Pope Leo XIV Preaches the Virtue of Magnanimity to Priests
National Catholic Register, 27 June 2025
Catholics belong to a communion of Christian disciples, and the challenge is to be agreeable even when disagreement is necessary.
It has been clergy week in Rome, with the Jubilees of Seminarians, Priests and Bishops being celebrated, culminating with the ordination of more than 30 priests from around the world by Pope Leo XIV on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
All reports characterized the mood as upbeat, even euphoric — a fresh breeze accompanying the arrival of a new Pope. Where past years sometimes brought papal criticism of bishops and priests, this week offered encouragement and challenge.
Pope Leo XIV’s addresses included the usual exhortations for such occasions, but two things stood out to me: human attractiveness and magnanimity.
In part, that was because, earlier this month, I had the grace of witnessing a young man — whom I baptized as an adult, who worked with me in our campus chaplaincy, who was a student in my honors economics seminar — ordained a priest. Dominican Father Basil Burroughs invited me to place the priestly stole and chasuble upon him after Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney concluded the prayer of ordination. Ten years after baptizing and confirming him, I had the joy of vesting him as a priest.
Days before his ordination, I asked him about his hopes for his priestly ministry. He related two things, the first of which was suggested to him and his classmates during their retreat before ordination: “to be an agreeable instrument in the hands of the Lord.”
The retreat master had suggested to them that they be “agreeable” to the designs of Providence. There are plenty of biblical examples of disagreeableness in that regard, at least initially, as was the case, for example, with Moses and Jonah.
Yet I took it a different way — as did Archbishop Fisher when I related the story to him. We both thought that agreeableness was a much-desired quality for priests today, in a world that is very disagreeable. Indeed, the digital world promotes disagreeableness as a perverse good in itself. There are even parts of Catholic discourse that consider agreeableness to be soft and weak, preferring instead harsh denunciation. For Catholics, who belong to a communion of disciples, the challenge is to be agreeable even when disagreement is necessary; all the more so for priests, who have a special duty to promote communion.
Harmony is not the same as communion, and agreeableness does not always promote harmony; but, in general, the agreeable priest attracts others, brings out the good in them, promotes harmony and fosters communion. In that context, the challenges of discipleship — conversion, witness, evangelization — can be proposed more effectively.
Speaking to seminarians on Tuesday, Leo told them that they should manifest “Christ’s gratitude and gratuitousness, the exultation and joy, the tenderness and mercy of His Heart, to practice a style of welcome and closeness, of generous and selfless service, allowing the Holy Spirit to ‘anoint’ their humanity even before ordination.”
An “anointed” humanity would be agreeable and attractive, even amid differences. In his message to priests for today’s solemn feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, also observed as the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests, Leo again presented the picture of a priest whose relatability fosters communion even in a media environment of passing agitations.
“Building unity and peace … calls for the ability to understand and interpret complex situations, and to rise above immediate emotions, fears and the pressure of passing fashions,” the Holy Father wrote. “It means providing pastoral solutions that generate and regenerate faith by building good relationships, bonds of solidarity and communities in which the style of communion shines forth.”
The second thing the soon-to-be Father Basil told me was that he desired to be “magnanimous” in his priesthood, perhaps with some great venture in his native Canada or in Asia (his mother is from Singapore). Perhaps I should have expected as much from a young Dominican, properly schooled in Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas; the latter interprets the former in stating that magnanimity — literally to be “great of soul” — is a virtue.
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