Building bridges: What Pope Leo could mean to Augustinian unity
Moments after his election as the 267th supreme pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, introduced himself as a “son of Augustine”, and told the world that he wanted to pursue unity, peace, and communion among people in a fragmented world.
The pope’s people
Pope Leo XIV joined a rare company of pontiffs who come from religious orders. And , with the election of Leo XIV, the College of Cardinals itself completed a historic election, entrusting the See of Peter from one religious cleric, the late Jesuit Pope Francis, to another: Robert Prevost the Augustinian missionary who formerly served as the prior general of the Order of St. Augustine (OSA).
A similar papal succession has not happened in over half a millennium, when, in 1342, Pope Clement VI, a Benedictine, succeeded Pope Benedict XII, a Cistercian monk.
With one of its own as pope, the Augustinian order, like the few other religious orders who produced popes, is now uniquely positioned to mark the papacy and Catholic Church in many ways — from its governance to its members’ expressions of popular piety.
Pope Leo began unpacking the Augustinian charism — “apostolic brotherhood” — in his first urbi et orbi blessing. He presented himself in the words of St. Augustine, who said, “with you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop,” while envisioning a synodal Church in a nod to his Jesuit predecessor.
At the same moment, Leo also clearly referenced St. Augustine’s notion of civitas Dei, or city of God, when he invited Catholics to join him on a “journey together toward the homeland that God has prepared for us.”
Augustinian friars who spoke with The Pillar suggested that the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost could see the pope draw inspiration from the Church’s Augustinian religious congregations work towards unity as he seeks to build bridges between the Church and the world.
And, they say, the Augustinian pope has raised hopes for greater collaboration between the Church’s Augustinian orders.
An opportunity for internal communion
After Pope Leo XIV’s election, the prior generals of the three major Augustinian orders, the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA) Order of Augustinian Recollects (OAR), and Order of Discalced Augustinians (OAD), expressed enthusiasm for the election of an Augustinian .
Fr. Alejandro Moral Anton, the OSA prior general reaffirmed, in a statement, the communion of the order with the new pope and its commitment to the Church’s mission. Similar commitments to communion for evangelization, ecclesial unity, and world peace were shared in respective letters by Anton’s counterparts, Fr. Miguel Angel Fernandez, OAR and Fr. Nei Marcio Simon, OAD.
Currently, there are about 5,000 Augustinian friars and sisters in the world.
In a broad sense, “Augustinians” includes those who live under the Rule of St. Augustine, particularly members of the OSA, OAR, and OAD.
Before 1588, there was one primary Augustinian order, the OSA. But discouraged by scandal within the order, groups of friars separated to start reform orders, in 1588 as the OAR or Recollects, and in 1592 a group started the OAD or Discalced Augustinians.
In recent years, the three major Augustinian orders have been attempting to collaborate more. 2014 brought the publication of an Augustinian breviary that is commonly used by the three orders for praying the Liturgy of the Hours. In 2020, the prior generals started regularly meeting one another and began encouraging more inter-order meetings between friars and sisters from different orders.
These meetings suggest greater collaboration than has been seen since the OAR and OAD split from the OSA in the late 16th and early 17th century.
On its website, the OSA states that it recognizes and acknowledges its fraternal bond with religious congregations that “freely choose for themselves the Rule of Saint Augustine.”
“Some of these are named after him and imitate his manner of living; others, however, decided to live their lives simply under the inspiration of his Rule,” the order states.
“Our Order has known in the past, and even now recognizes, that it is united by a certain fraternal bond with all these congregations, and it is sincerely desirous to live in closer union with them. The Order likewise wishes to promote collaboration with other religious families who take their inspiration from the spirituality of Saint Augustine.”
Fr. Genesis Labana, who serves on the communication team at the OSA’s motherhouse in Rome, told The Pillar that Leo’s election offered him and fellow Augustinians a chance to reflect on the meaning of Augustinian communion, as witnessed in Prevost’s own life.
Communion, Fr. Labana told The Pillar, begins with “going down to the level of the people,” which, he said, the pope modeled through fellowship with Augustinian religious, even as he led the Dicastery for Bishops or was the OSA prior general.
A few days into his pontificate, Pope Leo returned to the Augustinian general curia as pope to eat lunch and meet with his Augustinian brothers.
This was no unusual homecoming, Labana said, as Prevost would frequently visit the Augustinian curia, to play tennis on the compound’s courts or celebrate Augustinian feast days.
In fact, even amid the chaotic schedule of the recent general congregations held prior to the conclave that elected him pope, Cardinal Prevost joined his religious brothers for dinner to celebrate St. Monica on May 5, the day after her traditional feast day.
