flowers before us, having girls do this elaborate, choreographed welcome dance, which was unique to every place that we went, signs where the kids were having welcome singing songs in Bangladeshi or in in English about welcoming us and then really hungry to listen to what the message was. They felt so honored that the pontifical mission outside of the United States was taking Bangladesh seriously and prioritizing it on our list of visits. This was my first international trip as the national director, and they they were so grateful that we wanted to see what the situation was in Bangladesh so that hopefully we would be able to help them. And we're already at work and helping them. And anybody listen to us now who would want to assist us in that work. I just encourage you to contact me or visit pontifical missions dot org because there's such a dramatic need there. And every dollar we give can make a huge impact in helping people grow in faith. |
| Betsy | Well, we could talk about your trips. I think forever, but it also is Holy Week. So I wanted to have you share with us a few words about this piece that you wrote on the Jubilee of Hope A Crucible of Grace during the Jubilee of Hope. So could you tell us why Hope is so important and maybe tie that in to the hope that you have from being in these third world countries? |
| MSGR Landry | We're now Betsy and the Jubilee of Hope. And what is the virtue of hope it means to live Christ in the middle of the world? And during Holy week, we try to stay with Christ up close as He leads us through the mysteries of his passion at his transfiguration, he talked to Mose and Elijah about his exodus that he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. That exodus is from death to life, and he wants us to journey with him just like the Israelites journeyed with Moses. And so being with Christ in the world, the second big aspect of hope is we place our trust in Christ. Promises of eternal life. We seek to enter into His kingdom and Christ by what He did for us on Holy Thursday. Good Friday and Easter Sunday blew wide open the doors of Heaven. If only we follow him there. And so these are the days in which he wants us to hope for the definitive reception of what he won for us during these days. And so by nature, Holy Week and the sacred to him, our days of hope. I left Vietnam and Bangladesh believed in hope because these are the people that we encountered despite all the challenges that they have here on Earth, have never lost a confidence that Christ meant everything that he said. And when he promised us that he was going to prepare for us a place in his father's house, they continued to long for it. Sometimes we can be a little bit deadened by placing our hope and so many penultimate hopes. You could call it that. The Red Sox win the World Series this year that we get good, whether you name it, whatever, we place our natural hopes and they have natural hopes too. And some of the times is to be liberated from communism or liberated from poverty, but they're able to keep their eyes on the most important prize of all. And so that focus has helped recalibrate my own vision and not just the vision of my physical life, but the vision of the eyes of my heart so that they're really set on Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father, where he's gone to prepare a place for you and me. |
| Mary | Well, you're also going to be preaching at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City on Good Friday. And the seven last words of Jesus Christ. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that, if they're not familiar with that particular devotion? |
| MSGR Landry | I'm so honored that Cardinal Dolan has asked me to preach the seven last words of the 3 hours we call it, because from 12 to 3 we meditate on the seven things Jesus said from the cross, which would have required excruciating pain for him to enunciate with thick nails to the nerves of his feet. He would have to push on up to say these things. That's how important it was for us to hear them. And so we do an extensive entering into the mind of Christ as he was dying for us in our salvation on Calvary. And so this Friday, Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop in New York, will be preside in the extraordinary choir of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, will be singing Caesar Franck's seven last words, hymns and then I'll be preaching nine different meditations and introduction, a conclusion and then a meditation on those seven last words. And the theme I'm going to take is Halo Cross. Our only hope that each of the seven words of Jesus are a is a word redolent with hope. And to illustrate each of those seven last words, I'm going to be choosing one of the great missionary saints of our history to show how that word impacted that saints life. And it's meant to impact our life because we see in Saints our great hope that if we seek to follow Christ the way they did, we will be able to experience their eternal joy. |
| Betsy | Do you find it hard to toggle back and forth between these areas that where people just need basic things and then coming back to the abundance of the United States? Or does that kind of just deepen your priestly role as you as you see it in all these things of being being able to bring things to them and bring their hope back to us? |
