Death of Joe Lucey

Got news this morning of the death, yesterday, of Salesian Fr Joe Lucey, in Ireland. He was an important figure of the Irish province, and very active in the European region of the Salesians in areas of youth-at-risk and initial formation. Joe was 47 years old, and was struck down by a heart attack.

It was in 1993 that I first met Joe -- at a weeklong meeting of the Salesian province teams of the English-speaking region. At the time I was the delegate for youth ministry for the Salesians in California, and Joe filled the same role for the Salesians in Ireland. We worked on some committees together during that time, and I had occasion to meet his several other times in following years when I visited Ireland or when I was part of some European initiatives. He was always on-fire, if I can put it that way: lots of enthusiasm; a strong sense of justice; compassion for the young in trouble; demanding of himself and others for a coherent Gospel witness.

My strongest memory is of him at work with the poor and gang-banger kids of Sean McDermott Street in Dublin. They were a hardend lot, but he had their confidence and did great things with them. Sometimes he expected all the young Salesians to have his same talent among kids-at-risk, but this was not so. Sean McDermott Street scares a lot of people, after all; if some of the young Salesians felt intimidated, it is very understandable. Joe Lucey, however, was not to be intimidated. He ploughed right into that work, and had some success.

The following verse, written by Joe, has been found to be especially poignant:

Master, I need you to find me. The hide-and-seek game is over. I need you to find me again and again. Come, hound me, sniff me out. Come free me from dependencies of sore-filled wounds -- the kind that fester with volcano strength. Come, break my breath, and breathe in me again, and fill me with an emptiness which has given all, for the love of you.

Funeral arrangements will begin with prayers tomorrow evening at 17.00 at Milford, in Limerick - and then a fewing at Sean McDermott Street Church in Dublin on Wednesday, with an evening mass there at 18.00. Thursday, the 12.00 noon funeral mass at Milford, with burial at Pallaskenry.

This is a great loss, I repeat, for the Salesians of Ireland. We can only pray that Joe Lucey's Gospel fire will inspire young people to take up the calling.

Ring Mass

All the Catholic high schools in California that I know (and perhaps in the USA for that matter), celebrate "ring mass" - the day when the juniors (grade 11) get their class rings. Usually there is a mass and a blessing in the Catholic schools…

So the Vatican holds its own "ring mass" on the day after the consistory: when the pope blesses the golden rings of the new cardinals, and then gives the ring to each of them. It is yet another encounter between the pope and the new cardinals -- a moment of reassurances and of shared joy.

It began raining -- strike that: POURING this morning by 9.00, and so I decided that I would not use my ticket to go to the Piazza for that celebration. However, I did follow it in the media… and and it was another festive/solemn happy-kind-of-day.

There is nothing in the USA websites about our Cardinal Farina, except for some lamenting about there being still some curial cardinals by some American commentators who want to insist that the new cardinals are not representative enough of the people… (cf. John Allen of NCR). However, I did manage to find some enthusiastic reports from the newspaper of Benevento. It seems that a huge delegation from don Raffaele's hometown of Buonalbergo came to Rome to attend the two-days of consistory and celebration, and that their wild, noisey, affectionate endorsement of their hometown boy more than make up for the silence of the world press.

Representative of the people of God? Hmmm … the American critics may be sour on it, but the people of Buonalbergo are very happy that Raffaele Farina, Salesian and their own priest, is now cardinal. They have loved him and have always found him to be approachable and simple -- one of them. Sounds like a good representation to me!

At St Peter's Square for the new cardinals

This morning I went down to St Peter's to assist at the public consistory for the creation of 23 new cardinals. Among the new cardinals is the Salesian Raffaele Farina, whom I can claim as a personal friend from my student days at the UPS (1990-1994), but also from several years earlier when he spent his sabbatical year (1984) in California and was a guest for a day at De Sales Hall. Of course, I already knew him in the sense that, as rector magnificus of the UPS, he had overseen my theology studies at the Crocetta and signed the diploma for my bachelor degree in theology. As a matter of fact, his signature is on all three of my degress from the UPS - Bachelor, Licentiate and Doctorate.

When the nominations came out a little over a month ago I was very happy to learn that (finalmente) Don Raffaele had been named to the cardinalate. So when tickets were offered, I immediately asked for one.

