Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Heart of the Missions Dinner
The Pontifical Missions Society
The Columbus Citizens Foundation, Manhattan
January 22, 2025
Your Eminences, Your Excellency, Reverend Fathers, Deacons, Religious Sisters and Brothers,
Distinguished Guests, Dear Friends in Christ and Fellow Missionaries by baptism,
When I was asked to become the National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies, I started to do my homework on the history of each of the societies. I did not know much about the beginning of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, but I soon became fascinated by the story of Blessed Pauline Jaricot, who founded it when she was just 23 years old. Five years earlier, in prayer she had seen a vision of two lamps: one empty, representing the faith in post-revolutionary France, the other overflowing with oil, symbolizing the vibrant faith in mission territories, which for her then meant above all the United States and China. In her vision, she saw the oil flowing from the full lamp into the empty one, which she interpreted as an indication that the way that post-revolutionary France would be re-evangelized would be from the oil of faith, hope and love overflowing from the United States and missionary territories.
And so, as a very young woman, she asked what she could do to help the missions and assist missionaries, like her older brother. She presciently saw that every Catholic, through his or her prayer and daily work, could participate in the Church’s missionary mandate. So she organized the silk workers in her father’s factory into circles of ten to pray each day for the missions and to contribute a sou or penny a week for the spread of the faith in missionary lands, help her beloved France rediscover its first love, and transform the world.
From that humble beginning of prayers and pennies in 1822, the Society of the Propagation of the Faith grew. Today, the Pontifical Mission Societies continue her work in 1,123 mission dioceses and territories worldwide. Every year, we support the formation of thousands of seminarians, help build churches and chapels, fund Catholic schools, and provide direct aid to fledgling communities in need. More importantly, we facilitate that spiritual exchange that Blessed Pauline envisioned, where after missionaries bring the light of faith symbolized by lamps and oil to the ends of the earth, the vibrant faith of mission territories keeping that light burning brightly begins to overflow with oil, enriching and renewing the faith of established Catholic communities. That is very much what is happening in the Church in the United States today, as the generosity of generations of American Catholics to the missions is now being rewarded by God through the work of so many priests and religious coming from missionary lands.
Tonight, we have the chance to honor someone whose life has burned with missionary zeal that has transformed not just into the lives of countless immigrants in Washington DC, but whole dioceses in the Virgin Islands, Florida and Massachusetts. Everywhere he’s gone, he’s brought huge flasks of brimming oil to keep the flame of faith not just alive but growing. He’s also been a special instrument of God to help reignite the flame of faith among many of those who, because of suffering and scandal, had their fire in danger of being extinguished.
Cardinal Seán O’Malley from his earliest days in religious life hoped to be a missionary with his fellow Capuchins in Papua New Guinea. But God would have other missionary lands in mind, where, with the ardor of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Francis Xavier, he would continue to proclaim the Gospel powerfully in multiple languages. Like with Blessed Pauline Jaricot, he has shared the faith with contemplation and action, with humility and innovation, with prayer and pennies, or in his case, with prayer and the generous gift of self that flows from the vow of poverty. As the first recipient of the Medal named after Blessed Pauline Jaricot, he embodies the continuation of her vision, that every Catholic, through our prayer and the work God asks of us, is called to be a missionary and pass on to others as of the first importance the gift of faith we have received. Each of us, as Pope Francis loves to insist, is a mission on this earth. That is the reason why we exist.
Please permit me a personal word. Cardinal Sean was nominated by the Board before I began my work as National Director, but I cannot be happier that he is the first recipient of this medal. I was teaching in a summer program in the Spanish Pyrenees when, during my first class, I was told I had a phone call. I was worried, because the only people who had the landline telephone number there was my family and I was concerned that there was a family emergency. But it was the then Bishop Sean O’Malley of the Diocese of Fall River inviting me to become a seminarian. I met him for the first time a month later, on August 4, 1993, the feast of the patron saint of priests and the spiritual director of Blessed Pauline Jaricot, Saint Jean Marie Vianney, as he formally accepted me, and then for the next nine years guided me as a seminarian and a young priest. Over shared car rides, meals and late night gelati, in conversations on faith, literature, and culture, and especially in his epic homilies on which I still hang on his every word, his overflowing oil would, as Psalm 133 would say, run down his beard and cascade into my own spiritual lamp as I hoped to be filled with his fire. I am one of the hundreds of priests called to be heralds of Christ into whose hands Cardinal Sean has placed the Gospels and instructed us to believe what we read, teach what we believe and practice what we teach. And I am one of tens of thousands who have inspired by the way he himself does all three.
Blessed Pauline’s words once expressed her desire to “love without measure without end!” Tonight we honor Sean Cardinal O’Malley for seeking to love by that Christlike standard during his more than eight decades of baptism, six decades of religious life, five decades of priesthood and four decades of episcopal missionary work. And we thank God for the oil that he has lavishly poured into this ever humble friar and through him sought to fill our lamps, too, to missionary overflowing.
Now it is my great privilege to introduce Pope Francis’ personal representative to the United States of America, Apostolic Nuncio and ex-officio member of our Board of Directors, His Eminence Cristophe Cardinal Pierre, to present the inaugural Blessed Pauline Jaricot Distinguished Catholic Philanthropy Medal to Cardinal O’Malley.
The word Nuncio means messenger or ambassador and every Nuncio is therefore literally a missionary, dedicating his priestly life to going wherever the vicar of Christ on earth sends him. Cardinal Pierre, a native of Pauline Jaricot’s France, has brought the Gospel to Morocco, New Zealand, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Brazil, Switzerland, Haiti, Uganda, Mexico and, for the last nine years, the United States.
He is by reason of office and missionary mileage a most fitting presenter of this inaugural award.
Please join me in welcoming His Eminence Cardinal Christophe Pierre…”