By Thomas M. Simisky

Thomas M. Simisky, a Jesuit scholastic in his third year of theology studies at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, wrote the following reflection about his connection to Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek and his own service in Russia.

“Well, I’m not really a monk.  I’m a member of the Society of Jesus.  This is kind of a pilgrimage, encountering God as St. Ignatius might.” Thus began many conversations in Siberia this past summer when people struggled to figure me out.

Russia is overwhelmingly Orthodox, which means people are familiar with married priests and celibate monks living in monasteries. Religious life in our Western tradition is hard to grasp. The fact that I lived vowed life in community pointed towards monastic life.  However, I spent my days working with Russia’s poorest populations and my weekends socializing with friends. Plus, I smiled too much.

So the question kept arising: What was I doing in Russia and why did I even want to be there? After Jesus and Ignatius of Loyola, Walter Ciszek gets the credit.

Reading His Story

During the first year of my novitiate in Syracuse, our Novice Master asked us to choose an inspiring Jesuit saint. I came across Walter Ciszek, SJ, and immediately felt a connection.  Fr. Ciszek described himself as a tough, stubborn Pole and an unlikely candidate for priesthood. As a former Marine artillery officer, I still had many of my own rough edges.  Though not a canonized saint, he fulfilled my criteria of holiness. He clearly possessed the missionary zeal that I hoped to emulate in my Jesuit life.

I appreciated his direct style, especially the quotation: “Man was created to praise, reverence, and serve God in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next. That is the fact of the matter; you believe it or you don’t — and that is the end of it.” These words have inspired me at various times when I find myself getting down about something. I hear Ciszek’s advice as: “Tom, quit complaining. Get grateful. Put the focus back on Christ.”

After the novitiate, I spent three years in Bolivia and Chile studying philosophy. There I met a couple of Chilean Jesuits who had been missioned to Russia. I was fascinated by their stories. Later, I taught theology at Cheverus High School in Maine. Just for fun, I signed up for Russian classes through Portland’s adult education program. (Yes, Maine winters are long and one needs hobbies.)

During my second year of teaching, I discussed some chapters of “He Leadeth Me” with my senior theology classes. His story also intrigued many of my students. The consensus seemed to be, if he can find God in Soviet gulags, we should be able to find God in our lives.

Meeting the People He Loved

I am currently in my third year of theology studies at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and progressing toward priestly ordination. When I arrived, I asked to continue my Russian studies with a private tutor and to do apostolic work there during the summers.

Jesuit Thomas Simisky with Missionaries of Charity sisters.

My first summer was spent in Moscow in 2011. There I volunteered in an orphanage run by the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Theresa sisters) for children with severe disabilities.  I also helped organize books in the St. Thomas Institute library, a Jesuit school that grants bachelor’s degrees in religious studies.

On Sundays, I would attend different masses and be amazed by the enthusiasm of the Catholic community. There are only three Catholic churches in Moscow, each holding masses in various languages (Russian, Polish, French, German, Lithuanian, Spanish and English).  Every mass was standing room only and very international, the beauty of our Catholic faith.

This past summer was spent in Novosibirsk. There, the Society of Jesus runs a retreat house, as well as a pre-seminary for candidates who will move on to the diocesan seminary in St. Petersburg or the Jesuit novitiate in Poland. My task was to work with street alcoholics living at the Missionaries of Charity home. I taught a daily spirituality class in Russian to 15-20 adults whom the sisters had rescued from the streets. The rest of my day would be spent in pastoral conversations and simple housecleaning.

Another privileged encounter with Christ was the “Maly Kovcheg” (Little Ark) summer camp for adults with disabilities. This is a L’Arche-inspired community of Catholic and Orthodox volunteers who have been working together for the past 11 years. While physically challenging in many ways —  transporting patients in a rural setting and the labor involved in setting up the camp — it was a place of overwhelming joy and gratitude.

What Kind of Jesuit?

So, I’m not a monk. I am a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus as Ignatius was (General Congregation 32). St. Ignatius always referred to himself as the pilgrim and dreamed of going to the Holy Land to walk in Jesus’ footsteps.

