“The Church Is Not a Policy Machine”: Cardinal Czerny on Migration and the Necessity of Politics

A candid conversation on refugees, responsibility, and where the Church’s moral voice meets the limits—and demands—of political action.

Cardinal Michael Czerny speaks from experience—formed by his family’s flight from Europe and decades of work in global crises—to explain how the Church understands migration today.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• His family background and personal ties to a statue in St. Peter’s Square

• Why the Church avoids political framing on migration

• Whether arguments about culture and identity hold up

• Why social issues have become front-and-center in the modern Church

This is a serious exchange about one of the defining tensions of our time: the necessity of politics—and the refusal of the Church to be reduced to it.

Transcript

Intro: Cardinal Michael Czerny has been one of the Catholic Church’s most prominent voices on social questions for more than a decade. The son of immigrants of Jewish and Christian background, whose parents’ story is reflected in a 2019 installation in St. Peter’s Square, his advocacy is rooted in a personal history shaped by displacement and resilience. His priestly vocation was forged through human rights work in El Salvador and later in the fight against AIDS in Africa, before eventually being called to Rome. There, he became one of the closest collaborators of Pope Francis, helping shape the Vatican’s response to migration and environmental care through the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—work he continues into the early days of Pope Leo’s pontificate. In this conversation with Catholic News Service, we explore the roots of his convictions and how his life experience has helped popes shape the Church’s engagement with the defining issues of the 21st century. And we ask: as debates over national borders and identity intensify in Europe and the United States, is the Church being heard—or does its message risk falling on deaf ears?

Robert Duncan: I was wondering whether I would start the interview this way or end it.

Cardinal Czerny: Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it and then you can edit it.

Robert Duncan: You may disagree with this, Cardinal Czerny. First of all, thank you for sitting down with Catholic News Service. But I’ve been both present at many interviews with you and I’ve watched many interviews with you, most recently during the recent conclave. And one thing that I’ve noticed is you often will reframe the question that the journalist asks. And that makes me wonder whether you think that journalists, whether they be Catholic or secular, often get the church’s story wrong.

Cardinal Czerny: Well, I mean, my feeling is they get the story wrong if they ask the wrong question. And so if the question is not going to get us to a happy answer, then it’s better to reformulate it.

Robert Duncan: Well, I will be on my best behavior. I want to start with St. Peter’s Square, which is now a testament to your own life story. I believe if I’ve got this right, the last time St. Peter’s Square was permanently altered was in the 19th century with the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul. In 2019, a new permanent feature was installed. Can you tell me about that statue and what is your personal connection to it?

Cardinal Czerny: My personal connection with Angels Unawares is a pretty long-running friendship with the sculptor, Timothy Schmaltz. And the way I remember the particular story is that there was a boat that went down in the Mediterranean with I don’t know how many hundred migrants on board. And Timothy was here for some other reason and he said to me, Father, when is this tragedy of migration going to stop? And I said to him, Timothy, migration is not a tragedy, it’s a fact of life. And he says that this inspired him to try to portray the migrants of all times and all places. And in their midst, following a citation from the Letter to the Hebrews, in their midst, there’s an angel. The sculpture is called Angels Unawares. And the angel is ambiguous in an interesting way. Because it’s not clear whether the angel is someone who is welcoming a migrant or whether the angel is the migrant bringing life into the life of whoever is helping.

Robert Duncan: And your parents are depicted in the statue.

Cardinal Czerny: And my parents are on the back of the boat.

Robert Duncan: Can you tell people who don’t know your story?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, we’re refugees from Czechoslovakia who came to Canada in late 1948. And so when Timothy was doing the sculpture, he asked for examples of people who were forced to flee. And my parents happened to fit that category. So I shared a photo with him and so they ended up on a boat. Why were they forced to flee? Several reasons. They had scarcely survived the tragedy of World War II and the persecution. And then the regime in Czechoslovakia turned communist and my father was afraid for his own life and especially for the future of his family. And so we fled.

Robert Duncan: How old were you at the time?

Cardinal Czerny: Two and a bit.

