Editor’s note: Following the death of Pope Francis on April 21, 2025, the editors of Where Peter Is received many tributes to his life and reflections on his influence from past and current contributors, as well as podcast guests and friends of the site from all over the world. We will publish a few of these reflections every day leading up to the conclave. —ML
We shared the same far horizons
Recently, since the death of Pope Francis, various contributors to Where Peter Is have shared their thoughts on him and his teaching and how he has affected their lives, sometimes quite profoundly. It is encouraging to see the effect of one man’s love of Christ and His Church as it ripples through the lives of ordinary Catholics.
I am coming late to share my thoughts, partly because I didn’t know what I should write, but mostly because I didn’t want to scandalize WPI’s readers by admitting that Pope Francis had no real effect on my thinking and spirituality.
His actions and decisions had a tremendous effect on my life, because it was the attacks on his documents concerning contemplative nuns that caused me to start writing for WPI and other sites. I am tremendously grateful to Mike Lewis for giving me a platform from which to set the record straight on the documents Vultum Dei Quaerere and Cor orans and their effect on the lives and charisms of contemplative nuns. Mike’s openness and support has continued even when I branched out into other areas of the spiritual life.
The writing and publishing of these articles has had a profound effect on my way of thinking because it forced me to clarify and hone my own thoughts. But though Pope Francis was the catalyst of this new development in my life, he really didn’t change anything in my way of thinking or in my spirituality.
I hope that this admission doesn’t upset anyone because the reason is quite simple: we shared a similar way of seeing spiritual matters, we swam in the same waters, we very much shared the same far horizons.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Francis was a Jesuit, I am a Carmelite. Francis, for all his pastoral experience, was formed in Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius was deeply influenced in his spiritual discernment by the Fathers of the Desert. Carmelites began as hermits, like the Desert Fathers, and though the Carmelite Friars became more active in their pastoral ministry, the spirituality of Carmel has remained very influenced by the traditional eremitical formation.
On a more personal level, one of Francis’s favorite saints was St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower. One of my favorite saints is the Jesuit, Peter Favre [i](or Faber), one of the original seven companions of Ignatius of Loyola, and, being the only priest of the seven at the time, the one who said the Mass at their profession of vows. As a Jesuit, Peter Favre had much experience of the supporters of the Protestant Reformation, and an astonishing effectiveness in his interaction with the Reformers and their followers. A fellow Jesuit, James Lainez, asked Peter for advice on the best way to interact with the Protestants. Peter gave him these suggestions:
The first thing to keep in mind is that if anyone would be of help to the heretics in this day and age, he must look upon them with great charity and love them in truth. And he must close his mind to all thoughts that would tend to lessen his affection for them. The second thing to be remembered is the need of gaining their good will so that they in turn shall love and think kindly of us, This can be accomplished by dealing with them in a friendly way on those subjects about which we are in agreement and by avoiding those disputed points in which one side might give the impression of lording it over the other. Rapprochement should be established with them in those areas in which there is concord between us rather than in those which tend to point up our mutual differences.’
The man who has the knack of speaking with the heretics on holiness of life, virtue, prayer, death, hell, and those other truths closely related to moral reawakening, will accomplish far more good with the heretics than the man who, armed with the pronouncements of authority, makes it his aim to confound them. Briefly then, these people are in need of being counselled and encouraged to embrace a high code of morality, to rise to the fear and love of God and an appreciation of the dignity of good works as their best safeguard against the spiritual languor, the coldness, the dissipation of mind, the disgust with spiritual things, and in fact, all those evils with which they are afflicted and which in the main do not arise in the understanding… .
To another religious, Peter wrote, “I find that here in Germany a great number of people are returning to their first faith and are beginning to open their eyes to the fact that the heresies of the age are proving to be nothing else except a dearth of piety, humility, patience, chastity and charity.”[ii]
Peter Favre died in Ignatius’s arms on August 1, 1544, at the age of thirty-eight and in 1872, he was beatified by Pope Pius IX. On December 17, 2014, I was delighted to learn that the first Jesuit Pope also appreciated the pastoral wisdom of his spiritual forefather, for Francis waived the need for a second miracle and canonized Peter Favre. Anyone who wants to understand the style of Francis’s spiritual outreach should study the life and spirituality of St. Peter Favre.
If you would like to add your own reflection to this series, please send it via email by clicking on the “Article Submissions” tab above, with the subject line “Reflection.” The recommended length is 200-300 words. Longer submissions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and may be subject to editing. We may not be able to publish all submissions.
Notes
[i] https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/16th-and-17th-century-ignatian-voices/blessed-peter-faber-sj/
[ii] All quotes are from “To The Other Towns – A Life of Blessed Peter Favre, First Companion of St. Ignatius” by William V. Bangert, S.J.
Image: Vatican Media
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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