Fr. Roger J. Landry
Interview with Elise Harris of Catholic News Agency
“On Being a Missionary of Mercy”
April 5, 2018
This interview was conducted by email on April 5, 2018 in anticipation of Pope Francis’ meetings on Divine Mercy Sunday and April 10, 2018 with the Missionaries of Mercy he has reappointed to continue what they were doing during the Jubilee of Mercy. The story to which the quotations were incorporated was run here. The full questions and answers are given below.
CNA: It’s been a year and a half since your mandate as a missionary of mercy was extended. How have the past 18 months been for you? What sort of things have you done as part of your ministry?
Fr. Roger Landry: It took several months to formalize the extension that Pope Francis announced, to my surprise and delight, in his exhortation Misericordia et Misera. But I have just tried to continue the basic three-fold mission of mercy that is our mandate: to preach about the Lord’s merciful love, to make that mercy as available as possible to as many as possible through the Sacrament of Confession, and to become more and more an icon of the Father’s merciful love and the Church’s maternal compassionate solicitude.
In terms of preaching, in addition to regular references in homilies, I try to incorporate the theme of mercy into the retreats, recollections, conferences, lectures and workshops I give, no matter what the central theme. Because mercy is at the heart of the Gospel, what Pope Francis has called the “essence of Christianity,” that’s easy to do.
In terms of confessions, I hear confessions practically every day and regularly respond to needs for confessors when I’m asked. I heard confessions for six hours, for example, on Good Friday and I thought that that was a particularly fitting way to help bring the mercy won by Christ on Golgotha to those whose sins he bought at such a precious price.
CNA: How has this ministry impacted or shaped your role at the UN? Has it opened the door to new opportunities, and if so, what are they?
Fr. Roger Landry: Being a Missionary of Mercy has intensified my priestly call to be an ambassador of Christ appealing to others to be reconciled to God (2 Cor 5:19-20), and insofar as it changes me, it impacts, at least indirectly, everything I do, including my work for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN. I would like to think that it has strengthened in me the virtues confessors need — patience, understanding, meekness, paternal love, a spiritual doctor’s compassion, a good shepherd’s zeal for the lost, and heaven’s joy at reconciled sinners — and that that would make me more effective in the day-to-day interactions I have.
Concretely, so much of the work that the UN needs to do dovetails with various works of mercy, like caring for the poor, speaking up for and defending the rights of the voiceless, feeding the hungry, fostering peace and reconciliation among peoples, seeking to provide everyone with education, caring for those who have died in war, because of atrocities, poverty, avoidable environmental catastrophes, etc., but that work is done more effectively by deeds than by words. That’s a powerful witness that the Mystical Body of Christ that is the Church across the globe is doing: we lift up that work as an example and a leaven about the path to a peaceful world and civilization of life and love.
CNA: In your view, what would you say is the core of your mandate, and how necessary is this ministry for the Church right now?
Fr. Roger Landry: Pope Francis has given three parts to our mandate. First, we’re supposed to be “above all, persuasive preachers of mercy” as he wrote in “The Face of Mercy.” Second, we’re supposed to dedicate ourselves in a particular way to hearing confessions with the authority to pardon even those sins reserved to the Holy See. Third, he wants us to be “signs and instruments of God’s forgiveness,” “living signs of the Father’s readiness to welcome those in search of his pardon” and of the Church’s “maternal solicitude for the people of God.”
This ministry is always needed in the Church. On Easter Sunday evening, Christ gave the apostles the power to forgive and retain sins in his name and sent them to the whole world in order to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God is an essential part of the kerygma.
