New Prior General on Leo XIV: A Pope who is also our brother

By Christopher Wells

In the first General Chapter following the election of one of their own as the Successor of St Peter, Augustinians from around the world chose American Fr Joseph Farrell as the 98th Prior General in the over 750-year history of the Order.

“When we began” the work of the Chapter “we certainly started about some themes and issues that we, as an order, will need to make priorities for the next six years,” Fr Farrell said on Monday.

“And during that process, I guess the brothers and the Holy Spirit decided to start blowing back in my direction again…”

The new Prior General was in the studios of Vatican Radio for an interview that dwelt on the Augustinian charism, the priorities of the Order and the challenges it faces in the coming years, and on the experience of having a fellow Augustinian as Pope.

Interview with Father Joseph Farrell

Vatican Radio: Father Farrell, thank you for joining us this afternoon at Vatican Radio. I think it’s your first time here at the radio…

Father Joseph Farrell: Yes, it is.

Vatican Radio: And we’ll get right into it. You’ve recently been elected as prior general of the Augustinians. Can you tell us about your reaction at the election at the General Chapter?

Fr Joseph Farrell: Thanks for this opportunity to be with you, Chris. It’s really an honor to be here.

I’ve had the privilege of living in Rome and working with the Augustinians as vicar general for 12 years, and for probably the past two years, I kept saying 12 years is long enough, right, that perhaps we could, as an order, look to some of the areas that have not been represented fully on the General Council or areas where we’re growing now. And I don’t know if it was an excuse for me to say, this is my exit, to go back to the States or… But for the past two years, I had been kind of working on that, and then people kept saying to me, ‘Just be open to what the Spirit is calling us to do’. So that became my prayer after a while: Holy Spirit, help me to be open to what you’re calling us to do as an order at the General Chapter.

When we began, we certainly started talking about some themes and issues that we, as an order, will need to kind of make priorities for the next six years. And during that process, I guess the brothers and the Holy Spirit decided to start blowing in back to my direction again. So I have been asked to be the prior general.

It’s not completely new experience for me because of the opportunities I’ve had to work with the former prior, General Alejandro Morales Anton. He was an excellent leader and taught me a lot about how to include others in that leadership, how to work together. So he taught us all, all of us who were on the General Council in the past. One person cannot do it all. But if we work together, communicating with each other, especially from the beginning, we can accomplish a lot of things.

Augustinian priorities

Q. And you spoke about the General Chapter. Obviously, it’s kind of a group effort, modeling… I think religious in general model synodality in their charisms and in their organization. You mentioned the priorities that you spoke about for the Augustinian Order today. Can you talk a little bit about what those priorities are as you see them, and how you can move forward with those priorities?

A. We did begin the general chapter, it was from September 1st to September 18th this past year, spending the first two days really praying together. We didn’t get down to the work yet until we prayed together. And then the next few days, spent time listening to each other.

The priorities that we developed leading up to the chapter really were five different ones, where we recognized that the information that we have as brothers, the initial formation, those just entering into our Order as well as the permanent formation, the ongoing formation. Areas where we need to spend more time paying attention, recognizing that as the world develops, so do we need to develop new ways of communicating with each other, not losing what is integral to us as Augustinians, but developing these new ways of forming our brothers as Augustinians.

Another area was the value that we have in our centers of study, especially those that center on Augustinian education, Augustinian theology, spirituality. We want to spend more time kind of evaluating what we do, where we do it, and how we could probably better serve the world as we do that.

Third area is with regard to our common life, how we live our lives together in communion, which for us, one of the basic aspects of the rule of Augustine is that we share all things in common. Even those material goods. So we spent some time really talking about how we on the community level do that, which then would grow on the provincial level, which then would grow to the general level of the order.

Fourth area are structures. How we… kind of our organizational charts, where we serve, how long we serve, who we elect to serve. All of those areas were studied with regard to our structures.

The final area was with regard to our pastoral ministry. Recognizing, certainly, community life is so important for us, but we don’t just live in community to live in community. We live in community so that we can then go forth and respond to the needs of the Church throughout the world. What are those pastoral needs now? Where are we being called to perhaps serve in new places, in new missions? Where are we called to bring to completion those places where we have served and done our best and can no longer continue? So, they were the five basic areas that we worked on during the chapter.

The Augustinians today

Q. Can you give us an idea of where the Augustinian Order is at right now? How many of you there are, what your vocations are like, where you serve?

A. In the world we have about 2,400 friars, Augustinian friars. Our Augustinian contemplative nuns also form part of the Augustinian family. And so we have about 700 Augustinian contemplative nuns around the world.

