Saint Leopold Mandic
(1866-1942). His feast is celebrated on July 30.
Capuchin, martyr of the confessional: he offered himself to God for the unity of Catholics with the separated brothers of the East.
Biography
In the easternmost part of Croatia, next to Albania, is Novigrad -New Castle-, which the Turks, their rulers from the 15th to the 17th centuries, called Herzeg-Novi, and their Venetian liberators Castelnovo. Small strategic port located in the Mouths of Cathar, a deep entrance of the Adriatic Sea in the mountains of Dalmatia, with a wonderful landscape and climate. Castelnovo was in the 19th century largely Catholic, although more than half of these Slavic towns are Orthodox Christians. It belongs to the archbishopric of Zagreb, seat that was Monsignor Stepinac, the holy cardinal so persecuted by the communists.
On May 12, 1866, the last of 12 brothers, Bogdan -or Adeodato given by God- Mandic was born, of noble and wealthy grandparents, but whose parents had fallen almost into poverty. He frequented the convent of the Capuchins, who had arrived as military chaplains from the Venetians two centuries earlier. And at the age of 16 he entered the Capuchin seminary in Udine. In 1884 he entered the novitiate at Bassano, with the name Leopold. In 1890 he is ordained a priest in Venice, where he remains until 1897; then he passed through the convents of Zara, Bassano, Capodistria, and finally, in 1909, he arrived in Padua, which would be his convent until his death on July 30, 1942.
YOUR ECUMENICAL VOCATION
According to witnesses, even as a child he was exemplary. One of the characteristics of his vocation was ecumenism, the desire to work for the return of his people, the Slavs, to the bosom of the Catholic Church. This idea haunted him so much that he made a vow, repeated without ceasing, to consecrate himself to fulfilling the Lord’s promise: “There will be one flock with one shepherd.” And he added: “I offer myself as a victim for the salvation of my Eastern brothers.”
In order to realize this ideal of his, he never stopped studying oriental languages throughout his life. In addition to Croatian, he not only learned Italian and Latin, but he was able to speak Serbian, Slavic and modern Greek. Remarkable was the love and fidelity to his people, to the point that for this reason he did not want to accept Italian citizenship during the first European war, with the inconvenience of having to retire to southern Italy from 1917 to 1918. The proximity of Padua to the front he made the authorities forbid subjects of the enemy Austrian Empire to be there. However, he always felt like a citizen of hospitable and cosmopolitan Italy, where one can hardly feel like a foreigner.
As a result of so many prayers and intimate dealings with God, he received the consoling light that was reflected in his phrase: “Without a doubt, the Easterners will join the Church of Rome”, and he added that it will be: “through the merits and prayers of Mary, to whom they are so devoted.”
His request to his superiors to be assigned to the East was not granted; his health was very precarious, and his qualities were not brilliant, with faulty pronunciation to preach and no literary style to write.
However, on three brief occasions his dream of working with the Orientals came true: the three years he spent in Zara and the year in Capodistria, in the middle of Slavic land. Also in 1923, to his great joy, he was assigned to Fiume, when this port was incorporated into Italy, to attend to the Croats, Slavs and Serbs, but the people of Padua exerted so much pressure asking for his return, that after a month he was ordered father provincial his return.
THE CONFESSIONAL
And here comes the vulgar and the prodigious, the occupation of the short (1.35 m.) and ugly capuchin who was not fit for high missions, and had the routine, boring… and very high, of confessing, of forgiving sins in name and as representative of God, redirecting souls to their eternal salvation, “full time”, without leaving their confessional (a cell attached to the church), where long lines of men of all social classes, in particular priests, waited to confess and religious. No vacations, despite the strong summer heat; and without a small heater in the intense cold of winter. He resisting whole days with severe pain or burning with fever, until the very day of his death. And so he became holy. Because in any occupation we can sanctify ourselves, and because confessing is one of the occupations that, if they sanctify the penitents the most, will not be less for the confessors.
Paul VI in his beatification homily had these words of special significance and relevance in the biography of Saint Leopold today and for the current circumstances: “The peculiar note of his heroism and his charismatic virtue was – who does not know? – his ministry of hearing confessions. The late Cardinal Larraona, then prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, wrote in the 1962 decree for the beatification of Fr. Leopoldo:
‘his method of life was this: after celebrating the sacrifice of the Mass very early, he would sit in the small cell of the confessional, and there he would remain all day at the disposal of the penitents. He preserved this tenor of life for nearly forty years, without the slightest complaint…’
Let us give thanks to the Lord who offers the Church today such a singular figure of minister of the sacramental grace of penance; that, on the one hand, he makes a new appeal to priests to a ministry of such paramount importance, of such up-to-date pedagogy, of such incomparable spirituality; and, on the other hand, it reminds the faithful, whether they are fervent, lukewarm or indifferent, what a providential and ineffable service is still for them today, or better, today more than ever, individual and auricular confession, source of grace and peace, school of Christian life, incomparable consolation in the earthly pilgrimage towards eternal happiness”.