But we could say that it’s particularly needed today. St. John Paul II and Pope Francis have both emphasized that we are living in a “kairos of mercy,” a time in which God’s loving forgiveness is especially crucial. The reason is because we’re living at a time in which unexpiated guilt is wreaking so much havoc. After two World Wars and the Cold War, the Holocaust, the genocides in Armenia, the Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, after so many atrocities from tyrannical governments, after the waterfalls of blood flowing from more than two billion abortions worldwide, after the sins that have destroyed so many families, after so much physical and sexual abuse, after lengthy crime logs in newspapers every day, after the scourge of terrorism, after so much hurt and pain, the terrible weight of collective guilt crushes not only individuals but burdens structures and whole societies. The modern world is like one big Lady Macbeth, compulsively washing our hands to remove the blood from them, but there is no earthly detergent powerful enough to take the blemishes away. We can converse with psychiatrists and psychologists, but their words and prescriptions can only help us deal with our guilt, not eliminate it. We can confess ourselves to bartenders, but they can only dispense Absolut vodka, not absolution, and inebriation never brings expiation. We can escape reality through distractions and addictions — drugs, sports, entertainment, materialism, food, power, lust, and others — but none can adequately anaesthetize the pain in our soul from the suffering we’ve caused or witnessed. Whether we admit it, whether we realize it, we’re longing for redemption. We’re yearning for a second, third or seventy-times-seventh chance. We’re pining for forgiveness, reconciliation, and a restoration of goodness. We’re hankering for a giant reset button for ourselves and for the world. And if we can’t have that personal and collective do over, then at least we ache for liberation from the past and, like Zacchaeus or Ebenezer Scrooge, for a chance make up for has been done. We want atonement. And God responds to our age’s great desire and need for expiation with his mercy.
CNA: What fruits have you seen from this ministry so far? Have people sought you out? And, without going into too much detail, have you been able to lift any of the censures that you’ve been given the faculty to lift?
Fr. Roger Landry: Thanks be to God, there has been a lot of fruit. Some have sought me out by emails and phone calls. Bishops and pastors have brought me to their dioceses and parishes. Unfortunately, however, the decision was made not to share the names of Missionaries of Mercy publicly in a list, making it harder for those looking for Missionaries of Mercy to find them. The only reason I was found was because I did interviews about it — like this one — and people could find me in search engines. I hope that that decision will be revisited, so that it will be easier for people to put us to work.
The censures reserved to the Holy See are rather rare and are not encountered ordinarily, but I have had occasion to use those special faculties.
What’s been more helpful, frankly, has been that I know I have those faculties and can hear confessions and absolve censures anywhere in the world. Preaching retreats and leading pilgrimages can occasionally put priests in a bind, because ordinarily we need to ask whether we have faculties to hear confessions at all in different dioceses — the Diocese of Rome, for example, restricts faculties for priests to hear only their pilgrims’ confessions, not others who approach priests spontaneously — or whether we have the faculties to absolve certain censures that bishops can give to confessors in their respective Dioceses. Knowing that as a Missionary of Mercy I can hear people’s confessions anywhere in the world and can absolve any sin or censure except the illicit ordination of a bishop [the one censure restricted to the Holy See that was not given to us] makes it so much easier for me to be that “living sign of the Father’s readiness to welcome those in search of his pardon” that Pope Francis wants and every confessor desires.
CNA: This conference is the first time that the missionaries of mercy have been called back to Rome since the end of the Jubilee. What are your expectations for the meeting, and what do you hope to take back with you to your service at the UN?
I’m looking forward to being in Rome for Divine Mercy Sunday, to hear the confessions of penitents from across the world and of fellow Missionaries of Mercy. We’ll have the privilege to concelebrate Divine Mercy Sunday with the Holy Father and concelebrate another Mass with him on April 10, at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica, where I anticipate he’ll give us further guidance about how we can best help him extend Christ’s mission of mercy that is the defining characteristic of his Pontificate. I also look forward to sharing stories with Missionaries from various countries, to the three days of talks and conferences they have prepared, and hopefully to receiving more precise instructions with regard to the exercise of some of the faculties with which we Missionaries have been entrusted.
In terms of my work at the United Nations, I would say that right before Christ gave the apostles on Easter Sunday the power of the Holy Spirit to absolve sins in his name, he twice wished them “peace.” The most important peace of all is peace between God and the human race through the forgiveness of sins made possible by Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. Without that peace, no other durable peace is truly possible. I hope that my days focused on receiving, pondering, celebrating, and sharing that peace through the forgiveness of sins will strengthen me as I return to labor for peace among nations!