Robert Duncan: Any memories, images?

Cardinal Czerny: Not really. I mean, probably stories that I’ve been told and that I now make my own. But I mean, I think I remember a moment in the train station in Paris when we were on our way to Le Havre. I remember some moments on the boat or on the train from Halifax to Montreal. We arrived for Christmas of 1948. But the important thing of our story is that we would not have been able to go to Canada if we didn’t have sponsors. And a school friend of my parents heard that we were stuck in Europe and wanted to get to Canada. And even though he had only arrived recently himself and had his own young family, he took the risk of sponsoring us and making it possible for us to come to Canada. And that marked me very much. It was something that our family always remembered and that we are grateful for to this day. And so when the Church encourages us to welcome, it’s something that I believe in very much and that my own experience backs up.

Robert Duncan: I walk through St. Peter’s Square every day as I come to work. And, you know, people do, of course, stare at the Basilica and the Saints and the Square and all the different features. And they certainly also stare for a while and they touch — you can see certain parts where they’ve venerated the statue. And I just wonder, I mean, it must be both a source of pride and mystery and humility, I don’t know — What does it feel like to be a permanent part of St. Peter’s Square?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, that’s quite astonishing, I would say. I mean, that’s not something that I easily, I can easily believe. And especially being a refugee family, to think that you have a permanent place anywhere, much less in St. Peter’s Square, is quite astonishing. But, you know, the thing that I find most touching is how people relate to the sculpture. Because unlike many other works like that, there’s no sign. There’s no word around that tells you what it is or who did it or why it is or any of that. And so people, in a certain sense, stumble upon it and very quickly identify with it. And I think it’s fair to say that most people are walking around the boat looking for their ancestors. Because most people are the offspring of refugees or migrants of one kind or another. In fact, we all are, finally. So the fact that people recognize the meaning and relate to the sculpture so personally, that as you say, there are places which have been touched by thousands and thousands of people in a sense of connectedness. I don’t know if it’s veneration exactly, but certainly a sense of connectedness. That’s very cool because what the false narrative about migrants and refugees and displaced people and unaccompanied minors, the false narrative is that they have nothing to do with us. Whereas the sculpture says, no, no, they are us. They are us.

“The false narrative is that (migrants) have nothing to do with us. Whereas the sculpture says, no, no, they are us. They are us.”

Robert Duncan: So this experience, you say it marked you permanently. And it’s clear from your Wikipedia page, your biography, that you decided relatively early on to give your life to the cause of human rights. Would you just talk a bit about where that vocation came from and how it fit in with your priestly vocation?

Cardinal Czerny: Yeah, no, but I would never describe my vocation as a vocation to human rights. That’s not, I wouldn’t be right. No, my vocation was a gift and a call from God to serve him and to serve his people. And in fact, and I was attracted to the Jesuits because I had studied in a Jesuit school in Montreal in Loyola. But at first I thought I was probably going to be a professor. So I don’t think, you know, it wasn’t a question of human rights. It is true, people have studied that survivors of the Holocaust often have gone into the service part of life. It’s as if this gratuitous or doubly or triply gratuitous gift of life means you have to give back and that it’s not worth living if you’re not giving back. So many of us make that option. And I suppose, unawares, I made that option too. But my vocation, you might say, or my calling to work in the social ministry came later as part of my Jesuit formation. And now looking back, it all makes sense, but I didn’t see it so clearly then. I didn’t think that much about being a migrant or refugee until, in fact, until I was appointed to the new migrant and refugee section by Pope Francis and sort of had to learn all about it. And after listening to migrants and refugees talking after a while being said, but that sounds very much like what I went through.

