Hey everybody,
It’s the feast of Blessed Yaaqub El-Haddad, and you’re reading The Friday Pillar Post.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Two things, actually:
“Today’s the feast of St. Josemaria Escriva, JD.” And you’re right. But a lot of you already know about him, and I want to tell you about this other guy.
“It’s Friday, JD. We wanted Ed. We (some of us, anyway) pay for an Ed newsletter on Friday.” And you’re right. But Ed’s not here. I’ll tell you about that after the saint.
OK, so Khalil al-Haddad was the third of eight children, born in Lebanon to devout Maronite Catholic parents.
When he was 16, he got a job teaching Arabic in Egypt. He was excited to be out on his own, in a new country, experiencing some measure of a young man’s independence.
But there in Egypt, he met two priests.
One was a Capuchin, who died a good and holy death.
“Wow,” thought young Khalil, “I’d like to be a good priest like him.”
The other was a mediocre priest. We don’t know exactly how he wasn’t great: Maybe he was lazy, or intemperate, or unfaithful, or unkind. We just know what young Khalil thought of him: “Wow. I’d like to be a good priest in his place.”
That was enough to send him into religious life. He became a Capuchin at 19, and was given the religious name Yaaqub — Jacob.
He was ordained in 1901 in Beirut a priest of Jesus Christ.
He was assigned to preaching — and that’s what he did. From 1903 to 1914, he walked through much of Lebanon preaching the Gospel. He preached in Syria, and Palestine, and Iraq, and Turkey. He finagled invitations, apparently, to preach wherever he could. He faced along the way death threats and beatings, at least from time to time.
He gave away what he had, and had to write back often to Beirut for more supplies — he had given away his clothing or his knapsack.
While he walked, he had a vision: A community of Lebanese Franciscan sisters serving the poor and sick of Lebanon.
In 1919, with money people had given him over the years, he bought a plot of land. He built a church there. And he founded the Franciscan Sisters of the Holy Cross of Lebanon. At the heart of their statutes were works of mercy.
The sisters lived those works of mercy. With Fr. Yaquub, they opened a girl’s orphanage, a soup kitchen, a nursing home, and a hospital for girls with disabilities. They opened homes for the indigent. And then they opened the first psychiatric hospital in the Middle East.
Along the way, Fr. Yaquub just poured himself out. The miles took a toll on him. He had arthritis, and went blind, and then was sick with leukemia.
He became in the end, a contemplative, meditating, in sickness, on the cross.
And then at 79, on June 26, 1954, he told his brothers, “Today is my last day.”
Indeed it was.
In the afternoon, he laid down holding a cross. He murmured quietly a prayer — “the Cross of God, the love of my heart.”
Then he died, the apostle of Lebanon, given to Christ in a lifetime of living martyrdom.
May he intercede for us all.
—
Let me tell you about Ed.
Ed suffered a medical problem this week. He’s been off the whole week — laid up in bed, actually — and right now, we don’t know if he’ll be off just a few more days, or a good bit longer than that.
He’s notoriously private, you already know that. So let me say seriously that Ed is not well, and that I’m really not sure what to expect of that. I’m actually worried about him, and I’m resolved not to let him return to work until it’s good for him to do so.
In light of that, this will be a short newsletter. I was myself supposed to be off this week from work because Mrs. Flynn is away with Pia, and I’m doing solo dad duty. But instead I’ve been balancing both, as well as I can, and gladly so.
But I asked Ed what he’d like me to tell you.
Two things:
He’d genuinely appreciate your prayers.
He said — and I’m just quoting the man here — that if you want to cheer him up, he’d love for you to support our work. We run a newsstand with an honesty box at The Pillar, and it only works — it’s only viable — if people who read our news chose to pay for it. Otherwise, it’ll go under.
You can become a paying subscriber, or even increase your subscription level if you like. Now, I’m a bit afraid that might come off as opportunism, but Ed wished for me to communicate it, and I couldn’t deny a suffering man his deepest wish. I mean, really, who could?
The news
A consistory of cardinals kicked off in Rome Friday, and we’ve got a little bit of coverage for you.
Still, that happened at the January consistory, too, and most cardinals came out from that one calling their meeting a home run. Read Edgar’s analysis here.
But also troubling — when Oakley took a leave of absence last October, after facing initial arrest, he was said to leave for “personal reasons,” with no disclosure from his diocese or the Apostolic See that Oakley was facing very serious allegations.
