Asking the Clergy: Talking about newly canonized saints

In May, Pope Francis gave the Catholic Church 10 new saints. This week’s clergy discuss three of the saints canonized in the first such Vatican ceremony in more than two years, according to The Associated Press.

Sister Alice Byrnes

Professor of English, Molloy University, Rockville Centre

When Marie Rivier, born in 1768 in southern France, was 16 months old, she suffered a fall that left her severely handicapped. Her mother prayed with her every day before a statue of the Pietà, and, miraculously, little Marie was able to walk on Sept. 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Therefore, in my view, Marie Rivier becomes a patron for families of sick and disabled children.

It is not surprising that the approved miracles for Marie Rivier’s canonization were the healings of children. Although she lived in France during the French Revolution, a time of religious oppression, she opened convents and founded the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary. She eventually established 141 convents and professed 350 sisters, according to her congregation’s website. The Sisters of the Presentation continue their ministry of education and social service throughout the world, including in the United States.

In a news release in May, Sister Paula Marie Buley, president of Rivier University in New Hampshire, said that the canonization of St. Marie Rivier “is far more than an award or honor … It is a recognition of God’s presence in the world calling each of us to ask, ‘who is my neighbor,’ ‘how shall I serve,’ and ‘what can I do?’  ”

The Rev. Msgr. Thomas More Coogan

Pastor, St. Dominic Roman Catholic Church, Oyster Bay

Although all saints have something to teach us, among those just canonized by Pope Francis, I find St. Charles de Foucauld’s story compelling. Born a French noble in 1858, he lived a youth of privilege and debauchery. He served in the military and earned respect as a cartographer.

His experiences with the poor of North Africa helped convert him from the meaninglessness of his aristocratic life to one in the service of the Gospel as a Trappist priest ministering among the Tuareg people. During World War I, members of a neighboring tribe executed him.

As a translator and a poet, St. Charles was gifted with words. The following passage from his book, “The Spiritual Autobiography of Charles De Foucauld” (The World Among Us Press, 2003), clings to my memory as a concise summation of what his life can teach our society (though I relied on Goodreads.com to share it here): “The moment I realized that God existed, I knew that I could not do otherwise than to live for Him alone … Faith strips the mask from the world and reveals God in everything … the believer goes through life calmly and peacefully, with profound joy — like a child, hand in hand with his mother.”

The Rev. Msgr. Charles R. Fink

Rector, Seminary of the Immaculate
Conception, Huntington

In his bestselling book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” (Penguin, 2019), Jordan B. Peterson exhorts us to pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient, and to tell the truth — or at least don’t lie.

He might have used St. Titus Brandsma as an illustration of living out these two rules in an exemplary manner. Born Feb. 23, 1881, Titus grew up in a devout Catholic family in the Netherlands, entering the Carmelite order when he was 17. Seven years later he was ordained a priest and earned a doctorate in philosophy. No ivory tower intellectual, he became an outspoken opponent of Nazi ideology and its poisonous anti-Semitism in the 1930s, and in 1942 hand-delivered a letter from the Conference of Dutch Bishops to editors of Catholic newspapers commanding them not to print any Nazi documents in spite of being ordered to do so by the occupying German authorities.

Brandsma was arrested, sent to Dachau and, as part of a Nazi medical experimental program, given a lethal injection on July 26, 1942. Wouldn’t the world be a better place for our trying to imitate St. Titus Brandsma’s integrity, courage and defense of the defenseless?