Robert Duncan: Right. I wanted to put a pin in it because it’s slightly going back a step. But one thing that we didn’t discuss was your Jewish heritage. And when did you or your family become Catholic?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, on my father’s side, we’re traditionally Catholic. We’re not at all Jewish. And on my mother’s side, my paternal grandfather was a second-generation Catholic. In other words, his father converted. My great-great-grandfather was the last one who died as a Jew. So on my grandfather’s side, we’ve been Catholic for four generations. On my mother’s side, in fact, my grandmother was baptized not long before she married. So she was... But being Jewish at that time in Czechoslovakia was more of a cultural thing than religious. And so we were basically a Catholic family. We went to the parish from us. And being Jewish is part of our spiritual, cultural, and human heritage. And so it’s part of us. But we haven’t been Jewish, at least on my father’s side, or grandfather’s side for a long time.

Robert Duncan: So how did that awareness of Jewish heritage shape your Catholic faith growing up?

Cardinal Czerny: We didn’t talk about it much. Partly because it was traumatic and so there wasn’t much motivation to sort of keep digging around in it. Partly because coming to a new country with a new language and new culture, there’s a very strong motivation to inculturate rather than to dwell in the past. And because of implicit, mostly implicit instinct that anti-Semitism is never over. It’s always ready to come back. And so we didn’t need to go through that again.

Robert Duncan: So there are a few... I want to get to your roles at the Vatican, the roles. But there are two very important chapters of your life in San Salvador and then Africa. And I wonder if there’s anything that maybe you would want to share in sort of a biographical broad sketch with people about how those two experiences prepared you for the role that you’ve had in Rome.

Cardinal Czerny: Well, that would take a thousand years to explain all that. I’m often astonished how my past has prepared me for my present. So that’s a long story. The two years in El Salvador were of course a very moving experience to step into the shoes of these Jesuit martyrs, to live in the same community where the women had been involved and to participate in the ending of the civil war. These are all very, very meaningful experiences. And that’s where maybe the human rights thing became explicit because my primary work at the university was as director of the Human Rights Institute. So I got very involved in that aspect. It became an important issue in terms of the relationship between the government and the opposition and an important instrument that the United Nations used to help bring about the peaceful settlement.

Robert Duncan: And then in Africa?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, that was another story. That’s a different story. So I went, in between the two, between El Salvador and Africa, I spent 11 years here in Rome as secretary for the social apostolate of the Jesuits. And towards the end of my time, one of my tasks was to help the Jesuits in Africa to figure out how they were going to respond to AIDS, which was just bursting at the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s. And so after two or three years of consultation and discussion and thinking, I came to the decision to establish a network amongst the Jesuits in Africa so that together we might face this issue of AIDS, supporting each other and learning from each other. And my responsibility here was to get us to that point. But then it got turned around and said, well, if you help create it, you may as well run it. So that’s how I ended up in Africa.

Robert Duncan: Was your work on combating AIDS in Africa informed by, and if so, what were the challenges taking Catholic teaching against contraception and trying to shape a response that was plausible in Africa?

Cardinal Czerny: Yeah, the contraception thing was more of a problem here in the North and the West than it was in Africa. The real issue in Africa was alienation, abandonment, trauma and semi-prejudice. In other words, a person got HIV and as if that wasn’t enough, they also became ostracized. And that became the real problem because that made everything else impossible. Kids would come home and confess to their families and be thrown out. And the fear was terrible. So the task was to, you might say, to face AIDS, not to run from it, to understand it well enough and to care for one another. And that’s what we tried to do. Our network wasn’t trying to persuade Jesuits to leave what they were doing originally and come and work on AIDS. It was to help them to face AIDS in whatever ministry they were already involved in, whether school or parish or retreat house or university.

Robert Duncan: So is that what you were doing on the eve of being called to Rome to work in Pope Francis’ Curia?

Cardinal Czerny: No, it was what I was doing, but I came to Rome in 2010. Pope Benedict was still Pope.

Robert Duncan: Oh, that’s right.

Cardinal Czerny: And I was his assistant to Cardinal Peter Turkson as President of Justice and Peace. And then after that came the new Dicastery and the Migrants and Refugees section.

