My Dad Was The Pope’s Babysitter

Happy Father’s Day friends.

I’m aware…I’ve been aware since I was as old as my young son that not everyone celebrates Father’s Day. My dad didn’t have a dad in his life for most of his life. His dad didn’t have a dad in his life for most of his either. My father was raised instead by a single mom on the Southside of Chicago. His solace in childhood was his little church. It told stories about heaven and stories about how to get to heaven…“How to ascend to the father.”

That’s maybe not all the different from Jesus whose dad in the little town of Bethlehem, and then in Nazareth, was not his father; and everyone, including Joseph, knew, Mary was Jesus’ mother and knew Joseph was not Jesus’ father. Jesus dreamed and spoke of the father who did not tuck him in at night continually… “he and I are one.”

Was this way of talking about a father that others did not see something that bonded Jesus and the first disciples?

“This is after all an intimate group of friends, sojourners, comrades, spiritual co-conspirators,” says one scholar talking about the Gospel of John. “They journeyed with Jesus through his adult life…They ate with Jesus, laughed with Jesus, the disciples heard Jesus’ teachings, and walked alongside him…” So, says the commentator “to hear repeatedly that the one you know and love will not always be there” just as his father was not there…“What does this mean to be a community beyond Jesus?”

“Jesus says that the coming of the Spirit offers those that listen access to what they have known with Jesus.”

Ok.

That’s the perspective of an expert. I think she’s right. Maybe, insight into this story is also a true story of part of my father’s childhood. I’m going to tell you that story…

…though some of what I’m going to say is entirely made up.

Like December 25. Jesus was certainly not born then; nor was Jesus born in a stable with wooden walls and a roof. The stable was; according to those who run the tourist business in modern Bethlehem, a cave.

This does not mean our Bible stories are made up. Even skeptics admit Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person. Jesus was executed by Roman authorities. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It’s what happened between these that there isn’t debate about; so much lack of consensus—a difference of faith about what Jesus life means.

One way to talk about it is going to be a story I’m going to tell my children as they grow up.

…my dad was the Pope’s babysitter…

Before I tell you this story you should know that when my son was an infant I used to take him on long stroller rides so my wife could rest. We always stopped at the same place, a church a few blocks from our Upper Manhattan apartment—the Shrine of Mother Cabrini.

Did you know the that first American Saint’s body is still in Manhattan?

Did you know the first American Saint, Frances Xavier Cabrini, is the patron Saint of immigrants?

I know the name Cabrini, as in, Shrine of Mother Cabrini, because that’s what a notorious public housing project in Chicago was called, Cabrini Greens.

A writer, Alex Kotlowitz, wrote a book, There Are No Children Here, about the projects. I read the book as a teenager…and somehow I knew that’s what I wanted to spend my life doing, being with kids who didn’t know childhoods. I realized quickly after I started this work in the South Bronx during a seminary internship in the wake of September 11, 2001 that this was not work I could do. And so for the last 23 years I have not been doing the work…

That’s what Jesus tells his disciples.

They don’t have to have the answer of what to do or what to say. God is going to work through them by the Holy Spirit.

You could say religion is the family business.

My dad was a Lutheran Pastor. I didn’t know this until much later, after his death…he didn’t do that work either.

My dad grew up on the Southside of Chicago.

…he was Robert Prevost, future Pope Leo, also from the Southside of Chicago, babysitter.

This is the part that I have no actual historical evidence to point to.

Although, I do have fragments.

For example, my grandfather whose dad died when he was three, and left the family farm at age 13, came back to the family house in Minnesota to be with his sister after her two adult children died within 14 months of each other.

She was catatonic. Beset with grief. She could not and would not talk. My grandfather took his infant son to meet his sister. He reasoned; “you may not talk to people; but you my can’t not talk to a baby.” He was right. with a baby he re-tied her thread of life to the living.

5 years later this brother would be dead.

My grandfather died in a tragic accident leaving a son and wife with no insurance and no means of support. My grandmother heartbroken and grieving went back to the Southside of Chicago with her son to be with her family This is where that boy, my dad, would spend time nurturing the future Pontiff.

“Could be.”

At least that what my dad’s cousin, whose sister’s husband, was friends with another boy, who was an altar boy on the Southside with Robert Prevost, the future Pope.

“Wouldn’t that be amazing if it were true!”

I mean what are the odds that Michelle Robinson better known as Michelle Obama also from the Southside of Chicago would be childhood friends a girl named Santita—Jesse Jackson’s daughter; and Michelle would go on to marry the man who would become the first Black President of the United States of America?

I was in a room with a small group of seminary students at Columbia University when I heard Jesse Jackson wonder if Barry watched him speak when he was at Columbia University in 1984. Did this inspire Barry to embrace his birthname, Barack, and begin to imagine a successful candidacy for President?

Maybe.

So was my dad really future Pope Leo’s baby sitter?

Or was your dad; or mom; the caretaker of the Christ child?

That’s a Protestant idea of faith.

The Biblical idea that, “all who believe could become children of God,” that’s the Gospel of John’s thesis.

I’ve got an idea. When we tell the story of Jesus let’s not create a hagiography—telling stories that are too fantastic to be true.

Let’s do something better.

Let’s be babysitters.

Let’s take care of one another.

We need American Saints, who care for immigrants.

We need am American Pope who cares for the world—especially the most vulnerable. That’s the idea of John with the Holy Spirit…and to my ears that’s the idea of faith. We don’t need to know what the answer is or what to do…God is going to do it through us.

May God be with you all, Happy Father’s Day.

Amen.