Kenrick seminarians react to papal announcement

By LAURA KOSTA and JENNIFER BRINKER
Special to Lumen Media
 
As Cardinal Robert Prevost’s name was announced from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, seminarians at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary jumped from their seats with an explosion of cheers when they realized that a pope from North America had been chosen.

Dozens of seminary faculty and students gathered in the Father Emil Kapaun Student Center on May 8 to watch coverage of the papal announcement.

Some seminarians were in the midst of finals as Pope Leo XIV was introduced to the tens of thousands cheering in St. Peter’s Square. Seminarians later gathered in the chapel to sing the Te Deum for the new pontiff.

As Deacon Jake Rosenmeyer of the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa, prepares for ordination next month, he will have both a new bishop and a new pope to remember in his prayers when he celebrates Mass. Bishop John Keehner was ordained as bishop of Sioux City just a week before Pope Leo’s announcement.

Deacon Rosenmeyer“For us as seminarians, but then as a future priest, the Holy Father is our witness,” Deacon Rosenmeyer said. “He’s our pastor, and he’s our shepherd. We all have a shepherd on the local level — our bishop — and then we have a shepherd on the universal level, and that’s the pope. We take a lot from him and learn about what it means to be a priest from his example.”

Deacon Rosenmeyer said he hopes the new pope will continue to focus on evangelization, the poor and the marginalized, and serving the needs of a global Church.

“I would like to see a new Holy Father who keeps the boat steady and keeps us moving forward in that direction of new evangelization and how we can continue spreading the word of God throughout the world in the best way possible,” he said.

Seminarian Stephen Driscoll from the Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska, was working for Catholic News Agency in Rome in 2013, covering Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation and Pope Francis’s election. He recalled the silence of St. Peter’s Square when Pope Francis stepped out on the balcony for the first time and how powerful it was when he asked the crowd for their prayers before he gave his own blessing.

As Driscoll finished his degree in journalism and emergency management at the University of Nebraska, he discerned a vocation to the priesthood and eventually entered Kenrick-Glennon this year.

“I hope the new pope can bring a great sense of peace and unity to a world that sometimes feels divided or polarized,” he said. “I’m hoping that he can pull people together and pull them to Jesus.”

The news of a new pope has been a uniting topic of conversation with others — and an opportunity to invite people to learn more about the Catholic faith, St. Louis seminarian Jacob Trautman said.

“One of my good friends and I have talked a lot about what process is like,” he said. “I think this is a means in which people kind of enter into the faith in some capacity. I had an evangelical friend who just texted me earlier who was just like, ‘I saw the white smoke!’ It just brings faith back in the light in a way, and that’s been a neat experience.”

Father Charles Samson, an assistant professor of biblical theology, was a student at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 2013 and was among the crowd in St. Peter’s Square when the white smoke signaled that Pope Francis had been elected.

“There was a rush of emotion from the crowd in excitement, because everybody knew that the Holy Spirit, that God had just moved, and the smoke kept coming out in abundance, as if to show that the Holy Spirit is still moving abundantly in the Church,” Father Samson said. “Even seeing the faces and the flags and hearing the screams of the people in the square (today), it brings me right back to the joy of the moment of the election.”

In the square in 2013, Father Samson met a couple of people who weren’t Catholic and asked him what was happening. He explained that the Church was built on the faith of the first pope, St. Peter, “and now, as a response to that faith, all of the people in the crowd are exalting and cheering with the strength of their own faith.”

Seminary president rector Father Paul Hoesing and Cardinal Glennon College vice rector Father Jason Schumer both said they were surprised that American was named and they look forward to learning more about him.

Cardinal Prevost selected his name as an apparent nod to Pope Leo XIII, who has been described as the founding father of Catholic social doctrine in modern times. The new pope was born, raised and educated in the United States, but also has had extensive missionary experience serving the Church in Peru.

“It’s a wonderful surprise,” Father Hoesing said.

This article is reprinted by permission from the St. Louis Review in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Main photo courtesy of the St. Louis Review.
 
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