In Augustinian Order, Pope Leo XIV Found Unity, Charity and ‘Eternal Friendship’

The cell phone of the leader of the order of San Agustín, the reverend Alejandro Moral Antón, buzzed for what seemed the hundredth time, and jumped. He had been awake from 2:30 am Fielding called, trying to explain to people around the world how his order, who formed Pope Leo XIV, would shape the papacy.

This time, he was his dentist. An appointment had been lost.

“Do you know what is happening?” He told the dentist on Monday afternoon in Rome. “The new Pope is an Augustinian!”

The sudden interest of the world in the small order of Ferthe of 3,000 members had forced Father Moral Antón, an affable Spanish, 69, to distill the spiritual principles and ideals of the Augustinians to their essence. Charity, truth and unity, recited in Latin and translated into Spanish.

Pope Leo, previously Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, is an American with Peruvian citizenship, but his identity may have molded more deeply because of his connection with the Augustinians, which was when he was 14 years old and led to his ordination. He moved to Peru as an Augustinian missionary and possible made the order for 12 years since Rome. In that position, he developed extensive international connections that helped raise his profile last week in the conclave of the cardinals who chose him.

As the first Augustine friar in becoming a pope, the Augustinians expect Leo to emphasize the missionary scope and the importance of listening widely before making decisions, both central for the Augustinian way of life.

“The Holy Father will certainly be inspired by this search for communion and dialogue,” said Pierantonio Piatti, a historian of Agustinos of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, a Vatican office. That would be combined with the concept of “synodality”, fulfilling Francis’s vision “of a church that brings together bishops and laity to make great decisions.

“The other great element of Augustinian spirituality,” added Dr. Piatti, is a “search for the balance between action and contemplation, between contemplation and action.”

In part due to their small size, Augustinian priests are a united community worldwide, and many have met Leo over the years.

“Just when we do not agree on something like politicians, we have no problem talking between us,” said Father Allan Fitzgerald, an Augustinian priest and a professor of a lifetime at the University of Villanova to the northwest of Philadelphia, I, in the image of the United States, there is certainly a swath of us who is on one side and the other.

The order was founded in 1244, when the innocent Pope IV United Groups of Hermit in service to the Church as a community of Frailes. The group committed to a poverty lifestyle, along with a mixture of contemplation and pastoral service.

The Augustinians take their name from one of the first most important theologians of Christianity, Agustín, the Bishop of Hippo, who was born in what is now Algeria in the fourth century. Perhaps he is more famous for an autobiographical work called “confessions”, which in part details his conversion to Christianity after an immoral youth.

The place of the order in the broader Roman Catholic Church was threatened by one of its most prominent members of the 16th century, Martin Luther, whose calls to the reform in the Church ended up leading to the Protestant reform.

Agustín also wrote a guide of religious life that became the cornerstone of the Augustinian order. Its members undertake to “live together in harmony, be one mind and a heart on the way to God.” Leo’s new coat of arms reflects that heritage, which shows the Latin motto “in Ilo Unum” or “in the only one, we are one.”

The Augustinians are generally much less known compared to the larger slimming such as the Jesuits and the Franciscans. Part of that has to do with the personality and style of orders, said Father Fitzgerald.

“If you are a Jesuit, you are very good in the count of people you are,” he said. “The Augustinians are not great in the count of people we are. I think it is unusual for us to be self -promotes.”

In the years after he became chief, or previous previous, of the order in 2001, Leo tried to share in a global stage the ideas and practices for the missionary dissemination he had developed in Peru.

The description of its theological foundations in a speech in Rome in 2023. The mission is a means to carry out the fundamental duty of evangelization of the Church, he said. Without this perspective, the church’s charity becomes little more than “humanitarian action”, which, although important, will not be distinctly Christian.

“On the contrary, when we help each other to constantly remind Ourelves that our main mission is evangelization, no matter if our resources are small or large because the fundamental thing is already circling,” he said.

“Evangelizing with poor quality, among other things, being willing to abandon comfort zones, the comfortable bourgeois life, in the deliberations of the cardinals, the conclave, since the missionary dissemination was a key element of Francis’s vision.

Leo once told the Italian radio station Rai that he had with “my religious family, the Augustinians”, when he was a teenager, which caused his decision to leave Chicago for a Michigan Junior Seminary boarding school. There, he said, he learned about “the importance of friendship, the importance of life in the community.”

“I think it is very important to promote communion in the church,” Leo explained in 2023 to Vatican News. “As Augustinian, for me, the unity and communion of promotion is fundamental.”

On Saturday, Leo made an unnoticed visit to Our Lady of Good Council in Genazzano, an Augustinian sanctuary on the outskirts of Rome. On Monday, he invoked San Agustín in comments to journalists gathered in the city of the Vatican, saying that current times were challenging, difficult to navigate and not easy to tell the public.

“They demand that each of us, in our different roles and services, never yield to mediocrity,” he said. “San Agustín recalls this when he said:” We live well and the Times will be good. We are the times. “

He cited one of the sermons of the saint who alluded to how people can choose to make the most of difficult circumstances, the moral father Antón said: “We are the ones who have to live a good life to change the times.”

“We need to stop and reflect,” he added. “We live well, we eat well, we have pleasures, but are you happy and people say:” I’m not happy. “” Let’s look at happiness, inside, and then change. “

Father Moral Antón, who lost his dental appointment on Monday, was sitting in a small room at the Augustinian school of St. Monica, on a slope on the other side of the street of the Basilica of San Pedro, where the new one has played tennis for Yeeons on a court. Father Moral Antón and Leo, who are the same age, studied together at the university decades ago; The father was the deputy of Leo when he made the order and the success in the superior work.

In the days since Leo became Pope, the Augustinian friars have shared stories of meeting him during his trips. A vicar in Kenya sent photos of the Anton Moral Father from a trip that he and Leo Tok to the African country many years ago.

“Being an Augustinian means being quite open,” said Moral Father Anton, adding that, compared to other orders, he does not have “very rigid norms.”

“It’s about eternal friendship, friends, wanting to walk with friends and find the truth with friends,” he said. “Wanting to live in the world, live life, but with friends, with people who love you, with whom you love.”

“It’s not always something you look for,” he added, “but, well, that’s the ideal.”

Emma Bubola” Elizabeth days and Jason Horowitz Contributed reports.