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Friday, March 29, 2024

Pope’s newest encyclical calls Catholics to move beyond donation box to true encounter

On Oct. 3, Pope Francis released “Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship.” He drew the title from St. Francis’ address to his companions, “All brothers.” In an e-mail interview, Adam Fitzpatrick, social mission outreach coordinator in the Center for Mission in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, reflected on how the core of the pope’s third encyclical affirmed and challenged local Catholics. Fitzpatrick joined the Center for Mission in 2018. His newly created position includes being the diocesan director for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and Catholic Relief Services. He is also responsible for social justice ministry in the archdiocese, which currently includes leading the Archdiocesan Care for Creation Team, supporting the Twin Cities Prison Ministry efforts and involvement in the Archdiocesan Day of Prayer and Penance for the Sin of Racism and to Promote Racial Justice, held Dec. 2.

Q) Last month, Pope Francis released his second encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship.” He drew the title from St. Francis’ address to his companions, “All brothers.” In your reading of the letter, what did you take away as Pope Francis’ main message?

Adam Fitzpatrick

A) Pope Francis’ main message in “Fratelli Tutti” is the hope for humanity to be more connected than they currently are. The early portions of this document emphasize the great challenges we have due to COVID-19 and the digital age in terms of being truly present to others. Consumerism causes greater distance because we fill our lives with things and not with the relationships; we need to flourish as human persons. However, in the midst of these challenges, Pope Francis has profound hope that we can find a global solidarity that includes all people.

Q) What implications does that message have for the social responsibilities of our local parishes and individual Catholics?

A) The basic implication is we have to work harder to make sure no one is invisible in our parishes, even if they are different from other people in our parish communities. We have to examine who is included in our ministries and who is sitting at the back of the church wondering if we care about them at all. As Catholics, we also just need to be more sensitive and attentive to the world around us. His meditation on the parable of the Good Samaritan in Chapter 2 is challenging us to become less indifferent to the suffering around us.

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Q) You have written that the hallmarks of ideal parish ministry activity are mutuality and encounter. Why is that? How does “Fratelli Tutti” speak to that?

A) If ministry is just about my personality and the vision I want to bring to others, then the wisdom of the community to solve their own challenges is lost and I am disempowering the community. A focus on mutuality and encounter opens our hearts for wisdom to flourish from every seat at the table. In my approach to ministry, I seek to raise up leaders who understand the diverse communities of our archdiocese and they can work as a team to think about the ways to bring forth an ideal social ministry activity in their own community. “Fratelli Tutti” challenges us to think about the poor and why they are poor. The poor know what systems they are locked out of and are people just like those who have been given more fortune and have gifts of wisdom and intelligence to better their own lives.

Q) Last summer, you worked with Savannah Willard, a Catholic Campaign for Human Development research and outreach intern at the Center for Mission, to survey Catholic parishes to learn about their social outreaches. What was the purpose of the survey?

A) The purpose of the Parish Social Ministry Survey was to guide the direction of my ministries by getting a baseline understanding of what was occurring in the parishes. I wanted to plan initiatives but was not sure which initiatives would be well received by parishes or where parishes felt they might need more support. I also wanted to respect subsidiarity in my programming and the survey would help me see where there are holes which could be filled.

Q) What did you learn?

A) We have many generous volunteers, staff and priests in our community who give a lot of time and energy for various volunteer food shelves, community meals and fundraisers. This is our greatest area of strength. We also have many infrastructure challenges when it comes to developing social ministry for the future because of the challenges of maintaining funding for staff social ministry positions in parishes.

Q) How does “Fratelli Tutti” affirm our parishes’ current social ministries?

A) “Fratelli Tutti” would affirm our willingness to collaborate with a variety of nonprofits and ecumenical relationships to provide some relief for the hungry in a decent percentage of our population. It also affirms our willingness to create organizations which serve the common good as our archdiocese has plenty of examples, with CommonBond being the most prominent, of ministries which started in parishes and then became a separate nonprofit as they grew.

Q) In what ways does “Fratelli Tutti” challenge parishes and individual Catholics?

A) “Fratelli Tutti” challenges parishes and individual Catholics to build the sense of encounter in ministry in their own parish community. The Parish Social Ministry Survey also found that most parishes see themselves as referral agents to other organizations in doing social ministries and not doing the ministry with the whole community itself. We need to think about how we are solving the new problems facing our society and what Catholics can do to respond.

Q) What is your hope for the future of social ministries in the archdiocese, and how does “Fratelli Tutti” shape that?

A) My hope for the future of social ministries is that we rekindle some of the innovation we had in the past. We came up with many creative solutions for hunger, homelessness and the AIDS crisis, among many others. What I hope for in the future is for a greater creativity to address current and future challenges such as: climate change, labor automation and racism. “Fratelli Tutti” invites us to be moral people regardless of whether everyone else is moral or the recipients of our work are Catholic or non-Catholic. For our world to survive, there needs to be a greater solidarity amongst all peoples because the problems we face are much bigger than we have ever faced. “Fratelli Tutti” gives us a great framework for building on our tradition of solidarity.

 


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