Hey everybody,
It’s the feast of Our Lady of the Snows, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
There was no Pillar Post last week because I was in Peru in dire straits, but I have returned, and I’ve got stories.
First, I’ll tell you, I didn’t eat guinea pig. Eating “cuy” — it’s guinea pig — is a well-known custom in Peru, but mostly in the Andean region, not on the coast, and seemingly not in the town of Pope Leo XIV, where I was working.
I did eat local street delicacies, though — grilled beef hearts and ample portions of pork, and I quaffed them down with the local cocktail, which itself has a healthy portion of whipped (and uncooked) egg whites.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that I took ill in Peru, spending 36 hours at the bottom of a dark hole in which I questioned my every life choice, and prayed for sweet relief.
I followed that up with an unspecified cocktail of antibiotics purchased from an unsympathetic pharmacist, and an act of trust in Our Lady of Good Counsel, to whom I should have listened before I ate that street food.
So here I am, and some of you are wondering if while in Peru, I bought an ostrich, as Ed encouraged me to do before I headed out.
The truth is, I tried — I really tried — and I’ll tell you what happened after the news, along with the story of an amazing adventure that preceded my brush with avian greatness.
But first, let me mention to you that Pope Leo celebrated Mass this weekend with just about 1 million young people, who had gone to Rome for the Jubilee for Youth.
The numbers were bolstered in some part by people who had booked tickets to the Jubilee for Youth expecting that they’d see Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati canonized — an event put off until September’s mega-canonization featuring both Frassati and Blessed Carlo Acutis.
But I’m told that the numbers in attendance this weekend swelled even more because of European parishes and dioceses organizing pilgrimages at something of the last minute — and in response to the enthusiasm they’re seeing among young people about Pope Leo XIV himself.
It was an uncomfortable reality these past 10 years for Vatican officials to deal with diminishing crowds of pilgrims at many large-scale Roman events, institutional field trips like World Youth Day or international papal visits notwithstanding.
But it could be that the Leo era will signify a shift in that experience, with crowds exceeding the expectations of organizers, as they did this weekend. The next big opportunity for assessing that is in September itself, for the big canonization.
In the meantime, Leo’s homily to young people is worth reading:
“There is a burning question in our hearts, a need for truth that we cannot ignore, which leads us to ask ourselves: what is true happiness? What is the true meaning of life? What can free us from being trapped in meaninglessness, boredom and mediocrity?”
…
“Dear young people, Jesus is our hope.”
“We are not made for a life where everything is taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through gift of self in love. This is why we continually aspire to something ‘more’ that no created reality can give us; we feel a deep and burning thirst that no drink in this world can satisfy.”
Jesus is our hope. Now and forever.
Here’s the news
Meet the young pilgrims of the youth jubilee.
This is a profile I really enjoyed writing, and I hope you like it.
The move has generated huge amounts of controversy, because the three men are well-known theological voices in the U.S., and are widely suspected of having faced retribution by Detroit’s new archbishop for their perceived views on Pope Francis.
But at The Pillar we found ourselves wondering what the actual protocol is for firing a professor at Sacred Heart Seminary. According to the faculty handbook, there’s a process — which does not appear to have been followed in this case.
If the women don’t vacate, and lose their appeals, they could find themselves forcibly evicted from a monastery to which they no longer formally belong.
—
Cardinal Carlos Castillo of Lima has been accused of covering up sexual misconduct at the capital see’s archdiocesan seminary, and of retaliating against seminarians who accused the former rector of failing to respect personal boundaries.
The news comes amid a broader picture of emerging criticisms against the Archbishop of Lima.
You can read the Pillar’s latest here, or read this report in Spanish, here.
Church watchers have expressed concern about the Vatican’s willingness to engage publicly with the Azeri government, suggesting it could be falling prey to “caviar diplomacy,” a term used to describe the Azeri approach of using cultural restorations, economic investments, and other strategies to curry favor with foreign officials.
And indeed, Azerbaijan foundations have helped fund major restoration projects at St. Paul Outside the Walls, and across Rome.
If you ask me, this situation has gotten too little attention in recent months. It’s time to read up, right here.
Pope Leo’s town — Chiclayo — is on the north coast of Peru, just eight miles from the Pacific Ocean, the site of a town first founded as a way station for travelers, at the spot of a fork in an ancient Incan road, which had been traversed by the feet of South America’s indigenous people for centuries, or even millennia.
The thing about a town at a crossroads is that it takes on a life of its own, it just sort of grows and grows, even when the road itself has long been forgotten — but sometimes, like Chiclayo, it grows absent any distinguishing geographic or cultural or historic features to explain easily its continued being.
A town like Chiclayo is like Breezewood, Pennsylvania — just sort of there —- because there is where the roads happened to converge.
Such towns grow up in time with little else to go on but the reputation of their people for friendliness and hospitality.
And Chiclayans are indeed among the friendliest people you’ll meet on the planet. But if you want to see the natural beauty of Peru, you’ll probably have to get out of town.