Robert Duncan: What was, for people who don’t know, not maybe revolutionary — some people have described Pope Francis as revolutionary — but what was striking about the dedication of an office within that Dicastery to the migrants and refugee issue?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, I mean, in plain English, we might say that he was putting his money where his mouth was. He had clearly stood up for the migrants and refugees. He had taught significantly about them. He had made very moving and unforgettable gestures. But someone could ask, yeah, but what about your shop? And so one of his motivations, I think, in establishing the Migrants and Refugees section was to say, yes, here is our effort. Here’s what we can contribute. And along with my co-undersecretary, who is now Cardinal, also Cardinal, Fabio Baggio. So we developed an approach in which we tried to help the local churches to face the questions and challenges and opportunities of migrants and refugees.

“(Pope Francis) was putting his money where his mouth was.”

Robert Duncan: A friend of mine who we both know, built, I think, the website — that was Matthew Sanders. And it was, I think, the most attractive Vatican website, at least for a while.

Cardinal Czerny: All compliments are welcome.

Robert Duncan: And it looked like, I mean, when something like that happens, when you get a new website, it looks like there’s a communications effort being made. To what extent did you and do you see the work of the Migrants and Refugees section of that dicastery as making a case politically in the communication space amid the rise of sort of more anti-immigration politics in Europe?

Cardinal Czerny: Yeah. No, you’re quite right to raise up that aspect because it is, you can’t reduce it to a communication problem, but communications is an important part of the problem and also the solution. And so an explicit challenge for our new Migrants and Refugees section was how could we deal with and respond to and, if possible, reduce the toxic rhetoric. And we were convinced, I think, right from the start that the only plausible response was good practice, positive stories, case studies. In other words, that we would be wasting our time to engage in the shouting match because, in fact, the shouting is not based on reality, it’s based on false ideas. And instead dedicate ourselves to telling the truth based on what people were actually living and doing. So the communication part was essential and we worked very hard on it. And, in fact, when COVID broke, we immediately started a special newsletter on how, in our sector of Migrants and Refugees, we were dealing also with COVID since that was, you might say, a cross-cutting challenge wherever you went and whatever you were doing. And I’m glad that our website made a good impression.

Robert Duncan: What challenges did you face internally in getting that project and those priorities of Pope Francis off the ground? Were there any?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, I suppose the big challenge was to get started simultaneously practically everywhere in the world. There’s no place in the world that’s not touched one way or the other by migration and refugee issues or questions. And in some cases it’s very difficult, in other cases it goes quite well, but all the situations deserve attention. And I think we recognize that for Church leadership, for bishops, for those who work with them in pastoral ministry, that these questions were sometimes quite new and quite sharp, quite urgent. What were some of the questions? Well, one of the best examples, I would say, is the church on two sides of a border. So you have a diocese on this side that belongs to the National Bishops’ Conference in this country, and they speak this language, and this is their tradition. And on the other side of the river, on the other side of the border, there’s a different diocese, they speak a different language, they belong to a different bishops’ conference in a different country. And you would think, well, these differences become part of the obstacle for the person who’s fleeing, the person who’s seeking refuge. Whereas if you put the two diocese together, if you help them to, let’s say, recognize each other as being really two parts of the same church on two sides of a border, you can practically make the border disappear. And that’s a great miracle of pastoral ministry in the migratory area, that we can’t solve the problem, that’s not our job, but we can help the migrants and refugees, the people who are fleeing, to live their experience in a more human way and to feel that the church is accompanying them. And not that they’re passing through a whole bunch of churches, but that basically they’re passing through one church, which cooperates in such a way that they can keep moving with at least some extra security and self-respect.

Robert Duncan: You have said that the migration and refugee fact of the matter is that it’s always been a part of the human story. And on the other hand, there’s this communications challenge today to speak to people about its importance and government leaders. How do you understand the situation? In other words, do you see the particular communications challenges as coming out of the 2014 Syrian refugee crisis, or do they have antecedents that go farther back? I mean, the particular political challenges of making the case for migrants and refugees.

Cardinal Czerny: Well, I mean, I don’t know if I understand fully, but I mean, why do we have to make a case for them? You know, why do we have to make a case for them?

Robert Duncan: Well, you said part of it’s a communications challenge.