| MSGR Landry | One of the most important virtues with which to live today is a virtue, a detachment that even if you have some food in the refrigerator, even if you have a refrigerator, that you're not going to become particularly attached to it. You're grateful for it, you thank God for it. But you learn how to live. Without that. We're always going to be distracted and we're not going to be able to squeeze through the eye of a needle. When I go to areas in which people live very simple lives where they might not have indoor plumbing, where you have to sleep in mosquito nets. That was a first for me, sleeping in mosquito nets throughout my time there without air conditioning. In many places where it was super hot, you pare down very quickly what's essential and you see in their joy that our happiness is not placed in our stuff. Our happiness is placed in God. And so I come back much simpler than I arrived. And that doesn't mean I'm immediately sort of throwing out all my books and whatever else little stuff that a priest may have himself. But I am more greatly detached from those things because the Vietnamese and the Bangladesh, it's helped me to attach myself far more to the Lord. |
| Mary | Well, Monsignor, as we just enter these final hours of Lent, really, and prepare for Easter, what would you say to anyone listening who perhaps really didn't give their best effort during Lent and now feels bad about it and wants to try to catch up? Do you have any suggestions for something a person might do if they don't feel like this has been the kind of lent they had hoped it would be? |
| MSGR Landry | So I think we can all get great hope from the second interaction of Jesus and the Cross, which is with the Good Thief. We only have one record. He did one thing right. He stuck up for Jesus, who was being falsely accused by the bad thief and Jesus left and Jesus with the largesse. The King promised him not just to remember him, but to bring him with him into paradise. And so I just spurred on by saying dismiss to try to steal the end of Lent like he stole heaven by just saying, Lord, listen, I've blown up this land. I haven't really lived it the way that I intended to on Ash Wednesday, but I know my failures are nothing compared to your mercy. Please help me to live the end of Lent. Well, Lent finishes on Wednesday of Holy Week and then we enter into the shortest liturgical cycle of the year. The sacred Holy Thursday through Easter and or through Holy Saturday, actually. And we can, even if we've lived a poor Lent, we can live a great sacred tree to them first by coming to the liturgies, coming on Holy Thursday, coming on Good Friday, going to the Easter vigil, trying to make these three days a real time of retreat in which we take advantage of the churches giving these liturgical opportunities to us to prioritize them. And you know, there are some challenges sometimes going to Holy Thursday mass. We've got to prioritize what on everything else we're doing on that Thursday night. But can we and this is the invitation to come to the Last Supper if any of us were alive on April 638, the original Holy Thursday, we would have wanted to have been there with the Lord. We need to treat that invitation with the same priority. Likewise, if one of our loved ones were dying, just think about a parent or a child. We would want to be with them to the end. And we do the same thing with Jesus that we love on Good Friday. If there's ever a day to call in and take a personal day from work or take a day off of school, it's Good Friday to be able to enter into Jesus saving passion and then the most beautiful Liturgy of the year. It's by far the longest, which should make us happier, not longer. I remember those Vietnamese kids. Do you want a short or long homily? We want a long homily. They wanted a more beautiful liturgy. The most beautiful liturgy of the year is the Easter vigil, especially in those places in which we're welcoming in a record number, really, of new Catholics. So many places. What a beautiful experience in the church that is, and a beautiful marking of the church's joy at Christ Resurrection. If we live Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, well, we can make up for a poor Lent and transition into the 50 day period of Easter in which our feasting as is meant to overwhelm our Lenten fasting. |
| Betsy | Well, hopefully we can continue discussion about divine mercy next week because you're also in a film that's coming out about Carlo Acutis, who will be canonized on April 27th, Divine Mercy Sunday. Father Landry, we are out of time. Thank you so much for joining us. To learn more about Monsignor Landry's work, visit Catholic preaching income and you have a website for the Pontifical Mission Society. |
| MSGR Landry | Yeah, it's easy. Pontifical missions, plural dot org. |
| Betsy | Great. And to learn more about the Catholic Association, visit us at Catholic Association Board and Paul to follow everything we do in radio, TV, print online in our north local communities. Thanks again. Once a year. |
| MSGR Landry | A blessed 3 to 1 to you, Mary A few Betsy Thanks a million. |