That’s garnering some pushback from safeguarding and victims’ advocates calling for greater transparency in the Church. Here’s the story.
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A South African bishop appealed for calm this week ahead of a call from protest groups for undocumented migrants to leave the country by the end of this month.
Bishop Thulani Victor Mbuyisa, C.M.M. said that while calls for the departure of undocumented immigrants have come amid “real” concerns about the country’s economy and safety, protestors must respect the rule of law and avoid “violence, scapegoating, or threats against foreign nationals.”
Still, things are getting pretty volatile in South Africa. Read all about it.
A former IRS investigator told The Pillar that theft-by-gift-card is a problem on the rise, and requires careful attention to address.
(By the way, CBC reported this morning that the former finance director of the Society of Jesus’ Canadian province has agreed to pay back $6.5 million CAD in funds stolen from the province, along with another $2.3 million in damages and legal fees.
In their lawsuits against former treasurer Barry Leidl, the Jesuits emphasized repeatedly that they trusted Leidl, and “relied on him to fulfill his duties with integrity, honesty and loyalty.”
The trust was apparently misplaced. Which is a frequent enough occurrence in the context of Holy Mother Church, and the reason we run so many financial fraud, theft, and embezzlement stories here at The Pillar.
I started working in diocesan administration in 2007. From my very first day, I remember being told frequently that the “next scandal will be the financial one,” and that its scope and scale would “dwarf” the scope and scale of the abuse and cover-up scandals which began to emerge in 2002.
I’m still told that, frequently by bishops, and attorneys, and diocesan employees — “eventually, we’ll have to deal with a coming financial scandal.”
The thing is, the stories we report indicate that the scandal is now. That the Church is a relatively easy target of opportunity for financial crime because she is a high-trust society, administered by people with varying degrees of business sophistication, who are placed in the necessary position of trusting their employees.
Part of that reality is that Book V of the Code of Canon Law — the book which governs financial administration of the Church — is a fairly anemic set of norms for financial governance of large institutions through which a lot of cash flows. Those norms could be supplemented by something like a Dallas Charter for financial administration — a set of moral commitments among the U.S. bishops to develop consistently more sophisticated policies, to audit and publish policy compliance at the diocesan level, and to assist each other in better protecting the assets of the Church.
But there’s no mass pressure forcing that choice — nothing like the pressure bishops faced in 2002, and again in 2018, to develop more sophisticated safeguarding policies, and to revise them to address new problems. That means bishops who take a proactive approach in their own dioceses will have a very different policy and procedure from those who don’t. Which means that, predictably, there will be “high crime” hotspots within the Church, where opportunity is less carefully monitored.
The bishops’ conference is actually positioned to help address the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, that are sucked out the door by theft on an annual basis. Whether they’ll take up that challenge is another question.)
—
And finally in the news, there are some 50,000 people missing — tens of thousands may be dead — in Venezuela, where the country’s northern region was hit this week with a pair of earthquakes, the strongest in the country’s history.
Edgar Beltran spoke with bishops and Catholic aid agencies to get a sense of the situation on the ground, and how the Church can help.
And you can read about that effort here.
As I mentioned, I’d be grateful if you’d pray for Ed.
He’d be grateful if you’d consider subscribing to The Pillar.
And meanwhile, have fun for a while making weird stuff.
Making a perfect basketball team.
Please be assured of our prayers, and please pray for us. We need it.
Yours in Christ,
JD Flynn
editor-in-chief
The Pillar
Vimeo and Audible weren’t built for the New Evangelization. Annunciate was. Stop letting Big Tech profit from your content while keeping your audience data and pocketing your revenue. Launch your own content sharing platform; turnkey, fully branded, fraction of the cost. Take back control. Book a demo today.
I prayed a Chaplet of Divine Mercy out of the blue for Ed. last Friday (or recently, at least — time is a bit wibbly wobbly anymore). Guess I'll break out another one this afternoon now that This Is Not A Drill.
I had already remembered you two—and the entire Pillar community—at Holy Hour this morning but now ask the Lord, who stands outside of time, to take that past temporal act and apply it further to Ed. for his healing.
We love you, Ed. That is no secret. We love your family, too. Whatever hardships come my way will be offered for your healing and for the continuation of the Pillar.