In Augustine’s order, Pope Leo XIV found unity, charity and ‘eternal friendship’

The mobile phone of the leader of the Order of St. Augustine, the Reverend Alejandro Moral Antón, buzzed at what seemed the hundredth time, and he jumped. He was in the field of calls since 2:30 am and tried to explain to people around the world how his order, the one who formed Pope Leo XIV, would form the papacy.

This time it was his dentist. He had missed an appointment.

“Do you know what happens?” 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 less than 3,000 members had forced father Moral Antón, a sympathetic, 69-year-old Spaniard, to distill the principles of Augustinians and spiritual ideals to their essence. He recited charity, truth and unity in Latin and translated into Spanish.

Pope Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, is an American with Peruvian citizenship, but His identity Perhaps it is the deepest formed by his connection with the Augustinians, who started when he was 14 and led to his consecration in 1982 as an Augustinian priest. He moved to Peru like an Augustinian missionary and eventually ran the order for 12 years from Rome. In that position he developed extensive international connections that raised his profile last week In the conclave of cardinals WHO chosen him.

As the first Augustine brother who becomes Pope, Leo is expected from Augustinians to emphasize mission range and the importance of listening broadly before he makes decisions, both centrally in the Augustine way of life.

“The Holy Father will certainly be inspired by this search for communion and dialogue,” said Pierantonio Piatti, a historian of Augustinians at the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, a Vatican office. That would fit the concept of ‘synodality’, fulfilling Francis’ vision of a church that brings bishops and laymen together to make big decisions.

“The other large element of Augustine spirituality,” Dr. Piatti is a “search for balance between action and contemplation, between contemplation and action.”

Partly because of their small size, Augustine priests are a close -knit community around the world, and many have come across Leo over the years.

“Even if we disagree about something like politics, we have no trouble talking to each other,” said Father Allan Fitzgerald, 84, an Augustinian priest and old professor at Villanova University on the northwest of Villanova University northwest of Philadelphia, where Leo cannot be spoken in 1977. Still able to talk about things that matter. ‘

The order was established in 1244When Pope Innocent IV united groups Hermits in the service of the Church as a community of brothers. The group committed itself to a lifestyle of poverty, together with a mix of contemplation and pastoral services.

Augustinians do their name to one of the most important early theologians of Christianity, Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, who was born in what is now Algeria in the fourth century. He is perhaps best known for an autobiographical work called ‘Confessions’, which partly describes his conversion to Christianity after an immoral youth.

The place of the command in the wider Roman Catholic Church was threatened by one of the most prominent 16th-century members, Martin Luther, whose calls for reform in the church eventually led to Protestant reform.

Augustine also wrote a Guide for religious life That became the cornerstone of the Augustine Order. The members commit themselves to “living together in harmony, of one spirit and one heart on their way to God.” Leo’s new weapon weapon reflects that heritage, with the Latin motto “in Illo Uno Unum” or “In one we are one.”

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

“If you are a Jesuit, you are very good at telling people who you are,” he said. “Augustinians are not good at telling people who we are. I think it is unusual that we promote self -promoting.”

In the years after he became head, or earlier general, of the command, Leo tried the ideas and practices for mission range that he had developed in Peru on a worldwide stage, tried to share the ideas and practices.

He outlined his theological substantiation in a speech in Rome in 2023. Mission is a means to carry out the fundamental duty of the church for evangelization, he said. Without this perspective, charity work through the church becomes little more than ‘humanitarian action’, which, although important, will not be Christian distinctive.

“On the contrary, when we help each other to constantly remind ourselves that our primary mission is evangelism, it doesn’t matter if our means are small or large because the fundamental thing is already given,” he said.

“To evangelize resources, among other things, to be willing to leave the comfort zones, the comfortable bourgeois lives,” he said, in a clear nod to his life -changing decision to leave his life in the United States for a missionary placement in the northwest of Peru in 1985. That background in the Cardinals in the Cardinals, since the Cardinals, seems to have been in the Cardinals, in the Cardinals, Missionary Outleach was an important element of Francis.

Leo once told the Italian broadcaster Rai that he had met ‘my religious family, the Augustinians’, as a teenager, which encouraged his decision to leave Chicago for an Augustinian Junior Seminary boarding school in Michigan. There, he said, he got to learn about “the importance of friendship, the importance of life in the community.”

“I believe it is very important to promote the community in the church,” Leo Explained in 2023 to Vatican News. “As a Augustijn, promoting unity and community is of fundamental importance for me.”

On Saturday, Leo paid an unannounced visit To Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano, an Augustinian sanctuary outside of Rome. On Monday he called on St. Augustine In comments for journalists Collected in Vatican City and said that the current times were challenging, were difficult to navigate and not easy to tell the public.

“They demand that each of us, in our different roles and services, never admit to mediocrity,” he said. “St. Augustine reminds us when he said:” Let’s live well and the time will be good. We are time. “

He mentioned one of the sermons of the saint who referred to how people can choose to get the most out of difficult circumstances, said Father Moral Antón: “We are those who have to live a good life to change the time.”

“We have to stop and think,” he added. “Because we live well, we eat well, we are pleasures, but are you happy? And people say,” I’m not happy. ” Let’s look at where happiness is – and then change. “

Father Moral Antón, who missed his dental appointment on Monday, was in a small room in the Augustinian college of St. Monica, on a hill across the St. Peter’s Basilica, where the new Pope has played tennis for years on a court with a view of the iconic dome. Father Moral Antón and Leo, who are the same age, studied together in college decades ago; The father was Leo’s deputy when he ran the order and succeeded him in the top track.

In the days since Leo Paus became, Augustinian Broeders shared stories about meeting him during his previous trips. A preacher in Kenya sent Father Moral Antón photos of a journey he and Leo took to the African country many years ago.

“Being Augustijns means being pretty open,” said Father Moral Antón, adding that, compared to other orders, theirs has no “very rigid standards”.

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

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

Emma Bubola” Elizabeth Dias And Jason Horowitz contributed reporting.