Tickets were to St Peter's Square, but the consistory took place inside the basilica. Those of us who were outside watched and heard all on giant screen televisions that were set up in the piazza. At first I was disappointed (of course) that I was not right there, but the sense of being seated in the crowd in the square and seeing all on the giant screens - things taking place a few hundred meters ahead of us -- well I was soon swept into it. There was a great feeling of participation by all in the piazza. We were really "there" after all.

Before the ceremony began, the big screens displayed a steady camera shot on the nave of the basilica. As the bells of St Peter's began to sound at 10.15, there was a zoom and a fade, and I recognized the camera techniques of RAI, and realized we would see what was being broadcast through Italy. The tremendous camera work made it all so close for us in the piazza, as we joined also in the responsory singing with the Sistine Choir (what a tremenous sound from that choir today! real improvement over how they sounded at the start of the 1990s!!!). And then I had a real surprise - a very pleasant one. The camera focused on don Pascual Chavez at least 5 times during the ceremony, including for an extended time during Pope Benedict's homily. I noted that there were no other shots on individuals in the church other than cardinals. Even though a Jesuit and a Franciscan were also receiving the red hat, there were not closeups on the Jesuit Superior General nor on the Franciscan Minister General. Just the Salesian rector major.

And there was a big enough Salesian contingent in the crowd too - for every time Don Chavez was seen and every time Cardinal Farina was named, there was a cheer. Big cheers also went for the former bishop of Loreto, Giovanni Lajolo, for the archbishop of Monterrey, Francisco Robles Ortega, and for the archbishop of Houston, Daniel di Nardo. There were drum beats and enthusiastic cheers for the archbishop of Dakar (Senegal) Theodore Adrien Sarr, and for the Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon (Bagdad) Emmanuel III Delly. These seem to figure in the news releases of the world press (or at least the USA press), but the television spotted Farina and Chavez. How cool is that?!

The exit from the basilica was solemn and festive at the same time, but I left and hurried to the metro to get home for dinner. I was starving. As I traveled home I noticed that it started to rain, and was caught in a downpour when I left the 80 express bus to make my way up Piazza dell'Ateneo Salesiano… I missed the soup, but made it for the main course… And there were chestnuts and barolo wine!!! Another treat on a very happy Roman day!

Tomorrow the cardinals will receive their cardinal's ring from Pope Benedict… that takes place at a mass, again in St Peter's. I have tickets for that too, but am not sure I will be able to go (and again, my tickets are for the square, not for the basilica).

Welcome News for Don Bosco Hall

The good news from Berkeley is that Jorge Santiago from Puerto Rico, who came for one semester, will now stay for two years!! At the same time, a letter came to Tom Prendiville from the Stanley Foundation with a 25,000. check for scholarships for Salesians from mission territories. It is a repeat of last year when with the help of Katie Calvert from the development office of the Western Dominican Province, helped us (ISS and DSPT) to apply for a grant. That work began way back in the Summer of 2005, and Katie succeeded in getting a grant for our students in 2006, and now again in 2007.

It seems that Katie is no longer working for the Western Dominicans. However, Tom Prendiville tells me that he will invite Gael Sullivan, as new director of the ISS, to speak with Michael Sweeney (DSPT president) and contact Katie to let her know that all her efforts have yielded good results.

And the timing is perfect: Jorge was refused a place in Chile but is accepted to DSPT: the grant can offset his tuition and living expenses so that his province is not going to lose and we get to keep him on board. Ah, if only DBH could hire Katie to do some grant writing proposals for our international students! This would take the edge out of things, economically … and that is a big part of our problem in bringing in Salesians for our programs.

Well, it is not the time to worry about this. It is time to rejoice with Jorge, with the DBH community, and to thank Katie and the Dominicans for all their efforts to help us to flourish. All this fits with my comments from yesterday. How important it is that we get the word out (PR, advertise, whatever…) about the ISS and our Salesian programs.

Continuing the series

The satisfaction on the face of Aldo Giraudo (pictured above) speaks volumes, don't you think? Oh … well, I think so.

Today Aldo presented me with a copy of volume 2 of Arthur Lenti's series, Don Bosco, Life and Spirit. He is sending 24 copies of the book to Arthur in Berkeley. The project continues, then, at a good pace.