The friars that we have, we serve in 45 different countries, various ministries from education ministries, parochial ministries, pastoral counseling, missions. Some are in administration, formation ministry, peace and justice, education ministry. We do a variety…

We were founded to respond to the current needs of the Church, whatever those current needs were. So we find ourselves doing so many things in formation now. We have about 300 worldwide in various stages of formation. Of those 300, last count was about seventy of them are novices, which is really that first year – some of our provinces, it’s the second year – but that year where at the end, one makes his first commitment to live the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. So at this point, we have about 70 novices throughout the world.

It’s something. We basically have stayed just about the same since the 1960s. Where those friars are now currently living and ministering has changed in some dramatic ways. Okay. But our numbers are basically staying about the same. They might have diminished a little bit over the past six years.

Challenges facing the Order

Q. And you all certainly had a great privilege in having Pope Leo involved in your General Chapter. He spoke a couple of times, and of course, he’s an Augustinian pope. One of the things he did mention in his address, he spoke not only about the priorities for the Augustinians, but also about some of the challenges and problems that you face. Can you talk about those a little bit?

A. It was a real privilege for us to be able to have Pope Leo with us. We were joking a little bit with him because twelve years ago, he was the prior general who invited Pope Francis to come and preside at the opening liturgy, which kind of was an unprecedented thing at that time. You know, there were certainly the audiences that the religious orders would have with the Holy Father, but it he usually took place either in the Apostolic Palace here or at Castel Gandolfo.

But as Prior General, Robert Prevost had invited Pope Francis to come for the opening liturgy. So our current, our prior general at that time, Alejandro Morales Anton said, Well, let’s invite the Holy Father to join us for the opening liturgy. And he said, yes.

And he came to be with us and also came to spend some time during the chapter with us to talk about, as you had mentioned, Chris, some of those challenges, the challenges that we have in some of our more traditional places, we’ll say, where we have been for centuries, right. We’re growing older, right? Our men are growing older and are still very active, and still alive and full of energy, but yet don’t have as much energy as they had 50 years ago when they were 20 years old or 30 years old or 40 years old. So just to try to see how are we continually being called to minister to the… to respond to the needs of the Church when our men are growing older in some places.

The other challenge is on the other side. Some of our new places, we have many men coming in, and still going through those growing pains of ‘How do you organize yourselves… as a structure?’ Do we have to continue to base it on the structures that we’ve always done it that way, kind of that model? Or are there new ways of doing that? And so going through the growing pains of those new structures is also a challenge.

One of the very concrete challenges that we faced, was that in some of the traditional places, perhaps we have finances to be able to help with the formation of our men and have fewer men in formation; where some of the newer places, they have the men that want to come in for formation but aren’t necessarily financially structured to support them, either with a house of formation or the friars to be there to help them.

So we need to work together as brothers, kind of bringing into harmony what we can bring to the table. You know, what treasures we have.

The history and charism of the Augustinians

Q. And we talked a little bit before this interview about different religious orders. The Augustinians maybe are not quite as well-known as, say, the Franciscans or the Jesuits. And in fact, Leo is the first pope in history who’s come from the Augustinian order. Can you share a little bit about the history and charism of the Augustinians?

A. So certainly we have, as our spiritual founder, Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, which is now Annaba in Algeria. And he was bishop at the end of the 300s and the beginning of the 400s. So it’s the fourth and fifth century. When he died, in the year 430, it was a time of upheaval in North Africa. And there was kind of a lot of change going on. And the brothers with whom he lived – he didn’t found the Augustinian order in the four hundreds – he lived together in community, wrote a rule of life. Once he died, his brothers took him out of North Africa and he ended up in Sardinia for a while.

But that rule of life continued to be lived by various groups. And eventually, the beginning of the 1200s, there were hermits living in Tuscany. Beautiful part of our world. Those hermits were living in Tuscany and following the rule of Augustine.

So around the same time as Francis forming the Franciscans; Dominic Guzman, the Dominicans, the Church, it was Pope Innocent IV at that time, recognized that there was value in coming together. And so he had asked those hermits to find others who were living that same lifestyle and to come together. That was the year 1244.

Eventually, by 1256, Alexander IV was Pope, and he had asked those who were coming together, ‘All right, let’s officially kind of declare the Order of Saint Augustine’. Actually, the beginning was the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine. And we became an order in 1256.

Q. What’s most distinctive about your charism?

A. Our charism… I would say, certainly, our community life, that we value to live together in communion, in harmony with each other. We learn from the Psalms ‘how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony’. So we take that as really valuable for us. And what we’re doing is we’re imitating that first Jerusalem community, from the Acts of the Apostles, Acts [chapter] 4, when those believers came together, deciding to share everything in common, their very lives, the very heart, their material goods, recognizing that we’re all on this journey to God. So that’s probably the root of our charism community life.