Cardinal Czerny: Well, I know, but why? Why are we in this mess?

Robert Duncan: Why do you think we’re in the mess?

Cardinal Czerny: Because I think governments have lost their way and have, instead of exercising responsibility in dealing with the issue, they’re using scapegoating and stereotypes in order to try to wash their hands of it.

Robert Duncan: What do you think Pope Francis’ success was? I mean, he openly obviously made it a priority of the Catholic Church, and it seems that Pope Leo has continued this priority. But is it a lot of preaching that is falling on deaf ears?

Cardinal Czerny: Oh, no, no, no, no. Now you are part of the problem. No, it’s not falling on deaf ears. The large majority of Christians are responding. It’s a myth. It’s a false myth to associate us with this kind of blindness and deafness.

“(The Church’s message) not falling on deaf ears. The large majority of Christians are responding.”

Robert Duncan: Who’s us in this case?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, you’re talking about Church people. In other words, this is the problem, is that the bad news prevails. And so you don’t know how many thousands and thousands and thousands of gestures of welcome. Pope Francis identified the four steps very clearly. Welcome, protect, promote and integrate. That’s what all of us are called to do for every person who is fleeing for their lives. And we’re committed to it as a human family by the Conventions on Refugees, which continue to be valid and which we are blithely ignoring.

“This is the problem… the bad news prevails. And so you don’t know how many thousands and thousands and thousands of gestures of welcome.”

Robert Duncan: Are there any challenges that are internal to the Church?

Cardinal Czerny: No, the same challenges internal to the Church as with every other important issue. That is that we need better education, better formation, more resources. And most of all, we need our faithful, our members, our baptized people to recognize their gospel responsibilities in the world. And these many different issues, whether the migrants and refugees or other marginalized or rejected people or the environment or human rights or drug trafficking, the list is very long, the ways in which sin plays out in reality. And that’s, we’re here to bring the Gospel.

Robert Duncan: Can you tell me about your pectoral cross?

Cardinal Czerny: So my pectoral cross is made from the wood of a migrant boat. And you can see the back too, it’s the old paint from the boat. So this is the wood of an old fishing boat that migrants would have used coming from Northern Africa. Probably from Tunisia or Libya, coming towards Lampedusa. And some of the boats arrived and never went back. Some of the boats crashed and fell apart. But this wood is now used by people, especially by Christians, as an expression of solidarity with the migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean. And so this cross is a contemporary crucifixion, it’s Jesus.

“My pectoral cross is made from the wood of a migrant boat. … this wood is now used by people, especially by Christians, as an expression of solidarity with the migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean.”

Robert Duncan: So it’s from an actual boat or from the wood that’s...

Cardinal Czerny: Yeah. Okay. You can see it was painted many times.

Robert Duncan: Those who say that Europe cannot accommodate the waves of migration, and there are complicated social and economic cases that can be made in that regard, there are some people worried that the crisis in Iran is going to dwarf the Syrian refugee crisis. Is this something that your office is preparing for, planning for, anticipating?

Cardinal Czerny: The basic point is that our work is not predicated on current affairs. We don’t look at the newspapers or listen to the media and say, ah, this is what we need to work on. Our work depends on the requests and concerns and needs of the church. And so we try to accompany the church wherever in the world there are tensions, struggles, challenges, especially ongoing difficulties. The Iranian, whatever you want to call it, let’s call it crisis, the Iranian crisis is very new. It’s premature to talk about refugees. And so no, we’re not preparing. What we do in our dicastery is to try to help the bishops and their co-workers wherever they are in the world with the problems that they actually have. And that’s what we do. So we’ll wait to see what, if anything, this particular war is going to bring up.

Robert Duncan: Is there ever news that, in regard to refugees and migration worldwide, that shakes your faith or that frustrates you?

