Philadelphia, City of Fatherly Love

Philadelphia, Pa. — “He’s accessible.”

Lizanne Pando and I are talking about the upcoming international ecumenical congress to be held in Philadelphia, the World Meeting of Families, Pope Francis’s reason for coming to the United States later this month. And, in doing so, she can’t help talking about her boss, the archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput.

“He answers e-mails. He’ll give you advice. He’ll tell you what he’s thinking. He is very dedicated to communication.” She adds: “He doesn’t always give you the answer you want to hear, but what good father does?”

She explains: “He’s done a lot of structural changes that were not easy tasks. He’s very consistent . . . thoughtful . . . and his focus is very much on the poor. He just does it. The Church here does it.”

Pando is director of communications for the World Meeting of Families, but she’s telling me this not as part of her job so much as from her heart, as a cradle Catholic from Philadelphia, a daughter of immigrants. She’s a grateful daughter who can’t really believe she has been able to spend the past year or so focused on faith and family — the things most important to her in life.

The city of Philadelphia is buzzing in its preparations to welcome the pope to town — as you can see from the new pop-up store in Center City whose windows are lined with bobblehead pope dolls — and the Church in Philadelphia is in the final days of preparing for the meeting that will bring together Catholics from around the world. Love Is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive is the theme of the week and the title of the book put together for study and discussion. In a nutshell, “Love is our mission, and it is by loving God and one another that we will be fully alive.”

Love Is Our Mission quotes Pope Francis: “Promising love for ever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the one we love.” It adds: “But we live in a time of deep worldly skepticism about any ‘bigger plan’ or higher meaning to human experience. For many people, the human person is little more than an accident of evolution; carbon atoms with an attitude. In other words, for many people, we have no higher purpose than whatever meaning we create for ourselves.”

But there’s more to life. We are “created for joy.” If that sounds unreasonable or unattainable, don’t walk away just yet. The book quotes Pope Francis again: “To those who suffer, God does not provide arguments which explain everything; rather, his response is that of an accompanying presence, a history of goodness which touched every story of suffering and opens up a ray of light. In Christ, God himself wishes to share this path with us and to offer us his gaze so that we might see the light within it.”

It’s that “accompanying presence” that the World Meeting of Families seeks to make available in an inviting, concentrated way. “We’re bringing all kinds of issues together, and we’re talking about them, and we will learn from each other,” Pando tells me.

“Pope Francis has been talking about little else but the family since becoming pope,” Pando observes. Indeed, the very afternoon that she and I were meeting, a new link appeared in my inbox about the pope’s most recent comments, in which he called the family the “vital cell of our societies . . . in the difficult current cultural context.” He encourages married couples to “be instruments of the mercy of Christ and the Church toward those whose marriage has failed. Never forget that your conjugal fidelity is a gift from God, and that mercy has been shown to every one of us. A united and happy couple can understand better than any other, from within, the harm and the suffering caused by abandonment, betrayal, and a lack of love. It is necessary, therefore, that you bring your witness and your experience to help Christian communities to discern the real situations in which these people find themselves, to welcome them with their wounds, and to help them to journey in faith and in truth, under the gaze of Christ the Good Shepherd, to take part in the life of the Church in an appropriate way. Nor must you forget the unspeakable suffering of the children who experience these painful family situations.”

Pando echoes this, talking about the World Meeting in the City of Brotherly Love: “I think this will give the opportunity for every family to tell their story. When you have this level of energy and attention to something, what you put in comes out. There will be a focus on prayer, Church doctrine, struggles of families. I think people will be surprised at the reactions of their own families, of their Church families, of their school families, of their work families.

“I can’t tell you how many people thank us — people who come to the World Meeting of Families office and work there,” she says. “They’ve never been in an office before where people so freely pray. They are so freed by that — that they are allowed to. I think families will feel that freedom.” She tells me that 17,000 people are registered for the meeting. “They will pray together. Listen together. Talk together. Serve together, making food for the poor. Play together.”

The Pope Francis bobbleheads don’t begin to tell the story of the excitement in the air. For Philadelphia Catholics, there is gratitude.

“They have been through a lot of tough stuff, and they are delighted to be able to host the Holy Father,” Pando tells me. “They are generous, and they are joyful.” If you’re a Philadelphia Catholic and are not going to the art museum for the pope’s Mass, or lining the streets waiting for him to pass by, you might be watching on TV with friends and family in your local parish church — or at the magnificent Miraculous Medal Shrine. I’ve heard the visit described as a family reunion — the Church family, which welcomes all.

Some of the “tough stuff” includes scandal about abuse committed by priests, and Pando expresses her sorrow for the victims of unspeakable crimes — which mercifully came to light. They’re in a much healthier, safer place now.

For a people of passion, rooted in their parishes, who felt betrayed, this is a time of healing.

Pando tells me about a woman who goes to the Miraculous Medal Shrine every week. She cries at the foot of a replica of the Pietà and leaves her burdens there, with Jesus and Mary. She stands up after her prayers and does her best to go on, relying on the grace of God.

Pando observes: “There is a lot of sorrow. There’s illness. Personal attacks. Loss of loved ones. Loss of jobs. Loss of homes. Addictions.” Families face so many struggles beyond the religious-freedom clashes that make most of our headlines about marriage and family these days. “And in Pope Francis, they see a religious leader they can relate to.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” she adds, describing his attempts to bring people together. May we join him. Not just as a political matter, but in our daily lives.

In a highly polarized political atmosphere about marriage and family, can he do this? Can he help bring civility to our conversations and debates and peace to our hearts? It won’t take a miracle — just listening to a father who may say what we need to hear, as challenging as that may prove to be. There’s hope there.

“It’s going to be amazing,” Pando joyfully and confidently insists. See the faith of the people of Philadelphia. And meet the families! They might just help us all.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review Online. She is co-author of the new revised and updated edition of How to Defend the Faith without Raising Your Voice (published by Our Sunday Visitor, which also published Love Is Our Mission). This column is based on one available exclusively through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association. Lopez is a co-founder of Catholic Voices USA, which has been working with the World Meeting of Families and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in preparation for the pope’s visit.