Archbishop Charles Brownwelcomes me inside the red-bricked apostolic
nunciature in the middle-class district of Cabra on the northside of Dublin.
Outside it is a typical rainy Hibernian day and droplets splash against the
long window panes. The 52-year-old New Yorker has spent nearly nine months in Ireland.
When he was appointed apostolic nuncio to Ireland he was
raised to the level of archbishop and given the titular see of Aquileia. On
January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, the Pope personally consecrated him
archbishop.
Archbishop Brown had previously spent 17 years in the doctrinal section of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), working with the then
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger “every day for 10 years”. His appointment to
Ireland directly from the CDF was regarded as a highly unusual move. Perhaps
no one was more surprised by it than Archbishop Brown himself.
“I was thunderstruck and flabbergasted in the autumn of 2011 when Cardinal
Bertone [the Vatican Secretary of State] presented me with this new mission
and said that the Holy Father had personally requested me to do it,” he
says. “I will do whatever the Holy Father asks me to do – that goes without
saying – but of course I thought there might be others who would be better
for the job and who had more experience. It’s not the usual pattern for
someone who works in one of the dicasteries of the Holy See to be
transferred to the diplomatic service.”
He was given a day “to think and pray about it”, after which he said to the
Holy Father that he believed the assignment was part of God’s will for him,
coming as it did from the Pope himself.
When I suggest that the appointment was a sign that Benedict XVI esteems him
highly, Archbishop Brown shakes his head, shrugs and says: “Maybe. But I
have a lot of work to do in Ireland and it remains to be seen if I’ll do the
job well.”
There are three key aspects to the post. First, on weekdays at the
nunciature he has to trawl through a lot of paperwork as one part of the
overall process that leads to the appointment of bishops for Ireland’s
vacant dioceses. Every morning the post takes an hour or two to read. Many
Irish lay people, who see him as embodying the hopes for the Irish Church to
make a fresh start, have got in touch with questions. He does his best to
write back to everyone. Second, as dean of the diplomatic corps he has to be
present at all diplomatic occasions. Third, he is an envoy to the Holy See
at many Church events across the length and breadth of Ireland. One day he
might be at Letterkenny in Donegal to celebrate a Mass for pregnant mothers
and on another climbing up the stony mountain of Croagh Patrick.
It is not the easiest time to be a cleric in Ireland. In the book Light of
the World, Pope Benedict said that “to see a country that gave the world so
many missionaries, so many saints, which in the history of the missions also
stands as the origin of our faith in Germany, now in a situation like this
is tremendously upsetting and depressing.”
For several different reasons – including his ethnic background, his early
days as a priest, his time at the CDF and, especially, his keen knowledge of
the Pope’s character – Archbishop Brownis like a bridge between the Holy
Father and the Irish Church.
The archbishop is of both Irish and German stock. “Of my eight
great-grandparents, five were Irish and the others were German,” he
explains. “My Irish ancestors came to America during and after the Famine.
They left because they were poor. As I said in my sermon during a Mass at
the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin: ‘They left with hardly anything, except the
treasure of their Catholic faith.’”
There is an intriguing twist in the story of how his family kept the faith.
“One of my Irish great-grandfathers, who was from County Clare, was not
terribly zealous in his practice of the faith,” he says, “but he married a
devout Presbyterian girl, who was an American of partially German ethnicity,
and her family had been in America since the American Revolution. She was
Protestant, but she insisted that he go to Mass on Sunday and she taught the
Catholic Catechism to my grandmother.”
Archbishop Brown was born in 1959 in the East Village of Manhattan, near
Orchard Street and Chinatown. At that time it was a very Jewish area. When
he was growing up in the New York in the early 1960s his family “were pretty
much the only Gentile family in the apartment block”.
He is the oldest of six children. “My mum had a baby every two years from
1959 to 1969,” he says. “After me came four younger sisters and then a
younger brother Peter who was born when I was 10.”