Walter Ciszek found God in Russia, and I too have found it to be a holy land because of its people. Russians face many challenges today, much of which comes from its history and the devastating effects of alcoholism on so many families. But I am grateful to Fr. Ciszek’s spiritual guidance, pointing me East so that I too might share in the love he had for the Russian people.

Father General Nicolás told the synod that the Ignatian spirituality he was formed in encourages finding God in all things.

“I am afraid that we missionaries have not done it with sufficient depth,” he said.  Father General Nicolas also spoke about the need to enrich the universal church with the signs and seeds of God’s presence in other cultures and religions.

Father General Nicolás, who spent most of his priesthood in Japan and in other parts of Asia, said too many church members have “looked for Western signs of faith and sanctity and have not discovered how God has been at work in other peoples. This impoverishes all. We miss important clues, insights and discoveries,” he said.

“The fullness of Christ needs the contribution of all peoples and all cultures,” Father General Nicolás said. He said some of the keys to effective evangelization include:

• The simplicity of the message.
• Generosity in acknowledging the work of God in the life and history of people.
• Being aware of one’s own life as a factor of credibility.
• Forgiveness and reconciliation are the most helpful shortcuts to the heart of the Gospel.

Read the full text of Father General Nicolás’s remarks and learn more about the synod from this Catholic News Service report.

Fr. O’Malley says that one of the council’s legacies is that it gave the church “a new role as reconciler in a world torn apart by hatred and threats of violence.”

Reconciliation was one of the great themes running through the council, according to Fr. O’Malley. “The document of the liturgy, for instance, promoted a reconciliation of the church with non-Western cultures by inviting symbols and rituals from those cultures into the liturgy itself. The church thus distanced itself from the Western ‘cultural imperialism’ that affected even Catholic missionaries,” he says.

“Related to that reconciliation but perhaps even more pertinent for today’s world, was the reconciliation with Jews and Muslims, as expressed in the document Nostra Aetate. This meant putting behind us a tradition of belittling and denigrating those faiths, a tradition that had contributed to the horror of the Holocaust,” says Fr. O’Malley. “Pope John Paul II set a marvelous example by his many meetings with Jewish groups, as it is well known. Less well known, but in today’s tense international situation even more important, were his many meetings with Muslims.”

Fr. O’Malley says that Vatican II has already passed from experience and memory to history. Future generations, he says, “will experience what the council did not as a change but as ‘the way things are’ and maybe assume that is the way things have always been.”

In his op-ed piece, Fr. O’Malley concludes: “The post-Vatican II church was not a different church. But if you take the long view, it seems to me incontestable that the turn was big, even if failures in implementation have made it less big in certain areas than the council intended.”

Read the full interview with Fr. O’Malley at the Vatican Insider website and read his op-ed at The New York Times website.

His golden wings gleam. His ruby robe glitters. He looks more like a doll than a dragon slayer.

But the saint is tougher than he seems.

He defeats evil. He grants prayers. With the raised sword fastened to his hand by a rubber band, San Miguel will protect a small remnant of an ancient tribe: a people who have lived here, unseen, for 12 years.

The long-lashed, fiberglass saint is a perfect copy of the one standing in a small church 2,400 miles away. San Miguel is the patron saint of Metlatónoc, a remote mountain town in southwestern Mexico where Richmond’s Mixteco people were born. They may never go home again, so they have brought their saint here, to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Manchester.

In preparation for the saint’s arrival on this Saturday morning in late July, musicians strike up a song. Women arrive bearing bouquets of roses. A father makes the sign of the cross on his young daughter’s face with a white devotional candle, a veladora. He carries it to the front of the church, sets it in a metal stand and lights it. Other men join him, carrying candles, until the corner glows bright as a bonfire.

Around 10:30, nearly 200 people stand in the shade of a lop-limbed oak. The temperature’s already climbing toward 90 degrees. The Mixtecos sweat in their jeans and their suits and their skirts. The smell of incense mingles with perfume.