Cardinal Czerny: Much of it frustrates me, but it doesn’t discourage me. I understand that given many social, economic, political, cultural, media factors, this is a difficult, it’s difficult. And our role is, as I said, is not to solve the problem. That’s a political responsibility. It’s people’s civic responsibility to solve the problem. And their faith hopefully motivates them to exercise their civic responsibility. But we are there to help the church to accompany the people in their need. And this is what we try to do. And no, I’m never discouraged about that because the Church is, I don’t think we’ve ever been in a situation where a church said, yeah, there’s these hordes of people who need help but we’re not interested. I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Robert Duncan: The message that was resounding all the time with Francis, and it’s been continued with Leo, is welcome. Is that a moral category or is that a, it also sounds like it has political consequences.

Cardinal Czerny: All of life has political consequences.

Robert Duncan: Or policy consequences.

Cardinal Czerny: All of life has policy consequences.

Robert Duncan: The hard work is implementing the policy in a way that’s sustainable and just and fair. Is the Church — does it have it too easy to be able to make the claim, you know, that welcome is the morally just attitude without proposing concrete policy?

Cardinal Czerny: The Church is not a policy machine. The Church proclaims or teaches or testifies to the importance of welcome and it welcomes. And it tries to help people to welcome.

Robert Duncan: But the question is how do we do that?

Cardinal Czerny: It depends who’s asking, you know. If you’re asking Christians how to help, you know, we can do it through our parish, we can do it through Caritas, we can do it through other projects and many people do. In Canada we have this private sponsorship program where parishes and other groups can sponsor refugees and take care of them. Which, as you know, reminds me of our own being sponsored when we needed to find someone to welcome us. And so there are many ways in which the Church can and does respond. And now under the special stresses there’s as much as possible, the Church is trying to protect people and help them to deal with their terrible insecurities and all the things that are so painful right now. But the responsibility for the borders, for quotas, for systems is the responsibility of the state.

Robert Duncan: Does the argument hold any water that there is a cultural limit of migration? I mean, concerns about Christian Europe or what would happen if too many Muslims came to Europe and what would that do to the long-term future? Do any of those arguments hold any water for you?

Cardinal Czerny: No.

Robert Duncan: Why is that?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, because they’re not real questions. They’re polemical. They’re based on caricatures and bogeymen. And if you’re having a problem relating with Muslims, solve the problem. Don’t then create a category of unwelcome people. And you can ask with some critical penetration about how migrants or refugees from Islamic countries have been welcomed and treated and what has happened and all that. And maybe there were big mistakes made and we’re facing the consequences. And those remain the responsibility of the state to resolve. But you’re not going to convince the church to say, well, in that case, they’re not welcome. We’ll never do that.

Robert Duncan: I’d like to move on and talk, if we could, about Laudato Si’ in the environment. I don’t know if you’ve ever been asked on camera, but you were rumored to have been, in large part, responsible for drafting that text. Is that true?

Cardinal Czerny: It’s a rumor. It’s a rumor.

Robert Duncan: I’ll take that as a yes. Who is the audience of Laudato Si’ and how did it make its argument, taking into account people’s sensitivities about that issue?

Cardinal Czerny: I would say the genius of Laudato Si’ was to treat the environment, well, it’s in the subtitle, as our common home, which is already a big step forward. And to, you might say, wash it of its greenness. In other words, wash it from a particular, you might say, ideological stance, legitimate as it might be in many contexts, but not necessarily for the Church. To wash it of its greenness and instead to understand it as a problem in basically all the other, in all the real social dimensions, including the economic, of course, the scientific, the spiritual, the communal, the aesthetic, et cetera. So it’s a real common home. It’s everything of what it means to live here on earth. And it’s not just, pardon to use the word, but it’s not just a green question.

Robert Duncan: Pope Francis talked about the technocratic paradigm and also with Pope Leo, we’re talking about technology — AI — as questions of moral discernment. Is the Church late to talking about technology as an ethical and spiritual domain?

Cardinal Czerny: I think if you look at issues from this point of view, what is their place in the worldwide discourse and who’s talking about it and so forth, I suspect that we’re always late. We’re always late and I would say God bless us. We don’t need another voice, you know, trying to figure out what we’re talking about. It’s not our job. We are not the UN. We’re not a think tank. We’re not a first class university. Let them do that. Go talk to them if you want to know what’s the cutting edge. That’s not our problem. Our problem is how to live the faith in this world.