His parents, Patricia and Charles were daily communicants and third order Dominicans. “They were liberal Catholics of the 1950s who read Commonweal magazine and were loyal supporters of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement,” he explains. “I was bounced on her knee when I was a child. One reason they wanted to remain in New York City was so they could stay near her work.”
His parents would become, in comparison to the rest of society, more
conservative as each year of the 1960s came and went. They were deeply
concerned about the changing urban landscape of Manhattan and how it might
affect their children. When the future archbishop was five, they moved to
Rye, a suburb north of New York City. In 1971, when he was 11, his parents
moved again.
“My father, who was a devout Catholic, became quite disillusioned with the
way American culture was going,” he says. “By that, I mean the developments
after 1968. So in 1971 we went further north to the countryside.
“My father was an engineer who had become a lawyer and he was a partner in a
law firm where he handled patents. He left his Manhattan law firm, which was
unheard of because there are financial implications for abandoning a career
in one particular practice. But he took his family from the suburbs to
upstate New York, the real countryside, where he bought 80 acres of land.
“In a small village called Windham he started his own law firm, to raise his
family in an environment that was less afflicted by the problems that were
so evident in society after 1968. We didn’t have a television for a while
and when we did it was like Ireland: we only had three channels! We had a
telephone that we shared with other families. So when we picked up the phone
there could be other people talking and we would have to wait until they
were done.
“My father became an amateur farmer. He had horses, cattle, sheep, a
vegetable patch and all the children doing their chores while he was working
in a small law firm.”
His father passed on to him his love of the outdoors, teaching him how to
climb mountains and ski. They climbed the Matterhorn in Switzerland when he
was 14. Later they ascended the Gran Teton in the Rocky Mountains. Now
stationed in Dublin, Archbishop Brownsays he likes to stay in shape and
runs two or three times a week.
“It’s incredible the influence that my father had on my faith,” he says.
“Since my father’s university days he would go for retreats with the
Trappist monks in Spencer, Massachusetts. As a teenager I would accompany my father on these retreats. It struck me that these monks lived as though God
really existed. Their way of life was proof to me that God existed and that
God is worthy of our total love and the response of total self-giving.”
It was at the Trappist monastery that he first thought about his own
vocation. (“I admired the monks and at times I thought of joining them,” he
says.) But before he felt the deep stirrings of a true vocation he pursued a
degree in History at the University of Notre Dame. It was the late 1970s.
John Paul II was elected when he was in his second year.
“I was an average student in the sense of doing what everyone else was
doing,” he reflects. “I went to Mass on Sunday but was not particularly
devout. I thought that I would either become a lawyer like my father or a
professor in a university.”
At the time, it was difficult to remain faithful to the Church as a young
Catholic. “The spirit of the age was in significant tension with the
tradition of the Church,” he recalls. “And I was absorbing the influences
around me, most of which were very liberal, and I was never satisfied by
them. In spite of that, one very good influence was a professor of
philosophy, Ralph McInerny. But at that time I was a Catholic who didn’t see
the value of tradition.”
After completing his degree at Notre Dame he realised that he had “a thirst
for God” that had not yet been sated. “So I got the idea to study theology
at Oxford. I went there as an undergraduate, and it was essentially Anglican
theology.”
His description of his time in Oxford brings to mind scenes from Brideshead
Revisited, where sharing knowledge of the faith within the context of a
friendship is a central theme. Archbishop Brownmade many close Catholic
friends there. “They were amazing friends who gave intelligent,
comprehensive answers to the difficult questions on such things as women’s
ordination and contraception, which I had been very confused about. We are
still friends. One of them is Greg Wolfe and his wife, the novelist Suzanne
Wolfe, who wrote The Unveiling.”
nunciature in the middle-class district of Cabra on the northside of Dublin.
Outside it is a typical rainy Hibernian day and droplets splash against the
long window panes. The 52-year-old New Yorker has spent nearly nine months in Ireland.
When he was appointed apostolic nuncio to Ireland he was
raised to the level of archbishop and given the titular see of Aquileia. On
January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, the Pope personally consecrated him
archbishop.