But for Fr. Labana, the papal lunch reminded him of another visit with the pontiff — Prevost helped him quickly complete an Augustinian assignment.
Fr. Labana had been tasked by the Augustinian Province of Santo Niño de Cebu, Philippines, with securing from the cardinal a video message, to commemorate the closing of the 40th anniversary of the province’s founding.
“It was Dec. 31, 2024 and I asked him if he would come back the next day,” Fr. Labana said.
Labana recalled that while following up on a written request for an interview, he felt nervous to ask the cardinal for help.
But Cardinal Prevost simply asked him what to wear and where the video was to be recorded.
“I said ‘Let’s do it here, in your church,’” said Fr. Labana. He was referring to the Cappella di Santa Monica degli Agostiniani, Prevost’s titular church as cardinal-deacon, the same site where he was ordained to the priesthood on June 19, 1982.
The next day, Prevost came back to the chapel in his cardinal’s regalia and recorded a brief interview with Fr. Labana.
In the roughly three-minute video, the future pope said, “I would just simply like to remind myself and each and everyone of us of how important it is that as Augustinian religious, we recognize that we have a charism, a gift from the Spirit to offer the Church.”
“Our works are important, our apostolate is important, so many activities are important,” he went on.
“But our lives are fundamentally about being Augustinians and promoting communion and community among all the people of God.”
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Fr. Labana said he looks forward to stronger bonds among OSA, OAR, and OAD friars and women religious under Pope Leo’s leadership as excitement over the new pontificate continues to build among members of the various Augustinian congregations.
Other Augustinians told The Pillar they shared that sentiment, including a few in the sea of people who witnessed the introduction of Leo XIV to the world.
“We are happy, we are very happy because he is our brother. We are Augustinians. We are praying for him,” said Fr. Lounal Jarumay, an Augustinian Recollects serving in Rome.
Pope Leo’s reference to St. Augustine in his first urbi et orbi represented the Augustinian family’s pastoral, clerical, and religious spirit Fr. Jarumay added.
“Augustine is all about making space for people, even if they do not believe in God. For the sinners and for the just, the Church always has open doors, has open hands,” the friar said. “I guess this is also the spirit of Pope Leo XIV, to open wider the doors of the Church.”
For Fr. Harold Toledano, a Discalced Augustinian friar serving the Roman parish of San Giacomo in Augusta, the election of an Augustinian pontiff is a turning point in the Augustinian orders’ search for more ways to experience communion among the sons and daughters of St. Augustine, he told The Pillar.
Proposed papal (Augustinian) projects
These Augustinians believe that as pope, Leo XIV could help cultivate that communion by advancing some Augustinian projects.
For the past five years, the three Augustinian orders have been working together to obtain ecclesiastical recognition for St. Thomas of Villanova as a doctor of the Church, according to Fr. Toledano.
St. Thomas of Villanova, the namesake of the pope’s alma mater, Villanova University, was a Spanish Augustinian friar and archbishop of Valencia in the 1400s. He was noted for his preaching, ascesis, religious writings, criticism of bishops, and generosity that earned him popular acclaim as “father of the poor.”
Toledanos’ hope to advance St. Thomas’ cause to be a doctor of the Church during an Augustinian pontificate, appears to rest on promising precedents.
St. John Paul II, a Pole, canonized Poland’s St. Faustina Kowalska and instituted the Solemnity of the Divine Mercy based on Christ’s revelations to her. Pope Benedict XVI canonized the German Benedictine abbess St. Hildegard of Bingen and declared her a doctor of the Church. And Pope Francis canonized St. Peter Faber, co-founder of the Society of Jesus
Leo’s election has also brought within reach, for Fr. Toledano, a dream he personally expressed to Prevost during a brief meeting they had just outside St. Peter’s Square.
Fr. Toledano shared his hopes to expand the small Augustinian presence in Annaba, Algeria — the site of the ancient city of Hippo — where St. Augustine was bishop, through collaboration among all Augustinian Orders.
That was a bold proposal. The three orders have suffered an ebb in vocations in the last few decades. The work would be in a Muslim-majority country where Augustinian sisters, Blesseds Esther Paniagua Alonso and Maria Caridad Alvarez Martin were martyred in 1994.
Still, “I am not afraid,” Fr. Toledano told The Pillar.
He had been a missionary in Indonesia and also received training for ministry in Czechia and Slovakia.
Prevost’s response to his fellow friar was open-ended, but gave him hope: “If God wills it. Let us pray for it.”
Brotherly Promotions
Following the precedent of previous popes, Leo is likely to seek assistance from brothers within his own order in his ministry to the Catholic Church and the world.
Traditionally, religious orders have been perceived as reliable pools of future Church leaders. For almost half a century from 1073 to 1119, all popes were Benedictines, including St. Gregory VII (pope from 1073-1085) — a reforming pope who was invoked during the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV’s Petrine ministry — and Blessed Urban II (1088-1099).