And then, it is time.

“Vamos aqui,” Jesuit Father Shay Auerbach says. Come here. Everyone crosses the street to stand outside the Sacred Heart Center, a former school that’s a nonprofit community center. Four men hoist a green canopy on poles to shade the saint. San Miguel appears in the doorway, wobbling on a white litter. Cell phone cameras are held aloft.

Auerbach asks God’s blessing on the saint. “The scripture teaches us that angels always accompany us,” he says first in Spanish, then in English. The statue will remind us, he says, that “the invisible angels guard us and protect us in our daily lives.”

The Mixtecos know what it feels like to be invisible.

There are more than 1,000 of them living in Richmond, clustered in houses off Jefferson Davis Highway. You’ve probably never noticed them. And that’s exactly the way they want it.

“They’re a world unto themselves,” Auerbach says.

The Mixteco are an ancient people. Their true name is the nuu maalsavi: the people of the rain. They bowed, but did not break, under Aztec and then Spanish rule, finding sanctuary in the mountainous regions of what is now south-central Mexico.

Approximately 500,000 Mixtecos live in Mexico and the United States, mostly in California. They speak more than 25 variants of their language, which is many thousands of years old. (Almost impossible to describe, the Mixtec language sounds nothing like Spanish. Subtle changes in tone, or the addition of an accented letter, can alter entirely the meaning of a word.) They make up the third largest native population in Mexico, where there are more than 10 million indigenous people.

The Mixtecos are one of several indigenous Hispanic groups in Richmond, says R. McKenna Brown, executive director of the Global Education Office at Virginia Commonwealth University. There are the Purepecha from the Michoacán region of Mexico, and multiple groups of Mayans. Just the other day, Brown found himself speaking Kaqchikel with a surprised Guatemalan Mayan in a CVS on Midlothian Turnpike. “We are more global and cosmopolitan here than some might imagine,” he says.

Mixteco immigrants have spread across California, Utah, the South and the Pacific Northwest, dispersed as widely as blown dandelions. But their family and town connections remain unbroken, says Arcenio J. Lopez, who is Mixteco and the associate director of the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project in Ventura County, Calif.

When they leave home, they go “hand by hand,” Lopez says. They tell their friends: “I know this place, let’s go over there. I know how to move, I know how to live over there.” And that’s how 1,000 Mixtecos from one tiny town in Guerrero end up in Richmond.

Rufino Leon was one of the very first to arrive. He came here with a handful of others in 1999, seeking the landscaping work he heard was available in Richmond. After that, “he talked with other people and they all began coming,” Auerbach says, translating for Leon.

Metlatonóc, the remote mountain home of Richmond’s Mixtecos, is one of the poorest places in Mexico. With his hand, Leon traces in the air a winding road, showing how difficult it is to get there. Everyone is devoutly Catholic. Many people speak only Mixteco, not Spanish, and can’t read or write. The houses are adobe and thatch, although in recent years, money sent home has allowed some to build with cinder blocks and concrete. Influenced by their American sisters, women have begun to wear pants.

Leon talks with his relatives by phone, but “no Facebook,” he says. There are no computers in Metlatonóc. “Es tranquilo, porque toda la gente son conocidos,” he says. It’s peaceful, because everyone knows each other.

Mixtecos are perceived by Americans and other Latinos as being secretive, even standoffish. But it’s not because the Mixtecos dislike outsiders.

“We’re coming from very specific rural communities,” Lopez explains. “The only thing we saw is our own people there, and our own life, closed there. So when we’re coming to big cities, and we’re coming to these new worlds for us, it makes us feel afraid. It’s a different culture.

“It makes us feel like, ‘How I’m going to say hello? How I’m going to saycómo estás in Spanish? If I don’t know how to say it, they’re going to start laughing at me.’”

These fears extend to their children. Translating for Leon, Auerbach says “they tell their kids really to stay among themselves, so that there won’t be problems. … You might play a little bit with [other kids], but that’s enough.”

The Mixtecos keep to their own small corner of Richmond. But on this Saturday, they’re stepping out.