Archbishop Brown had previously spent 17 years in the doctrinal section of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), working with the then
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger “every day for 10 years”. His appointment to
Ireland directly from the CDF was regarded as a highly unusual move. Perhaps
no one was more surprised by it than Archbishop Brown himself.
“I was thunderstruck and flabbergasted in the autumn of 2011 when Cardinal
Bertone [the Vatican Secretary of State] presented me with this new mission
and said that the Holy Father had personally requested me to do it,” he
says. “I will do whatever the Holy Father asks me to do – that goes without
saying – but of course I thought there might be others who would be better
for the job and who had more experience. It’s not the usual pattern for
someone who works in one of the dicasteries of the Holy See to be
transferred to the diplomatic service.”
He was given a day “to think and pray about it”, after which he said to the
Holy Father that he believed the assignment was part of God’s will for him,
coming as it did from the Pope himself.
When I suggest that the appointment was a sign that Benedict XVI esteems himhighly, Archbishop Brown shakes his head, shrugs and says: “Maybe. But I
have a lot of work to do in Ireland and it remains to be seen if I’ll do the
job well.”
There are three key aspects to the post. First, on weekdays at the
nunciature he has to trawl through a lot of paperwork as one part of the
overall process that leads to the appointment of bishops for Ireland’s
vacant dioceses. Every morning the post takes an hour or two to read. Many
Irish lay people, who see him as embodying the hopes for the Irish Church to
make a fresh start, have got in touch with questions. He does his best to
write back to everyone. Second, as dean of the diplomatic corps he has to be
present at all diplomatic occasions. Third, he is an envoy to the Holy See
at many Church events across the length and breadth of Ireland. One day he
might be at Letterkenny in Donegal to celebrate a Mass for pregnant mothers
and on another climbing up the stony mountain of Croagh Patrick.
It is not the easiest time to be a cleric in Ireland. In the book Light of
the World, Pope Benedict said that “to see a country that gave the world so
many missionaries, so many saints, which in the history of the missions also
stands as the origin of our faith in Germany, now in a situation like this
is tremendously upsetting and depressing.”
For several different reasons – including his ethnic background, his early
days as a priest, his time at the CDF and, especially, his keen knowledge of
the Pope’s character – Archbishop Brownis like a bridge between the Holy
Father and the Irish Church.
The archbishop is of both Irish and German stock. “Of my eight
great-grandparents, five were Irish and the others were German,” he
explains. “My Irish ancestors came to America during and after the Famine.
They left because they were poor. As I said in my sermon during a Mass at
the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin: ‘They left with hardly anything, except the
treasure of their Catholic faith.’”
There is an intriguing twist in the story of how his family kept the faith.
“One of my Irish great-grandfathers, who was from County Clare, was not
terribly zealous in his practice of the faith,” he says, “but he married a
devout Presbyterian girl, who was an American of partially German ethnicity,
and her family had been in America since the American Revolution. She was
Protestant, but she insisted that he go to Mass on Sunday and she taught the
Catholic Catechism to my grandmother.”
Archbishop Brown was born in 1959 in the East Village of Manhattan, near
Orchard Street and Chinatown. At that time it was a very Jewish area. When
he was growing up in the New York in the early 1960s his family “were pretty
much the only Gentile family in the apartment block”.
He is the oldest of six children. “My mum had a baby every two years from
1959 to 1969,” he says. “After me came four younger sisters and then a
younger brother Peter who was born when I was 10.”
His parents, Patricia and Charles were daily communicants and third order Dominicans. “They were liberal Catholics of the 1950s who read Commonweal magazine and were loyal supporters of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement,” he explains. “I was bounced on her knee when I was a child. One reason they wanted to remain in New York City was so they could stay near her work.”
His parents would become, in comparison to the rest of society, more
conservative as each year of the 1960s came and went. They were deeply
concerned about the changing urban landscape of Manhattan and how it might
affect their children. When the future archbishop was five, they moved to
Rye, a suburb north of New York City. In 1971, when he was 11, his parents
moved again.