The volume was delivered to the LAS last Wednesday, 14 November, thanks largely to the efforts of Aldo and of the Centro Studi Don Bosco here at the University. However, it was only yesterday that the LAS put Arthur’s second volume out for sale. Both Aldo and I have already communicated with Arthur via e-mail. I have not heard back from him, but Aldo tells me that he received an enthusiastic reply.

Arthur Lenti offers an extraordinary resource in this series… and I am hearing from a number of quarters how much his work is appreciated. Aldo tells me that there is already a move to translate the series into Spanish. Aldo Giraudo, by the way, remains the most enthusiastic supporter of Arthur Lenti's efforts and of the work of the ISS. Others in Rome seem to think that our Berkeley initiative has run its course. We need more "good PR" and less aggravation, I feel… but that is another story. For now, we bask in the sunshine-joy of Arthur's series.

For my part (hey! that's me in the photo!), I am most pleased to see Arthur's work come to print. He has been the mainstay of the ISS in Berkeley since the onset, and now he is making an important contribution to the entire Salesian World. Yesterday in my class on Salesian Spirituality (TA2232) I presented a number of books to the students, and showed them Arthur's first volume. Now I will show them the two volumes together, and encourage them to delve into them.

Computer woes

The old adage says that "no news is good news", but I have come to realize that "no news is just no news"..

My laptop computer has been brought to the Apple people at Flaminia Computer to be fixed, but it is really not working right at all. It overheats quickly even with a chill pad, and the batter drains within 10 minutes of being unplugged. If I am on the internet it likes to crash the machine and I've been blocked in the middle of my powerpoint presentations too by a sudden, no-reason, shutdown of the whole machine.

So I went and purchased a computer for my working - a desktop, iMac - again from Flaminia Computer. The Theology Faculty here promised to pay, but there were all sorts of delays (which I will explain in a moment), so I used my credit card.

Flaminia Computer advertising WiFi

The total of the computer, with the three year guarantee and taxes, came to (gulp) € 1,611.00. The faculty (school of theology) assured me that they would reimburse me by check so that I could send this to you. However, things have developed differently. For one thing, since September, there have been the deaths of two brothers who worked in the financial offices of the UPS. Three days after I got  here, the head financial administrator of the UPS was rushed to hospital; after 2 weeks there, he came home and was well for a couple of days… and hten fell ill again. He is now in his native Poland for the last two weeks undergoing testing…

This would be a sad report of curiosities for you do not know these people. However, the impact is this: the new person working the finances at UPS does not have signature on all the accounts.

So, the long and the short of this is that the Faculty could not secure a check from the UPS, nor could they do a wire transfer. But yesterday the prefect of the Theology Dept came to me in my office and gave me € 1,611 in cash.

The final piece of bad news is that my laptop is still not functioning. As I said, it is crashing now all the time, which is not good for a Macintosh. I am trying to stabilize it, and hope to succeed, but I am also recuperating all my preferences and other data at this time (when I am free to do t his because my class schedule is 8 hours of class in the first three days of the week). When I return to Berkeley, I will need to get me a good desktop mac - because (already the technicians at Cal's computer place told me this :) I am using the laptop more than what it was designed for. A laptop is for travel an occasions that call for brief work, not 9 hours a day of work. It is the third time this computer has broken down, and I burned through two other laptops in the five years previous to buying this one.

So, it is not in my budget, but this is one of those necessities. I need to get a desktop computer when I get back to teach the second semester and carry on all the assignments that province, house and faculty put on me.

Whoa, that wasn’t so hard to say, now, was it?

The ever-crashing mac powerbook

It is hard to tell whether I have been busy or just worn and torn. On Friday last I went down to the Mac Store in via Flaminia, beyond the center of Rome but in an area that has been commercial since Julius Caesar was a teenager. They could not get the laptop to function and since I had a guarantee, they took it to work on. I went with a student and another professor, both of whom were interested in purchasing a mac for their office/rooms. At that point I took the plunge and purchased an iMac, having taken two weeks to get a type of a yes from the dean. It is an excpetional machine and I am working on it now, however I still missed my own little Apple Powerbook G4.