But when Pope Francis became leader of the world’s Catholics in 2013, 167 years had passed since a religious order last produced a supreme pontiff, which was Gregory XIV, a Camaldolese monk who led the universal Church from 1831 to 1846.
Over the course of his pontificate, Francis appointed at least 8 of his fellow Jesuits to the College of Cardinals. He also assigned a number of Jesuits to important posts within the Vatican curia such as Cardinals Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer SJ as prefect of the Dicaster for the Doctrine of the Faith, Michael Felix Czerny SJ as prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Jean-Claude Hollerich SJ as general relator of the synod on synodality, and Fr. James Martin SJ as a consultor to the Dicastery for Communication.
The Augustinians are no strangers to serving the universal church. For years, priests and brothers have helped pontiffs as sacristans in liturgical ceremonies, and many friars spread Christianity in mission territories across the world during the age of colonization.
Pope Leo XIV has a sufficient pool of Augustinian candidates for possible elevation to the College of Cardinals.
Right now, there are no Augustinian’s that serve in the College of Cardinals. But 23 friars from the pope’s own order serve as bishops around the world — a reserve of episcopal brothers from which the pontiff might eventually choose as cardinals.
The order, in addition, has at least 25 provincial priors whose pastoral and administrative experience as superiors of national or international Augustinian jurisdictions could make them suitable episcopal candidates.
The last Augustinian cardinal (other than Prevost) was Cardinal Prosper Grech, founder of the Augustinian Patristic Pontifical Institute, who died in 2019. Pope Benedict XVI had given Cardinal Grech the red hat in 2012, around 111 years since the College of Cardinals last saw another, sole Augustinian friar among its ranks.
Eighteen Augustinians have served as cardinals, making their order the ninth highest number of red hats in church history. The Benedictines have the highest number of religious cardinals, 157.
Building from his foundation
History shows that a pope’s experiences in his religious order can be formative in his pastoral ministry and spiritual teachings.
As the OSA prior general, Pope Leo had the opportunity to visit places around the world where his fellow Augustinians lived and worked, Fr. Labana told The Pillar.
That has made Pope Leo deeply familiar with the situation and contexts of Augustinians who administer among others parishes, missions, shrines, universities, schools, centers of spirituality, and poverty alleviation programs in various countries.
That also means he is aware of the devastation wreaked by alleged clerical misconduct, including that leveled against 26 American Augustinian friars named by Bishop-accountability.org, an advocacy group for abuse survivors, in a database of religious workers accused of perpetrating abuse.
And according to his confreres, the pope’s Augustinian spiritual background, by virtue of his personal devotions, particular church, or religious order, will likely permeate throughout his teachings and writings to the faithful and in his initiatives.
Including in his approach to synodality.
Pope Leo at the start of his pontificate, reiterated his predecessor’s call for synodality, and committed the Catholic Church to being “synodal.”
Leo’s emphasis on fostering communion is an Augustinian turn from Francis’ promotion of synodality as a “conversations in the Spirit” epitomized in the synod on synodality. . This initiative focused on prayer, silence, and talking were a method of collective discernment that Canadian Jesuits previously developed in the wake of the Second Vatican Council’s movement for aggiornamento or updating of the Church.
The Augustinian friars who spoke with The Pillar, however, reflected on synodality, sharing that to them it means making space for people, friendship, and communion.
Beyond synodality, Pope Leo has already imbued the Church’s devotional life with an Augustinian flavor by asking for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary under a title dear to his order upon the Catholic Church
Soon after his election, Leo visited the Roman shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel, patroness of the Augustinians, whose image was enthroned in St. Peter’s Square for the Mass to inaugurate his Petrine Ministry on May 18.
On the Augustinian liturgical calendar, Fr. Labana said, Mary is also venerated as Our Lady of Grace with a feast day on May 8, the day of Pope Leo XIV’s election.
Mary, he noted, is also honored as Our Lady of Consolation, patroness of the Augustinian order.
For Fr. Labana and Fr. Toledano, Leo’s rise to the papacy is a gift to the Church through the prayers of Our Lady of Grace. Will it be a long-lasting gift to the orders who, like Leo, follow the path of St. Augustine?
That remains to be seen.
I also wonder what this will mean for the cause of the Servant of God, Fr. Bill Atkinson, who I would love to see canonized in my lifetime.
Erratum: "Pope Benedict XIV canonized the German Benedictine abbess St. Hildegard of Bingen and declared her a doctor of the Church" - Benedict XVI - the current papacy of Leo XIV makes this a challenge to not write either "XIV" or the "XVI" because of Pope Benedict!