“My father, who was a devout Catholic, became quite disillusioned with the
way American culture was going,” he says. “By that, I mean the developments
after 1968. So in 1971 we went further north to the countryside.
“My father was an engineer who had become a lawyer and he was a partner in a
law firm where he handled patents. He left his Manhattan law firm, which was
unheard of because there are financial implications for abandoning a career
in one particular practice. But he took his family from the suburbs to
upstate New York, the real countryside, where he bought 80 acres of land.
“In a small village called Windham he started his own law firm, to raise his
family in an environment that was less afflicted by the problems that were
so evident in society after 1968. We didn’t have a television for a while
and when we did it was like Ireland: we only had three channels! We had a
telephone that we shared with other families. So when we picked up the phone
there could be other people talking and we would have to wait until they
were done.
“My father became an amateur farmer. He had horses, cattle, sheep, a
vegetable patch and all the children doing their chores while he was working
in a small law firm.”
His father passed on to him his love of the outdoors, teaching him how to
climb mountains and ski. They climbed the Matterhorn in Switzerland when he
was 14. Later they ascended the Gran Teton in the Rocky Mountains. Now
stationed in Dublin, Archbishop Brownsays he likes to stay in shape and
runs two or three times a week.
“It’s incredible the influence that my father had on my faith,” he says.
“Since my father’s university days he would go for retreats with the
Trappist monks in Spencer, Massachusetts. As a teenager I would accompany my father on these retreats. It struck me that these monks lived as though God
really existed. Their way of life was proof to me that God existed and that
God is worthy of our total love and the response of total self-giving.”
It was at the Trappist monastery that he first thought about his own
vocation. (“I admired the monks and at times I thought of joining them,” he
says.) But before he felt the deep stirrings of a true vocation he pursued a
degree in History at the University of Notre Dame. It was the late 1970s.
John Paul II was elected when he was in his second year.
“I was an average student in the sense of doing what everyone else was
doing,” he reflects. “I went to Mass on Sunday but was not particularly
devout. I thought that I would either become a lawyer like my father or a
professor in a university.”
At the time, it was difficult to remain faithful to the Church as a young
Catholic. “The spirit of the age was in significant tension with the
tradition of the Church,” he recalls. “And I was absorbing the influences
around me, most of which were very liberal, and I was never satisfied by
them. In spite of that, one very good influence was a professor of
philosophy, Ralph McInerny. But at that time I was a Catholic who didn’t see
the value of tradition.”
After completing his degree at Notre Dame he realised that he had “a thirst
for God” that had not yet been sated. “So I got the idea to study theology
at Oxford. I went there as an undergraduate, and it was essentially Anglican
theology.”
His description of his time in Oxford brings to mind scenes from Brideshead
Revisited, where sharing knowledge of the faith within the context of a
friendship is a central theme. Archbishop Brownmade many close Catholic
friends there. “They were amazing friends who gave intelligent,
comprehensive answers to the difficult questions on such things as women’s
ordination and contraception, which I had been very confused about. We are
still friends. One of them is Greg Wolfe and his wife, the novelist Suzanne
Wolfe, who wrote The Unveiling.”
While at Oxford he got money from the university to trek in the Himalayas in
September 1983. He had read up on Buddhism and monks’ repetitive prayers
using strings of beads, which called to mind the rosary. He and his family
had not said a daily rosary when he was growing up, but he packed his rosary
for his journey to Tibet. While trekking in the mountains he recited the
decades. “Something changed in my heart and my childhood Catholic faith was
totally reactivated and made alive for me again,” he says. “I realised that
the Catholic Church contained the truth of Christ and that everything the
Church taught was true and that I could trust the Church to lead me. I
didn’t have to re-fashion Catholicism in my own image, but I had to be
re-fashioned in the image of the Church.
