Abp. Lori: ‘Fr McGivney was a
Pope Francis priest before there was a Pope Francis’
 |
| Studio photo of Fr. Michael McGivney. Photo credit Kights of Columbus. |
The Venerable Servant of God Father Michael McGivney is best
known for having founded the global lay fraternal Order of the Knights of
Columbus. Looking ahead to his beatification, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori
talks about his life and legacy.
By Vatican News
The approval by Pope Francis of the promulgation of a decree
recognizing a miracle attributed to the intercession of Venerable Michael
McGivney puts the Connecticut priest one step further along the path to
sainthood.
The parish priest from Connecticut is best known for having
founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882. Today, with almost two million members
around the world, the organization founded on the principles of charity, unity
and fraternity continues to bring financial aid and assistance to members and
their families, as well as the sick, disabled and needy.
Archbishop William E. Lori is the Supreme
Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus as well as the Archbishop of Baltimore,
where McGivney was ordained in 1877. He spoke with Christopher Wells about the
soon-to-be Blessed American priest, who served his flock during the pandemic of
1890, before himself becoming ill and dying of pneumonia, and about how, nearly
a century before the Second Vatican Council, his prescient vision empowered the
laity to serve Church and neighbour in a new way.
Expressing his delight and joy for the news of Fr Michael
McGivney’s beatification, Archbishop Lori said he, and most Knights across the
world, have has been praying for many years for this to happen.
“I think it reveals the solid foundations of holiness upon
which the Knights of Columbus has been built,” he said, and it holds up the
life and example of a parish priest.
The life and times of Michael McGivney
The Archbishop tells the story of the soon-to-be Blessed
starting with his childhood as part of a working-class immigrant family in
Waterbury, Connecticut.
The premature death of his father meant he and his siblings
had to work to help make ends meet; and because of this, he had to overcome
many difficulties to pursue his vocation to join the priesthood because of
this. However, during final phase of his formation he ended up in Baltimore in
St. Mary's Seminary, which is the oldest in the United States.
The Archbishop reflected on the many places and people that
he has in common with Fr McGivney, and said, “Every time I say Mass in my
co-Cathedral (the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary), I
look at the spot where I am pretty sure he was ordained priest, and I give
thanks for his life and example.”
Lori went on to say McGivney “became a stellar parish
priest,” assigned to St. Mary's in New Haven, a newly-built church that was in
tremendous debt with a pastor in ill health.
He said Father McGivney pretty much had to run the parish:
“What he did was to ‘jump in with both feet’! He made friends easily, he was a
natural leader, he liked sports, he loved plays and so he really engaged the
parishioners and brought them into the orbit of his pastoral love and preached
in ways that really touched their minds and hearts and souls, and brought the
faith beyond the walls of the Church and into the community at a time when
there was considerable anti-Catholic sentiment.”
Another trait he always manifested, Lori said, was his great
love “for the poor, for the widow and for the orphan” and these qualities
endeared him to his parishioners.
And then, he added, his own experience as a young boy who
had lost his father, sharpened his sensitivity to what happens to families when
the breadwinner dies, leading him to found the Knights of Columbus in a
basement in St. Mary’s Church in New Haven.
From the beginning, Lori explained, “it was a fraternal
organization based on the principles of Charity, Unity and Fraternity; a way
for them to live their faith, to support one another being good husbands and
fathers. And he also he founded an insurance company so the Knights of Columbus
could provide for their families in the event of their death.”
The organization, Lori said, had to face many challenges and
misunderstandings, but Fr. McGivney was determined in addition to being “a
good, holy priest,” and it soon began to spread beyond New Haven.
Michael McGivney died at the young age of 38 whilst working
as a pastor in Thomaston, Connecticut, where there was a pandemic that has many
similarities to the Covid-19 crisis we are experiencing today.
During the pandemic, the Archbishop said, he ministered to
the faithful with “the same love and the same generosity that he had shown
throughout his whole priesthood,” and died “no doubt because of the way he
expended himself for his people.”
“I like to say Fr McGivney was a Pope Francis priest before
there was a Pope Francis, and I also like to think of him as the pastor of my
soul,” he said.
Bringing life and faith together
Fr McGivney, Lori went on to say, was close to his people:
“He knew them, loved them, understood them, but also challenged them to grow in
faith”, exhibiting “a tremendous degree of what we call pastoral charity.”
“It was not a theoretical love, not merely an emotion, but
it was a kind of love that is expressed in action,” he said, noting that
McGivney was a practical priest who was able to show people how to live their
faith, how to engage in it by bringing life and faith together: “And so that’s
one of the most basic things.”
Pope Paul [VI], Lori recalled, used to say that one of the
great challenges facing the Church is the divorce between faith and culture,
and “Fr McGivney brought the two together, I would say brilliantly, in the
brilliance of holiness.”
The role of the laity
Archbishop Lori went on to describe the enhancement of the
role of the laity as an enormously significant legacy of Fr McGivney.
He could easily have been the Supreme Knight, Lori said;
everyone admired him and would have made him their leader. But “Father McGivney
insisted that the Knights of Columbus be lay led, long before the Second
Vatican Council envisioned a greater role for the laity.”
Love for the poor and the marginalized
Thirdly, the Archbishop continued, Fr McGivney really loved
the poor and the marginalized. He said that one of the traits of Pope Francis’
pontificate is his tireless call “to all of us, not just the clergy,” to have a
heart for the poor and to overcome indifference.
“Fr McGivney really blazed the trail,” he said.
He recalled how McGivney befriended a man who had been
condemned to die and accompanied him to the end of his life, saying that “these
kinds of things, cause the years to melt away.”
“Father McGivney died in 1890,” but he said, but “as you
read his life, it seems as though he could have been your parish priest,
yesterday. I think that it’s hard to exaggerate the continuing impact of Father
McGivney’s life on us and on the Church.”
Knights of Columbus true to the vision of their founder
Archbishop Lori concluded highlighting how the Knights of
Columbus have remained true to the original vision of Father McGivney.
Noting that it has become the largest fraternal organization
in the Church, and perhaps in the world, he said it is still dedicated to
helping men and their families grow in faith and holiness.
“It is still living out the most important founding
principle of the Knights: Charity. And it is a tremendous force for good in the
life of the Church”, he said. “Whether it’s helping the Holy Father or the Holy
See, whether it’s helping bishops in their dioceses, Christians in the Middle
east, refugees, immigrants, rescuing the unborn, the Knights are there,” as
well as in parishes, churches and local councils across the world.
“So Father McGivney, with great simplicity started something
really big,” Archbishop Lori said, “And I’m so proud to say that under the
leadership of the Supreme Knight, Carl Anderson, the Knights are living out
Father McGivney’s beautiful, founding vision.”
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