To read the full feature, visit the Style Weekly’s website here: [Style Weekly]

In 1972, Jesuit Father John Baumann started a small training institute with the goal of supporting neighborhood organizations in California. What eventually came from this idea was the Pacific Institute for Community Organizations, now known as the PICO National Network. And, his desire to help local organizations has grown to a national outreach program, which has helped more than a million families and 1,000 congregations from 40 religious denominations. PICO has successfully worked to increase access to healthcare, improve public schools, make neighborhoods safer, build affordable housing and redevelop communities. Because of his work on problems facing urban, suburban and rural communities, Fr. Baumann sat down with the National Catholic Reporter to share his perspective on the U.S. economy today.

NCR: From your long-term perspective, what do you make of all that’s going on in the U.S. today regarding economic disparity, Occupy movements, etc.?

Baumann: I’d say that many Americans believe that the American Dream, also known as “America is the land of opportunity,” was once true, but it doesn’t hold anymore. Every previous generation has really known America as the land of opportunity, where children were expected to do as well or better than their parents. Yet, today we find our nation in a crisis, with record levels of poverty, the rising inequality and worsening predictions for our children’s future.

What is really troubling to me is this whole gap between the rich and the poor that has been growing over the past 20 years or more. It’s not an aberration; it’s a result of deliberate choices. It seems like that over the last 40 years, a series of economic choices have really redistributed the income upwards and as a result of that, it provided less and less opportunities to everyone else. All this has led to the financial stress on our families, and really it’s something that hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression.

When you started PICO years ago, did you ever imagine that this discussion of income inequality would be happening today?

When I started PICO, then, as now, I saw organizing as a way of responding to people’s pain. Organizing was a means of giving people an opportunity to express their values and their faith by forming faith-based organizations that gave them power to act, to bring about change so that their families would have a better quality of life. Today, organizing continues to respond to people’s pain, especially what we’re discussing — the results of inequality and class warfare. People want to make a difference. I often thought that if our elected officials were doing their job, responding to the needs of people, there’d be no need for organizing. Organizers would be out of a job. We really expect a government that works for everyone, not just for the powerful. So today I would say faith-based organizing is needed more than ever. People want to make a difference. They want their children to do as well as or better than their parents.

Are you happy with today’s discussion, that people are discussing it more in everyday conversation?

Again, it demonstrates to me the need for faith-based organizing. The faith community has a pivotal role for people to express their faith through action. The people, I believe, were inspired by their faith to seek, to unify people to reduce poverty, to bring about justice. Again, it’s about taking our faith into action, and it’s about challenging our elected leaders to put first the needs of families and the common good of our nation. People want to remake America into a land of opportunity for all people. I think this discussion continually highlights the importance of people uniting and coming together. And really, what all this means is people want a fair tax code that insists everyone pay their fair share, people want an increased access to health care, they want to end the foreclosure and underwater mortgage crisis, comprehensive immigration reform policy with a path to citizenship, strong federal action, I believe, to end the mass incarceration of people of color — these are things that people just have always wanted. They have wanted a better quality of life for their families.

What is your assessment of what is happening with all these protests and speaking out: Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

I’m thinking in terms of the fact that I’m a clergyperson, and think in terms of and also the role of clergy that play such an important role in faith-based organizing. It seems to me that many Americans long for a stronger moral leadership from churches and clergy regarding what’s going on in our country, especially the economic problems. I’d like to think of it in terms of just as God called the ancient prophets in our scriptures to condemn injustices, I think we, too, as clergy and through our community organizations must speak out when we see the unchecked greed of wealthy elites and the corrupting influences of powerful special interests. I think it’s important that we speak out, not only as clergy but through our faith-based organizing that we speak out.

Do you think the clergy are doing that today?

Through PICO we’re making a strong effort to reach out to clergy across our network to do this. We have actually put that in motion, to give clergy an opportunity to sign onto what we’re calling a prophetic voice for our country. If you go to our website, there’s the statement that clergy have put together that we’re anticipating getting 20,000 signatures to this prophetic voice statement, a call to action as we’re calling it.