“This realisation did not happen in a moment, but during the weeks that I
spent in the mountains. Then I wanted to give my life to her – the Church,
Christ’s spouse – and to live my life for the Church as a priest. It all
came together at once while walking in the Himalayas: a recovery of my
childhood faith and a recognition that I was called to be a priest.”
On telling the news to his parents, he says, “they were bewildered, then
joyful”.
After finishing his degree at Oxford, he was fully convinced of his vocation
to the priesthood. “I had a real desire for radical holiness and so I
visited some strict orders that were starting up at that time, such as the
Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But none of them appealed to me.
“I got a scholarship to go to the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
in Toronto. So I left England and went to Canada to do a doctorate, still
with this idea that I was called to be a priest. At this point I did not
consider the diocesan priesthood because of my own misconceptions and
ignorance.”
But when he visited the diocesan seminary, Dunwoodie, just outside New York
City, in the spring of 1985 he had a sense that he had found his place.
“Immediately, after I knocked on the door for my interview, and when I went
into the chapel, I knew that I had found my home where I would learn to be a
priest.”
In 1988 Cardinal Ratzinger visited the seminary. When he celebrated Mass it
was seminarian Charles Brown who was the server.
Archbishop Brown says he studied for the priesthood during “a golden age in
Dunwoodie”.
“We had great professors: a dogma professor Fr James O’Connor, who wrote a
book on the Eucharist called The Hidden Manna and a rector, Cardinal Edwin
O’Brien, who is now the cardinal head of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre
in Rome, and a great moral theologian, Mgr William Smith, who was an
inspired theologian and was teaching us the doctrine of Veritatis Splendor
years before it was written. My formation could not have been better.”
It was also providential that as a newly ordained priest he was sent to St
Brendan’s parish in the Bronx, which in 1989 was almost entirely an Irish
parish. “Still a few years before the Celtic Tiger era, most of the
parishioners were Irish immigrants who had just moved to New York, and were
working as construction workers, waitresses and barmen,” he remembers. “I
was one of the few people there who spoke with an American accent.” Little
did he know at the time that this hands-on experience in a mainly Irish
parish would serve him well.
Two years later, in 1991, Fr Brown was sent to Rome because Cardinal John
O’Connor of New York, who had ordained him, asked him to study for a
doctorate in sacramental theology and to go back as soon as possible to
become a theology professor at Dunwoodie. But the plan never became a
reality. A position opened up at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith because they needed an English speaker. The CDF asked Cardinal
O’Connor if he would release Fr Brown from his duties in New York.
From 1994 to 2005, he worked side by side with Cardinal Ratzinger. In 2001,
the future Pope Benedict XVI requested that bishops from all over the world
send details of every credible accusation of abuse to the CDF. In a short
time no other place in the world was as familiar with the crisis as the CDF.
The Pope would tackle these matters on a Friday, a practice he termed ‘“our
Friday penance”.
The young priest and the high-profile cardinal spent a lot of time together,
but one memory stands out for Archbishop Brown. “I would see the then
Cardinal Ratzinger praying in the CDF chapel, before or after office hours
began, his eyes on the Tabernacle. The sight of this prominent cardinal on
his knees was an image of what we need to be as priests: first and foremost
men of prayer.”
He adds: “He has extraordinary intelligence, deep faith and great humility.
Those three things are his defining characteristics. But also, just as
importantly, he is a man of prayer. He is not one who puts on airs or needs
to boost his ego at all. He is very comfortable with who he is.
“One of the beautiful things in working for him was that you felt totally
free to make suggestions, with total freedom because you never felt that you
had to worry about his reaction, because he is very comfortable with himself
and he seeks the truth at all costs. You could tell him what was on your
mind. It was a very liberating experience to work for someone like that. It
created a great tranquillity and trust.”
He continues: “Cardinal Ratzinger thought that he would retire or become a
librarian when the new pontificate began, but he was elected Pope. And one
of the first things he did as Pope was come back to meet up with us. The
atmosphere was joy, a tinge of bittersweet sadness that he was leaving us.
