GRATEFUL FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO EMBRACE THE WORLD!

A couple of years ago, I sat down to summarize my life in five words or less as I have experienced it so far. Believe me, weeks of intense trying to feel the emotions that summarize your life and then trying to name those emotions in five words or less is intense, but well worth it!  The four words I came up with are these "Simply Amazed - Forever Grateful." 

Knowing when I was born, where I was born and how I grew up and then looking back over all the places I have been and the variety of people I have met, I am amazed! Yes, amazed!  

I am also grateful! Yes, grateful! I am both grateful for the range of opportunities that God has offered me and I am grateful that he gave me the grace to be able to embrace many of those opportunities.  

One of the biggest blessings of my life for which I am amazed and grateful are the opportunities that were presented to me to be exposed to people of other races, cultures and religions. I call them "opportunities to embrace the world!"

I think it was going to Seminary at St. Meinrad over in Indiana that introduced me to this strange new world. For the first time in my life I was thrown into an environment that became more and more international, multi-cultural and inter-racial. It started in 1966 on a fire-escape there when I made a resolution to put myself into as many new opportunities to grow and change as I could. After several decisions to do just that here in my own country, I stumbled onto an opportunity to go world-wide! 

Below are only samples of hundreds of photos I have collected from my ministry travels where I got to meet and get to know people from various countries and ethnic backgrounds. Yes, I call them "opportunities to embrace the world."

In the summer of my second year after ordination, 1971, I made my first of five back-packing trip to Taize in France. I still don't know what possessed me to respond positively to a three-line description of an opportunity to gather with hundreds of students from around the world in an ecumenical monastery, much less return four more times. On the first trip, I had absolutely no idea what was ahead of me but I went ahead anyway! 

That's me (28 years old) in the dark blue t-shirt at Taize, France in the early 1970s

In 1983, when I was sent to Louisville to be pastor of the Cathedral of the Assumption, I embraced another scary opportunity. While there, I ended up helping start the ecumenical and inter-faith support organization called the Cathedral Heritage Foundation that later morphed into the Center for Interfaith Relations. 

That's me on the left when the Cathedral Heritage Foundation hosted the Dalai Lama of Tibet in the Cathedral, one of many interfaith leaders from around the country and the world.

After my years as pastor of the Cathedral, I ended up as a Vocation Director, the founder of the Institute for Priests and Presbyterates and a seminary staff member. Besides meeting seminarians from all over the country and all over the world, I was able to start a program called World Priest that focused on welcoming international priests to the United States and helping them acclimate to American culture. 

Here I am moderating one of the many discussions between international seminarians at St. Meinrad and international priests recruited by dioceses around the United States who attended our World Priest Workshops. 

Each year, while I was working at St. Meinrad, I would host an annual Thanksgiving Dinner for international seminarians who had no place to go for the holidays. The two typical pictures above include seminarians from around the United States, as well as Vietnam, the Philippines, the Bahamas and a couple of African countries. 

While I was working at Saint Meinrad, I paid special attention to the Benedictine monks from Togo in Africa who were studying there. Here are three of those African monks being given a tour of our Cathedral of the Assumption. I helped them with personal expenses and made sure they could afford the class trips to Rome that were offered to their graduating class right before they were to be ordained. One of those monks from Africa became the first Abbott of his monastery back in his country of Togo. 

One of the most successful programs I was able to develop while working at Saint Meinrad as founder and director of the Institute for Priests and Presbyterates was the more than 150 priest convocations I conducted in 10 countries. Below are a few pictures of the hundreds of Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops and priests I would typically meet giving week-long workshops on "presbyteral unity" in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, the Bahamas, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad. Sadly, I had to turn down invitations to Singapore, Tonga (in the south Pacific), Nigeria and India because of time and distances.  

Archbishop Pindar and the priests and deacons of the Archdiocese of Nassau, Bahamas

Pictured above are the Cardinal, Archbishops and Bishops of the Antilles Bishops Conference meeting at the Papal Nuncio's house in Trinidad. This was the second Bishops Conference I was asked to address. In Florida, I addressed the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at their spring meeting on the subject of building presbyteral unity.  

Bishop Milan Lach SJ and his priests from the Eparchy of Parma, Ohio, and myself at their Presbyteral Convocation at St. Meinrad. Most of the priests, some married, are immigrants from the eastern European country of Slovakia. 

Archbishop Neary and myself (in the middle front row) with the priests of the Archdiocese of Tuam in Ireland. We met at the hotel of the famous Knock Shrine. 

 

Cardinal Collins and myself are pictured here before Mass at one of the five convocations on presbyteral unity that I conducted for him, his priests and his seminarians in the Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada. He personally attended four of them. 

 

Pictured here is Bishop Gary Gordon of  the Diocese of Victoria in far western Canada, one of the 15 dioceses in Canada that I presented presbyteral unity material over several days.  His dog's name is "Merlin." On three separate occasions, when Bishop Gordon was the Bishop of the Diocese of Whitehorse, Canada, Merlin defended the Bishop from bears, which earned him the honorary title ‘St. Merlin’.

Bishop Gerard County and his priests and deacons of the Caribbean Diocese of Kingstown, SVG.

Bishop Peter Joseph Hundt (now Archbishop of St. John's Newfoundland) and his priests of the Diocese of Cornerbrook-Labrador in Newfoundland - at the far eastern end of  Canada

The Archbishop and one table of his priests at the priest convocation I led in the country of Saint Lucia in the Caribbean. 

In my retirement, I volunteered to serve in the Caribbean mission countries of Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines mainly. Below are a few of the people I worked with and served during my 12 trips down there. 

We did a lot of work with empowering school children in the Caribbean missions. This is a class and its teacher in St. Mary's Cathedral School in downtown Kingstown, SVG. I gathered a huge amount of school supplies for children and their teachers and raised money for scholarships to island Catholic schools. 

I was the presenter at  two one-week Deacon Training Sessions for the Diocese of Kingstown SVG. 

I got to work with Sister Nyra Ann, a Carmelite Sister, who was the administrator of St. Benedict's Orphanage. We bought quite a bit of equipment, snacks, toys, school supplies and sent a few of them to the Special Olympics in the United Arab Emirates. One Christmas, we treated all of them to a Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch and a personal shopping trip! 

We were able to raise the funds to the sponsor several SVG youth to go to World Youth Day in Poland. 

We offered three week-long "computer camps" for kids (two on the main island and one of the outer islands) and provided over 25 laptop computers to kids who had never used one before. 

With a lot of support from friends, we made sure kids on several islands got Easter Baskets every Easter. This photo was taken at the church on the island of Mayreau. 

I gathered sponsors to send down three huge shipping containers of surplus medical supplies (tons of equipment worth thousands and thousands of dollars) to the poor country of SVG from Supplies Over Seas here in Louisville. 

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a small country made up of a large island and a chain of 32 smaller

islands. This often required using small planes to get around, especially when I had to stop in Barbados on flights from Miami on my way to SVG. Many times this required stops on several islands before getting to St. Vincent. Toward the end, American Airlines offered a direct fight from Miami to SVG once a week. 

This is just a sample of the contacts I have made in the Caribbean missions. I am happy to say today that I am grateful to have friends all over the world as well as grateful for these many "opportunities to embrace the world!"