EPISTLES

Today is the feast day of Padre Pio, and I find myself thinking about what a Catholic priest should look like and how he should live. The image of the old friar with the white beard and brown robe keeps coming back to me. That is the face many of us still carry in our minds when we hear the word priest.

Padre Pio was holy in a way that felt solid and real. He prayed for hours. He bore the wounds of Christ. He heard confessions until late at night. He spoke plainly about sin and heaven. He was also a man in the fullest sense of the word—strong, steady, and unafraid. Catholics grew up expecting that every priest would try, at least in some measure, to walk the same road. We wanted men who carried the Cross without apology and who still looked as though they belonged to the Church of the ages.

That expectation has not aged well.

Walk into many parishes today, and the picture can be different. The man at the altar may be kind. He may smile often. He may speak gently about inclusion and welcome. Yet the quiet fire that burned in Padre Pio is sometimes missing. Instead of the brown robe and scarred hands, we encounter something different: the modern haircut, fashionable glasses, and careful language that seems determined never to offend. The contrast is almost funny until we remember that souls are at stake.

Some priests have simply grown tired of the old ways. The long black cassock, firm teaching on marriage, and clear distinction between male and female may now feel burdensome to them. They set those things aside. In their place, they pick up softer words and safer causes. A few go further. They begin to speak the language of the age, supporting movements that treat the body as optional and truth as flexible. They bless what the Church has traditionally taught to be sinful or remain silent while others do so. The result is a strange new figure: a Catholic priest who no longer sounds very Catholic at all.

This reminds me of Mrs. Sarah Mullally, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. She is not a Catholic priest, of course. Yet some of her public positions illustrate the kind of progressive clergy whose approach can also be encountered by Catholics in their own parishes. Mullally supports the blessing for same-sex couples and has spoken about her position on abortion in terms that differ from traditional Christian pro-life teaching. Her position really does not matter to me; it is simply that some of our own Catholic priests are advocating for the same things.

I do not write this out of anger. I write it with a kind of tired sadness. When I was young, the priest was the one man in the room who still believed that heaven and hell were real and that the Mass could change a life. Now, I sometimes leave the church wondering whether the man at the altar believes the same things I do. The gap between the bearded friar and the liberal cleric feels wider every year.

Yet the feast of Padre Pio does not exist to make us bitter. It exists to remind us that holiness is still possible. One man in a small Italian town lived the Gospel so fully that the world still speaks about him decades after his death. If he could do it, other men can try. The Church does not need every priest to receive the stigmata. It needs men who will stop trying to look modern and start trying to look like Christ.

The Church still needs men like Padre Pio—men who are not afraid to speak the truth, defend the Faith, carry the Cross, and lead souls toward heaven. We need priests who do not measure their success by the approval of the world but by their fidelity to Christ and His Church. On his feast day, I pray that God will raise up more priests who embody that same courage, holiness, and love for souls. That is the hope I want to hold on to.