But it was a beautiful moment and he gave us a reflection on his election,
before taking an opportunity to speak to each member of the CDF
individually.”
After Benedict XVI’s election they remained close and met occasionally. It
is true, Archbishop Brown says, that the Pope likes to drink Fanta. I ask
Archbishop Brown if the Pope has brought cats into the Apostolic Palace, as
rumoured. “No,” he answers. “I never once saw a cat in the palace.”
I ask if it’s true that the Pope celebrates the Extraordinary Form Mass in
private. “I can only speak from my own experience,” he says, “but at all the
Masses offered by the Pope that I have attended, they have all been Novus
Ordo.”
This year Archbishop Browncelebrated 23 years of priesthood. I point out
that there is a Fatima theme throughout his life: he was born on October 13,
the day of the Miracle of the Sun, and ordained on the anniversary of Our
Lady’s first appearance at Fatima. The archbishopexclaims: “I am all for
Fatima. I love Our Lady!”
Earlier this year Archbishop Brownwas invited by Fr Alexander Sherbrooke to
stay in Soho, central London. He celebrated Sunday Mass on May 13 in St
Patrick’s. In his sermon he encouraged the congregation to pray the rosary
with devotion, saying we can’t overestimate the power of the rosary. As
England is Mary’s Dowry it was a fitting sermon for a busy Sunday in the
nation’s capital.
When our interview finishes the rain clears and the shy Irish sun peeps out
from behind clouds. I suggest to Archbishop Brown that I take some photos of
him on the steps of the nunciature. His face is bathed in pale sunshine and
he looks at ease in the land of his ancestors, where he now has such an
important mission.
September 1983. He had read up on Buddhism and monks’ repetitive prayers
using strings of beads, which called to mind the rosary. He and his family
had not said a daily rosary when he was growing up, but he packed his rosary
for his journey to Tibet. While trekking in the mountains he recited the
decades. “Something changed in my heart and my childhood Catholic faith was
totally reactivated and made alive for me again,” he says. “I realised that
the Catholic Church contained the truth of Christ and that everything the
Church taught was true and that I could trust the Church to lead me. I
didn’t have to re-fashion Catholicism in my own image, but I had to be
re-fashioned in the image of the Church.
“This realisation did not happen in a moment, but during the weeks that I
spent in the mountains. Then I wanted to give my life to her – the Church,
Christ’s spouse – and to live my life for the Church as a priest. It all
came together at once while walking in the Himalayas: a recovery of my
childhood faith and a recognition that I was called to be a priest.”
On telling the news to his parents, he says, “they were bewildered, then
joyful”.
After finishing his degree at Oxford, he was fully convinced of his vocation
to the priesthood. “I had a real desire for radical holiness and so I
visited some strict orders that were starting up at that time, such as the
Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But none of them appealed to me.
“I got a scholarship to go to the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
in Toronto. So I left England and went to Canada to do a doctorate, still
with this idea that I was called to be a priest. At this point I did not
consider the diocesan priesthood because of my own misconceptions and
ignorance.”
But when he visited the diocesan seminary, Dunwoodie, just outside New York
City, in the spring of 1985 he had a sense that he had found his place.
“Immediately, after I knocked on the door for my interview, and when I went
into the chapel, I knew that I had found my home where I would learn to be a
priest.”
In 1988 Cardinal Ratzinger visited the seminary. When he celebrated Mass it
was seminarian Charles Brown who was the server.
Archbishop Brown says he studied for the priesthood during “a golden age in
Dunwoodie”.
“We had great professors: a dogma professor Fr James O’Connor, who wrote a
book on the Eucharist called The Hidden Manna and a rector, Cardinal Edwin
O’Brien, who is now the cardinal head of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre
in Rome, and a great moral theologian, Mgr William Smith, who was an
inspired theologian and was teaching us the doctrine of Veritatis Splendor
years before it was written. My formation could not have been better.”