Any other comments?

I keep getting back to, again, many Americans believe that the American Dream, which is “America is the land of opportunity,” that was once held true doesn’t anymore. And that it’s very important that we don’t sit back. We need to speak out and do something about it.

[PICO Network]

The award is one of the chapter’s highest honors and, as the name suggests, recognizes “public servants who perform fairly, impartially and courageously.”

“I do feel honored. The NAACP is a pioneering civil rights group,” Urmston said. “Sometimes we over-emphasize the individual and don’t recognize the contribution everyone makes to the common good. Even if they think they are only doing something insignificant, we’re all in this together.”

Urmston is a Cincinnati native who left for the service at age 17 and taught and worked briefly in Detroit before returning.

“We live in two Cincinnatis,” Urmston said. “One is in the basement. The other is on the top floor, and if it’s not on the top floor, it’s not in the basement.”

Urmston sees the differences between the two as a schism emblematic of  issues around the country.

“It’s counter-productive,” said Urmston, professor emeritus of Peace and Justice at Xavier, where he founded programs such as the campus shantytown in solidarity with the homeless. “We need to learn compassionate listening with people we disagree with.”

Urmston is a World War II veteran who served in Patton’s Third Army, fighting in three major European battles – the Rhine, Ruhr and Bavaria – before serving a year in the Philippines.

“With God’s help, I was able to draw good from evil,” Urmston said. “Despite many years of repressed memories, instinctively I got my passion for peace and justice. I value freedom.”

In 1995, the Jesuits came together in their General Congregation to broaden the understanding of the Society’s mission, to include the proclamation of the Gospel and the evangelization of culture. Recognizing that that Jesuits today carry out their mission in a world of ecclesial and religious pluralism, this past September, Jesuits from around the globe came together in Rome, to discuss the future and expansion of this mission.

Mindful of this, Father General Adolfo Nicolás reorganized the Jesuit Curia’s one-man secretariat for ecumenical and interreligious affairs, appointing eight Jesuits from around the world who would meet with him every September for three years to advise him on shaping Jesuit mission in these areas. The most recent meeting included discussions that were wide-ranging, covering topics such as; new challenges to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, how those from different religions might find ways to pray together or in each other’s company, how to encourage dialogue with indigenous and traditional religions, and how to prepare Jesuits for engagement with all these issues.

A number of suggestions were made, among them, finding ways to encourage young Jesuits to prepare themselves for teaching and entering into dialogue with Asian and African religions, the need for a Center for African Studies or study center in Rome for relations with Muslims, that the Society needs a new Ratio Studiorum to train Jesuits for ministry in today’s religiously pluralistic world.  In philosophates and/or theologates there should be a basic, required course in ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, as well as courses on Protestant and Orthodox churches as well as a basic course on world religious, including traditional or indigenous religions.

One of the most interesting moments in the course of the meeting was a presentation by Monsignor Juan Usma Gómez from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on the growth of Pentecostalism today.  He said that Pentecostalism in its various forms—classical, charismatics in mainline churches, and Neo-Pentecostals—represents some 600 million Christians today.  He repeated a line often heard about the Church in Latin America: the Catholic Church chose an option for the poor, but the poor chose Pentecostalism.  There is much that Catholics can learn from Pentecostals.  They are very much a missionary movement, something often lost in the mainline churches, and they challenge Catholics to rediscover our own spiritual treasures.  In his closing remarks Father General said that ecumenism and interreligious dialogue were among those frontier areas where Jesuits do their work today.

Founded more than a decade ago by Jesuit Father Jeff Puthoff and the pastoral teams of several local parishes, Hopeworks ‘n Camden is a transformative and holistic ministry of empowerment for the youth of inner-city Camden, which offers technology training and job opportunities, coupled with academic support and formation.

