Saintmaker – not a chance - Roise Hoban

Fr James FitzPatrick has been called, among other things, a ‘Saintmaker’. He laughs at the suggestion, but acknowledges the term is sometimes used in newspaper headlines and material over which he has no control. When he spoke with Rosie Hoban, Fr James, a priest with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, was quick to set the record straight.

‘I don’t make saints, and nor does the church—it only recognises saints’, he said. And that’s where Fr James has earned his title. For 15 years he was based in Rome and worked as Postulator General, mentoring people and groups who wanted a dead person declared a saint by the Catholic Church. He travelled the world helping people through the process and examining evidence, including the case of Bishop Eugene de Mazenod, the founder of the Oblates. In fact he lists the canonisation of Bishop Eugene in December 1995 as one of his ‘career’ highlights.

‘Standing in St Peter’s, hearing the Pope proclaim Eugene de Mazenod a saint was marvellous. It was the completion of my work and a very clear manifestation of God. So much was done on a human level but it relied entirely on the confirmation of God’, he says.

The proclamation of Bishop de Mazenod followed evidence of a miracle involving a Mexican man who was dying from cancer. A local church group prayed regularly for the man in the final days of his life, as he lay in his bed cared for by his wife. One morning he woke, got out of bed, ate breakfast and appeared as if nothing was physically wrong with him. Medical evidence found that the cancer had completely disappeared.

‘That case was fraught with problems right from the beginning. Whilst working on gathering the evidence and interviewing those involved it was suggested that as the collecting of the requisite evidence would be so difficult that I should just let it be’, he says.
‘But I was convinced that God had clearly intervened in the matter, and hence that we had the responsibility to respond to God's action, no matter what the difficulties. Perseverance won through, and the miracle was finally proven and approved.

‘God is tremendously alive in our world. Frequently when we see something extraordinary we say, “I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd seen it”. But with our realisation of the working of God in the world around us we should be saying, “I’d never have seen it unless I believed it”. Unfortunately we can be too busy these days to see the action of God in our lives. But God is there.’

Fr James’ latest book, Prayers for the Journey, may help people find that space in their lives to connect with God. The book is a collection of original prayers, one for each day of the year, and includes scores of the prayers he has written in different countries for different events, retreats, missions and causes over the years of his life as an Oblate.

‘They are conversation starters for speaking with God, for communing with him. They can open doors for meetings with God, and help direct our thoughts to spend time, even a few deep moments, with him’, he says.

In a world running at a fast pace, is there time for prayer or has it been jettisoned in favour of television, take-away and shopping? Certainly, Fr James worries that people allow too little time in their lives for prayer, but he is confident that people are as desperate as they always have been to connect with God.

According to Fr James, our prayer life follows a developmental pattern similar to our own lives. There are the childhood prayers such as the Our Father and Hail Mary, learnt off by heart and repeated often by children. Adolescence can be a time of turmoil in life and in prayer. Adult prayer illustrates a maturing of our relationship with God, when prayer can be a free-flowing conversation with God, meditation or a life experience. But those prayers learned as children are the anchors that we can use at various times in our life, particularly when it is hard to find any other words.

‘We have to set aside time for prayer. Just as we set aside time to spend with our children in a busy week, we need to set aside time to commune with God. Time spent with God is also time spent for ourselves’, he says.

Fr James’ life appears to have been one devoted to connecting people to God, though the environments have differed significantly. In 1958 he wrote the Iona Passion Play, which is one of the world’s longest running plays. Year after year the play brings people around Australia in touch with the great story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. In 1967 he helped found Mazenod College in Melbourne and as the first rector he supported families who were keen to have their sons educated at a Catholic school.
In the late 1970s he moved to Sydney as Director of the Catholic Enquiry Centre. There, he and his team, developed education programs and courses for people interested in becoming Catholics and for Catholics wanting to undertake further study.
In the final year of his tenure, the Centre put 7000 people through a 20-week course about the Catholic Church. He doesn’t know how many went on to become Catholics, but the search for God was evident. The Centre also distributed 32,000 copies of various courses developed to help Catholics expand and renew their faith-lives.

‘People are very tribal and they want to find an anchor. The thing about being a Catholic is that it is a tribe that goes beyond the human connection and it leads to the divine. Many find a great connection with the tribe, but the ultimate completion is found in God’, he says.

Fr James was born in Perth and educated there by the Jesuits. He has been around the world and back again, giving retreats to men and women religious as well as to parishioners. Some of his saddest moments have been in poverty-stricken countries in Africa and in Bangladesh. Yet, in the midst of such desperate poverty he has witnessed a joy and simplicity that he no longer sees among the affluent.

Now back in Melbourne, one of the many things he has come to understand in all of his ‘jobs’ is the surety that we all live with holy people, though most will never be recognised as saints by the Catholic Church.

‘Not being declared a saint does not mean that a person is not a saint—this declaration happens with very few. A holy person does not need to be declared a saint. They are already one. It is us here who need saints—as models to follow, and as intercessors on our behalf before God.’

Fr James reminds us, ‘We are all called to be saints, each in the individual circumstances of our lives. God's grace is there in abundance for us, and we have just to reach out and grasp it. The road to sainthood is a journey with many ups and downs along the way. Every saint had to make that journey with their own ups and downs.

‘The more that I was involved in studying the lives of holy people the more I am sure that just as every saint has a past, so every sinner has future. Thank God.’