It was also providential that as a newly ordained priest he was sent to St
Brendan’s parish in the Bronx, which in 1989 was almost entirely an Irish
parish. “Still a few years before the Celtic Tiger era, most of the
parishioners were Irish immigrants who had just moved to New York, and were
working as construction workers, waitresses and barmen,” he remembers. “I
was one of the few people there who spoke with an American accent.” Little
did he know at the time that this hands-on experience in a mainly Irish
parish would serve him well.
Two years later, in 1991, Fr Brown was sent to Rome because Cardinal John
O’Connor of New York, who had ordained him, asked him to study for a
doctorate in sacramental theology and to go back as soon as possible to
become a theology professor at Dunwoodie. But the plan never became a
reality. A position opened up at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith because they needed an English speaker. The CDF asked Cardinal
O’Connor if he would release Fr Brown from his duties in New York.
From 1994 to 2005, he worked side by side with Cardinal Ratzinger. In 2001,
the future Pope Benedict XVI requested that bishops from all over the world
send details of every credible accusation of abuse to the CDF. In a short
time no other place in the world was as familiar with the crisis as the CDF.
The Pope would tackle these matters on a Friday, a practice he termed ‘“our
Friday penance”.
The young priest and the high-profile cardinal spent a lot of time together,
but one memory stands out for Archbishop Brown. “I would see the then
Cardinal Ratzinger praying in the CDF chapel, before or after office hours
began, his eyes on the Tabernacle. The sight of this prominent cardinal on
his knees was an image of what we need to be as priests: first and foremost
men of prayer.”
He adds: “He has extraordinary intelligence, deep faith and great humility.
Those three things are his defining characteristics. But also, just as
importantly, he is a man of prayer. He is not one who puts on airs or needs
to boost his ego at all. He is very comfortable with who he is.
“One of the beautiful things in working for him was that you felt totally
free to make suggestions, with total freedom because you never felt that you
had to worry about his reaction, because he is very comfortable with himself
and he seeks the truth at all costs. You could tell him what was on your
mind. It was a very liberating experience to work for someone like that. It
created a great tranquillity and trust.”
He continues: “Cardinal Ratzinger thought that he would retire or become a
librarian when the new pontificate began, but he was elected Pope. And one
of the first things he did as Pope was come back to meet up with us. The
atmosphere was joy, a tinge of bittersweet sadness that he was leaving us.
But it was a beautiful moment and he gave us a reflection on his election,
before taking an opportunity to speak to each member of the CDF
individually.”
After Benedict XVI’s election they remained close and met occasionally. It
is true, Archbishop Brown says, that the Pope likes to drink Fanta. I ask
Archbishop Brown if the Pope has brought cats into the Apostolic Palace, as
rumoured. “No,” he answers. “I never once saw a cat in the palace.”
I ask if it’s true that the Pope celebrates the Extraordinary Form Mass in
private. “I can only speak from my own experience,” he says, “but at all the
Masses offered by the Pope that I have attended, they have all been Novus
Ordo.”
This year Archbishop Browncelebrated 23 years of priesthood. I point out
that there is a Fatima theme throughout his life: he was born on October 13,
the day of the Miracle of the Sun, and ordained on the anniversary of Our
Lady’s first appearance at Fatima. The archbishopexclaims: “I am all for
Fatima. I love Our Lady!”
Earlier this year Archbishop Brownwas invited by Fr Alexander Sherbrooke to
stay in Soho, central London. He celebrated Sunday Mass on May 13 in St
Patrick’s. In his sermon he encouraged the congregation to pray the rosary
with devotion, saying we can’t overestimate the power of the rosary. As
England is Mary’s Dowry it was a fitting sermon for a busy Sunday in the
nation’s capital.
When our interview finishes the rain clears and the shy Irish sun peeps out
from behind clouds. I suggest to Archbishop Brown that I take some photos of
him on the steps of the nunciature. His face is bathed in pale sunshine and
he looks at ease in the land of his ancestors, where he now has such an
important mission.
This interview appears in the 28 September edition of The Catholic Herald. You can keep up to date with Archbishop Brown by looking at the Facebook page.
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