Jesuit Father Tom Greene, Secretary for Social and International Ministries at the Jesuit Conference (SIM), SIM Policy Director John Kleiderer and SIM Programs Director Amy Newlon were privileged to visit with Fr. Puthoff, the staff and youth of Hopeworks. Below are their reflections:

Under Puthoff’s leadership, Hopeworks has evolved in its ten-years of existence, expanding its programs to offer not only technology training but also comprehensive “literacy” programs that help youth complete high school, and get into college.  The technology and literacy programs are augmented by a counseling and formation program that helps young people to overcome barriers which impede their success.  Amy Newlon, Director of Programs for SIM, was very impressed with how adaptive Hopeworks is in its programming.  “Hopeworks saw that there was a critical need affecting the youth they serve – unsafe, insecure, or unsupportive housing with limited personal space.   As such Hopeworks opened a new residential community – the C.R.I.B. (Community Responding In Belief ) that provides a safe, respectful, celebratory and structured atmosphere where Hopeworks youth can and do succeed.”

Puthoff told the visiting delegation that the vision of Hopeworks is to empower youth to “identify and develop their D.R.E.A.M.S. – Dynamic, Realizable Efforts to Attain and Maintain Success” and thus create hope for their futures.

Fr. Greene, in reflecting upon the visit, said that direct ministries of accompaniment and service like Puthoff’s are important to the Society of Jesus because “direct contact with the poor and excluded is the challenge of solidarity called for by the Assistancy Strategic Discernment (ASD) Process and GC 35 – a solidarity that is mutually transformative and flows from the Gospel call to accompany the suffering.  It’s critical to the mission of the Society for Jesuits to be in places like Camden.”

For John Kleiderer, SIM Policy Director, the visit was an opportunity to enhance the domestic poverty advocacy work of the Conference:  “At a time when human-needs programs are facing the threat of extreme budget cuts, it was important to hear from Fr. Jeff, the staff and the youth of Hopeworks on the importance of programs such as Pell grants which make college possible for youth living in poverty.” The SIM delegation invited Puthoff and the youth of Hopeworks to come to DC to visit the Jesuit Conference and to accompany them on advocacy visits to Capitol Hill.  Said Kleiderer “It is important for lawmakers to listen to the poor, and to hear directly from youth about how federal programs can make a difference in the lives of real families and communities.”

As Fr. Jeff bid the SIM delegation farewell, a young woman participating in the Hopeworks program came running up to the door of the C.R.I.B., clutching her newly earned G.E.D., excited to tell the staff of her success.  It was another hopeful day in Camden.

Fr. Madigan, a native of Australia with a doctorate in Islamic religion from Columbia University, said theological study of Islam is also important in helping Christians and non-Christians better understand their own faith.

“When we talk about theology among ourselves we adopt a kind of a language and we’re so used to doing it, we don’t challenge each other on it,” Madigan said. “We don’t realize how weird it sounds to people who grew up in a different faith.”

Establishing an interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Islam, and among all world religions, is an important step towards greater accountability and acceptance, according to Madigan.

Read more about Madigan at the Georgetown University website.

Fr. Schatz’s presentation was part of a series of conferences on the theme of “Conversion: A Change of God? Experiences and Reflections on Interreligious Dialogue”, launched by the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies of Religion and Culture (ISIRC) at the Gregorian University.

Speaking on the Chinese mission founded by Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci and carried out in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, Schatz stressed that the scope of the Jesuits, in the beginning, was aimed at earning credit with the upper echelons of society. They wanted to gain the trust of the court and the emperor, who were the ones who shaped an official interpretation of religious rites. The novelty of Christianity, presented by the Jesuits to the Chinese, was that every man can have a direct and immediate relationship with God. This was a message unheard of in a country where only the emperor could make sacrifices to heaven.

Ultimately, their mission had a much farther reach. Korea is a unique example in the history of Christianity of a local church starting not through preaching, or direct personal contact with missionaries or Christians, but through literature. Here, the Christian faith got on its feet towards the end of the 18th century because a group of Koreans read Ricci’s book on the teaching of the Lord.

H2onews, a Catholic news service that distributes multimedia in nine languages, has more on Schatz’s presentation at the Pontifical Gregorian University here.