THE SOUL OF HIS HOLINESS
To his sacred ministry of hearing confessions, Fr. Leopoldo combined a rigid austerity; his illnesses, deprivation of rest and tastes (all the delicacies that, seeing his delicate health, his penitents used to give him, he gave them to his superior), the heat and the cold, all with great love for poverty for its enormous evangelical value: “So many The poor are cold and am I going to have the courage to warm myself with a stove? What would I say to them when they come to confession? Only last winter – he was 75 years old – at the insistence of a group of friends did the superior force him to accept a stove.
Twelve hours a day confessing, without sleeping more than four or five at night, not even a nap. So forty years without vacations! And when he had a fever he would answer: “The poor have to work with a fever too, in heaven we will rest. How can I go to bed, waiting for so many souls out there for my poor help?”
At night, in the chapel, on his knees, struggling with sleep, if they told him to go and rest now: “To the people I confess I give very light penances; it is necessary that I satisfy for them.”
Accepting such a penitent life is only possible with the inner energy of prayer, of constant union with God, founded on the rock of faith. Almost as a refrain, he repeated in the confessional: “Faith, have faith.” It was enough for the confessions to cease for a moment for him to kneel in prayer. “God has established that we can achieve everything from Him, but always through prayer.” He even made a vow to be continually in the presence of God with his thoughts, which supposes a heroic dominion, and he complied scrupulously.
Through this path he came to an extraordinary union with God. He never spoke of it, and the letters he wrote to his spiritual director are not extant; but they are unmistakable signs of his extraordinary charisma, among others, the many predictions he made after recollecting himself for a moment, and the many miracles he performed.
As a channel for his dealings with God, his devotion to the Lady stood out, as he called the Holy Virgin. Every day he put fresh flowers on the image of Ella that he kept in her confessional cell.
We cannot omit his devotion to the Heart of Jesus -characteristic of all modern saints-. He wrote: “Pray to the boundless charity of the Heart of Jesus so that I may become a perfect friend and disciple of yours.” As a veiled reference to his mystical life, he wrote in a picture of the Heart of Jesus: “The divine charity of the Heart of Jesus who deigned to give me such ineffable signs of his love, have mercy on me!… I hope for everything, everything I promise myself of the infinite charity of our Lord Jesus Christ, of his divine Heart”. And in a picture of the Virgin: “Today, the fiftieth anniversary of my religious profession, I renew my vows in honor of the divine Heart…” For him it was glory: “We will rest one day in heaven. There we will do better , resting our head on the divine Heart of Jesus”.
He also had great devotion and frequently turned to his Guardian Angel, to the saints, in particular Saint Joseph, Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of Padua, Saints Cyril and Methodius -apostles of the Slavs-, Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Ignatius of Loyola -he had copied and reread his famous letter of obedience-, Saint Luis Gonzaga, Saint Stanislaus Kostka and Saint John Berchmans -for their simple lives-.
KINDLY LOVE TO SOULS
His earnest and solid love for souls, which led him to such a heroic life of self-sacrifice, was in its outward manifestations full of goodness. For four years, from 1910 to 1914, in addition to giving patrology classes to Capuchin theological students, he was their director. He left in them a very pleasant memory of the maternal love with which he treated them, and he was interested in each one in particular. To the cook brother he used to say, “Be generous to the students. Limit me and someone else’s ration as much as you like, but for God’s sake treat the students well.”
On the harshest winter nights, he excused them from the choir and from the acts following dinner and recreation: “Go to rest. I’ll pray and do a little penance for you.” Because of his broad criteria, some criticized him for mitigating the traditional rigor of the order, and they only let him confess.
Also in the confession he seemed to have wide sleeves. To a canon, a penitent of his, who questioned him: “You are too good, don’t you have to give an account to the Lord for that?” infinite goodness of God.
Days before he died he said: “I have been confessing for more than fifty years, and my conscience does not bother me all the times that I have given absolution, but rather I feel sorry for the three or four times that I have not been able to give it. It is possible that he did not do everything he should to arouse in the penitents the due dispositions”.
Tremendous strength and responsibility of confessors who cannot absolve those who are not willing to fulfill their serious obligations. Difficult situation in times of liberalism, such as those of Saint Leopold, when many do not accept the interpretations or serious provisions of the Church. The admirable thing about the saint is not…