On Monday night, then, I got a call from the Flaminia Computer that my machine would be ready the next day. Accompanied by Marco Bay (who spent the summer of 2000 at Don Bosco Hall), I picked up the machine. I was very happy to see him, and the technician, Alessio, told me that the hard drive was damaged. They installed a new one and recovered my data…

But…

The data is there without the programs that were mine. Alessio installed the usual mac programs, many of which I never use, but my own particular ones are missing… I've got the original application disks at home and will install them…

And yet…

The computer really is not functioning. It crashes now frequently… but when do Macintoshes ever crash? So something is really WRONG here.

Well, I have just to get it operating so that I can use it for class presentations. My classes at the UPS are going well (from the student feedback), so that has got to be the priority of the moment. I will try to understand what is missing that is causing the crashes. And I will make sure to back up everything so that if I need to return to via Flaminia, I'll not worry about losing data.

Amusing, really. Not only am I attached to my Powerbook, but I depend on it for almost everything these days… Thank God it does not make coffee too, or I really be in bad shape!

Cielo aperto, poco nuvoloso

Thursday and no classes to teach all day, so I took it easy during the morning and did some laundry and other little tasks. The sky opened very blue this morning, and the air is fresh and sweet. How I love the scent of Rome when the wind is blowing and the ground is wet. My laundry likes it too, because it can dry in the November sunshine that is sweet and not too harsh.

At dinner today, I entered into a discussion with my table companions about the growing clericalism that we detect in the church. Is this a swing of the pendulum? Or is it a symptom of something deeper taking place, particularly among the younger generation? Whatever it is, it is happening in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in North America, as a new strident crowd becomes more indignant within the Church, and as Society as a whole moves away from any notion of organized religion and all its trappings outside the inner circle of Western churches.

Heavy discussion, on top of pasta with a bacon and egg sauce. We switched themes and spoke of ecumenism when it was time for the second plate of chicken, potatoes and spinach. More than 2 hours later I still feel heavy!!!

It is time to prepare next weeks classes, but the first three days leave me rather exhausted and I lose my ambition. No matter. It is time to act. Still, if I do not succeed in meeting any academic deadlines, I am consoled that the afternoon sun is drying my laundry. At least I will have accomplished one deed today that has something of value.

Taking stock

So yes, it is now two weeks that I am back in Italy. The courses are going fine… what will happen for the future for me, of that I am less sure. At the end of the day it is a question of where I can offer a better contribution, I suppose. I have not yet figured out all the details of what that is supposed to look like.

After the rain

Well, life in Rome has become, I suppose, very normal for me. I really cannot account for this feeling that I have about being in Rome and in Italy, but I must admit that I breathe a lot easier once I am here.

This morning has been glorious. After several days of rain, the sky is open, the breezes are fresh and cool, the sun is a kiss of warmth on the skin and a dazzle for the eyes. Oh, but I am supposed to be here to teach!!!! Okay, that too: I am working on my class preparation as I look out my office to the Alban hills.

Roma, quanta sei bella!

All Souls Day

All Souls Day and the holidays continue. We are having a nice few days of rest and just spending some time together. After this it will be non-stop until Christmas.

This morning I took advantage to sleep a little longer. I am still not over my jetlag. But when I went to find some breakfast at 8.30, there were some other professors there as well.

During the breakfast conversation I actually fielded many questions from the UPS professors about the viability of ISS and our continuation of the Salesian Spirituality and Studies program at Berkeley. I think that our ISS needs to organize a PR tour. The up-coming General Chapter would be the perfect time for it, but would our San Francisco representatives, David and Mel, agree to become proactively vocal? Something is needed to recapture the immagination and the good will of the Congregation, not only of the few who speak English.

Festive but quiet day

Today is the feast of All Saints. I joined the Don Rua Community for early morning mass at 7.30, and then for breakfast. After doing a load of laundry, I spent some time preparing classes, e-mailing friends, and, yes, taking a nap.

Am doing all the work on my classes on the borrowed laptop provided by Marco Bay. Next week I will have a chance to bring my Macintosh down to Center Rome to have it looked at by the Mac people. I have a full, 3-year guarantee so I should have luck for the machine. I just hope that I can get all of my data out of it. I recently put in a lot of photos, and I neglected to make a backup disk with them. I also bought some music off iTunes and did not have time to back them up (or felt too pressed to take the time). Well, that is my own fault. I have backed up my document files regularly (Word and PowerPoint), however, so I can present my work for my courses without fear.

There is a lesson somewhere in all this, but I am not ready to face that lesson right now.