But as I mentioned a little bit before, we don’t do that simply to live together in community, right? We do that so that we can kind of energize each other, to then respond to the needs outside of community, to work in our world, minister in our world, be evangelists in our world: to bring the Gospel message to the world.

The first Augustinian Pope

Q. In fact, we mentioned that Pope Leo was the first Augustinian pope. What do you see as the significance of having a pope from your order to head the universal Church?

A. It’s certainly a moment of pride, which hopefully doesn’t go into the sinful pride part, but certainly a very family pride. You know that that he’s one of our brothers who has been chosen to lead us. You know, every time he mentions he’s a son of Augustine, I know we can sit up straight a little bit straighter. And also when he mentioned Saint Augustine, he finds value in the theology and the spirituality and the ecclesiology of Saint Augustine and wants to be able to share that with the world; when he does that, that encourages us as his brothers, perhaps to study a little bit more about Saint Augustine, to kind of go back to – whether it was a sermon that Pope Leo was citing or a passage from the City of God, or the Confessions of Saint Augustine or De Trinitate – it encourages us to go back and to look more into, rather than just that line, what’s the context of that?

So we as Augustinians are learning what it means to have a pope who is also our brother.

Learning from Saint Augustine

Q. And in fact, Saint Augustine is one of the great leaders of Western Christianity, certainly, and left his imprint on the whole of the Latin Church. How do you see Augustine as being a voice, or perhaps an inspiration for the universal Church? Not just the Latin West, but also the Eastern Churches, and we might even say ecumenical communities throughout the world.

A. We can learn from Augustine that, you know, in his own lifetime, he lived during a time in North Africa, especially when – we’ll just pick one of the schisms, the Donatist schism. That was really strong. And there were kind of Donatist churches that were being built right next to the Roman Catholic churches and people kind of choosing a side. Which one are you going to go to?

And Augustine, as bishop, recognized that the only way forward is to work in union with each other. And that union must be based on a Church that recognizes that we’re all saints and sinners, and that we cannot completely purified in one church and just ignore everyone else. We have to work together – never kind of condoning, whether it’s a sinfulness or… but saying, we need to work together on that.

And I think if Pope Leo can, will learn that from Saint Augustine of recognizing the way towards unity always needs to begin by listening to each other.

Before he was Pope: Working with Robert Prevost

Q. And I’ll ask you one final question. I think a lot of people will be interested. You knew Robert Prevost before he became Leo XIV. Can you share some of your experience with the Holy Father before he became the Pope?

A. It was an honor and privilege. You know, there were different stages of my own life where I probably worked with him a little closer, and then other stages when we both would go on to different parts of ministry. And so I guess I worked with him a lot on a kind of young adult ministry, organizing these national gatherings in the United States of young adults coming from the Chicago province, which was Robert Prevost’s Province. He was provincial at the time, and I was in the province of Saint Thomas of Villanova, which is on the east coast of the USA. And those moments of collaborating in youth and young adult ministry.

I was able to study in Rome a few years ago now – over 20 years ago – and Robert Prevost was the prior general at the time. So, it was kind of his next-door neighbor. I lived in the building next door and would certainly see him as he served our order as general.

Once he moved back to Rome as the prefect of the dicastery for bishops, he lived in an apartment on his own, but found it to be a real priority to stay connected to community. And so he would come and pray every morning with us, our morning prayers, he would remain for Mass. We would celebrate Mass together. He’d go off to the office and then come back for pranzo [lunch] to share a meal with us because of the value he had in staying connected to community. That’s one of those things that I will never forget. [He was] always very respectful, realizing he was coming in as a brother, and kind of a guest, because he wasn’t living in the house. He was always very respectful of making sure that, we were able to share our life together.

Peace is possible

Q. Thank you so much, Father Prior.

Oftentimes, the interviewer kind of shapes the interview, but I always like to give our guests the opportunity to say a few words. Is there anything we’ve missed or anything you’d like to add?

A. I guess one of the areas that we talked about at our General Chapter was to be a voice of kind of a model of peace in our world, because we know we live in a world that is… there are divisions in many different areas. And if there was a voice that we could add to our world, it wouldn’t be a voice of division, but a voice calling our world from us, as individuals and in community, calling us to find a different way of moving forward. One of those ways could be the value in recognizing that we can live together in harmony. We don’t have to all be alike. We don’t have to be… everyone be exactly the same. We can all have a different aspect to bring to this harmony, but it’s possible to live in harmony without resorting to guns or bombs or weapons. It is possible, and we wanted to make that kind of clear from our general chapter.

Q. Father Joseph, thank you very, very much.

A. You’re welcome, Chris, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Q. Pleasure to have you. Thank you.

Transcription lightly edited for clarity

Father Joseph Farrell with Christopher Wells in the studio at Vatican Radio