For me, that meant taking a short trip to Pimental, the beach town eight miles west of Chiclayo, where a smattering of wealthy Limans are building beach houses, and where ordinary Peruvians go to frolic in the surf, buy fresh caught fish on the beach, and spend time in the company of the aves gigantes del Peru — the giant birds penned up in a petting zoo on a patch of desert at the edge of town.
A taxi ride to Pimental should take about a half an hour, and it should cost something like 15 Peruvian soles — $4.10 or $4.20, depending on where you buy your currency.
I got in a cab last Saturday afternoon, planning to have a walk on the beach, a cold beer along the sea shore, an ice pop, and then a visit to the avian petting zoo, which I’d promised Ed, and the listeners of The Pillar Podcast, would merit a visit and a full review.
My driver’s name was Eduardo. Just as I requested, he took me to Pimental’s small parish church, where I thought I’d make a visit to the Lord before hitting the surf. Eduardo was excited about that.
The driver was about 60, seemingly a devout Catholic, and glad to talk about what Bishop Prevost — our Chiclayo pope, he called him — had done to see that the parish had a full-time priest (inasmuch as I understood) and a beautiful interior paint job.
But the problem came when we pulled up. Because that’s when I tried to pay.
Eduardo wanted 10 soles — less than the ordinary 15, he said, because he’d enjoyed chatting and because we were going to the church, which made him pleased.
I took from my wallet a 100, the only denomination of currency I had.
Eduardo said it was too much, that he couldn’t make change. I told him that was too bad, because I didn’t have anything smaller.
One hundred soles is 28 bucks. I try not to make a habit of it, but I’ve paid late fees at the library more than that. So I asked Eduardo just to keep the change.
He refused. He told me that 100 soles was a day’s pay, not one fare.
I told him it was a blessing for me to give. In terrible Spanish, I told him about you all, readers of The Pillar — I told him you’d want him to have the money, and to take his wife for a beautiful dinner, or to buy a round at the bar.
Who can say what he understood of my bad Spanish — or what I actually told him, for that matter. All I know is that he again refused.
And then as we talked, I realized something endearing about Eduardo: he was worried about me.
I was, for him, a big giant American with a wallet full of cash and a swagger full of unearned confidence, and he was worried about turning me loose in the wilds of a tiny Peruvian beach town.
Now readers, I am not some kind of holy fool, I’m no Dostoevsky-esque idiot, and I’m not even the ordinary kind of fool, I hope. I’ve done my share of traveling, and I have a good head on my shoulders, and the little town we were visiting was full of goofy Peruvian kids on Vespas, not motorcycle gangs.
But Eduardo couldn’t let me just part with 28 bucks and tour the town. He told me to go into the church, and pray, and that’d be back with change. But I know that’s not what happened.
I watched Eduardo through a church window go around the corner into the alley, and pull out his phone, and begin talking with his wife.
I can surmise the conversation they had. When he returned, Eduardo told me that he’d stay in Pimental: That I could have some time on the beach, and then he’d drive me to “los birdies,” — he called them that — and then back to the hotel in Chiclayo.
It seemed unnecessary, and I told him so, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
So I accepted and asked to meet him in an hour at the car.
But that’s not what he had in mind.
So that, dear readers, is how I found myself walking along the Peruvian coast on a beautiful day with a kind man named Eduardo, who insisted upon carrying my beer, along with a pretty rock I’d picked up to bring home to my kids.
Eduardo took it upon himself to play my tour guide, though he freely admitted to visiting the beach but infrequently. He pointed out to me the waves, and the sand, and a giant fishing pier which turns out to be one entire kilometer long, which he said was pretty long.
When we happened upon a surfing competition — which was quite cool to watch — Eduardo dutifully informed me that it was a surfing competition. When we saw people swimming, he let me know that’s what they were up to. We saw a flotilla of boats on the horizon, and I asked whether they were fishermen or the military — Eduardo let me know that they were boats, and they had gone out to sea.
He encouraged me to swim, though I only waded as far as my knees. He showed me where fishermen sold their catch on their shore, and advised me not to buy any fish. Since I had only the hotel room microwave, it was sound advice.
When we saw a horse, he told me it was not the pope’s horse. But after a painful negotiation, in which Eduardo stretched the truth to claim that I was a very important journalist from the United States, the horse’s owner agreed to let me take a picture with the horse, while waiving the customary fee of five soles.
I only had hundreds, you see, and I wasn’t going to drop 28 bucks for a photo of a horse that did not belong to the pope.
We didn’t see any toughs on the beach, and if we had, I’m not sure what my cab driver might have done. But I suppose he was ready, in his own way, and that should have given me some small measure of comfort.
When we had finished on the beach, Eduardo found a place for me to wipe the sand from my feet, and then he drove me to Aves Gigantes del Peru, the flightless bird farm and petting zoo on the edge of Pimental.
Eduardo told me that he’d never been to the bird petting zoo, and that he had no interest in going. He’d wait outside the high walls surrounding the place, talking soccer with a few other cab drivers waiting along the road.
If I was to see the big birds, I would have to do it alone.