“We are not the UN. We’re not a think tank. We’re not a first-class university. … Our problem is how to live the faith in this world.”

Robert Duncan: So what made it an issue?

Cardinal Czerny: Well, because it was obviously an accumulating problem and it was even though a reasonable person would say, well, if the human race is making this huge mistake, they’re going to correct it. Apparently, we don’t have that rational capacity. So it’s getting worse and worse and more and more dangerous and more and more dangerous for people who otherwise don’t have a voice. So those are all reasons for the Church to speak up.

Robert Duncan: There’s Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo, and Father Manuel Dorantes was saying how — he was making a case that this is actually a way to evangelize because if you listen to young people, Gen Z, there’s a lot of concern for the environment. And I’m sure there wasn’t a cold political calculation that this is how we could get people interested in the Church again. But have you seen evidence that the Church’s relatively recent focus on the environment has had an effect on attracting young people to the Church?

Cardinal Czerny: As far as I know, yeah, I think so. You have to ask the bishops, you know, in their respective countries to get a good sense of that. But I’m pretty sure it’s true, yeah. And it’s true, you know, we have this very beautiful experience, I don’t know if your listeners know about it, the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, which is a place online where people can get together to work out their concerns about the environment and find good ways to respond together. And it’s organized according to sectors for families and for parishes and for schools and for businesses and so on. Anyway, that to me is a great sign of people’s desire and willingness and generosity to get a hold of this thing and wisely thinking we’d best do it together.

Robert Duncan: There is a perception that we’ve talked about, Pope Francis inaugurated the Migrants and Refugees section. Even though Pope Benedict also spoke about the environment in a very important way, Laudato Si’ was a step forward. And Pope Leo is talking about AI, and he chose his name in part because of Pope Leo XIII and social issues in general. From the outside, it might look like the Catholic Church is trying to do a rebrand. Like the primary issues are social. Some people have claimed that theology has taken a bit of a backseat, and the Church’s primary role in the world is horizontal. This is a story. Do you think there’s any truth to that story? And if not, how can you, how would you persuade people that these are indeed the core issues that should occupy the minds of Christians today?

Cardinal Czerny: The issues are so many ways of living our faith. What the Church is concerned, and the Church’s brief, is to help us to live the Gospel in our time, with our brothers and sisters. And so, I think we will always be coming late to issues. It will always be looking at, we suddenly discovered the wheel, and everybody else already knows. But that’s fine. It doesn’t really matter. Because the real question is not, were we the first to think of it, or are we part of the cutting-edge discussion? That’s not our business. That’s not what we’re for. What we’re for is to help people to live their faith authentically and evangelically in this world and thereafter. And so, the real question is, what help do people need to live their faith? That’s the real question. And if you’re in California, and reality all around you is burning, you need help to live your faith in that context, and making your struggle to survive and to protect your life and the life of your community, that’s part of your faith. It’s not a sideshow. The theoretical, ontological, metaphysical questions are all aids and supports to help us to live, and to live as humanly and as fully as possible, which in terms of our dicastery is called integral human development. So everything is supposed to help us to do that. And unfortunately, many people are excluded. Many people are abused and exploited. And our common home is in danger. And we’re doing a very bad job of treating each other humanly. But these are all questions of faith, and questions of morality, if you want, and questions of practice.

Robert Duncan: Maybe I’d like to wrap up with a few questions that are more personal. What is it like to be a cardinal? For people who maybe don’t know much about the Church, do you feel that people see you in a particular way? A lot of people think the Church and cardinals are very rich. Or do you feel that people want you for access to the Pope?

Cardinal Czerny: To be a cardinal, honestly, to be a cardinal is to have a special calling, a special invitation, a special designation to help the Holy Father. That’s what we exist for. When I became a cardinal, I gave myself five years to figure out the answer to your question. Now I’m in my seventh, but I’m still not ready to answer your question. I don’t know what it means. No, seriously, it’s a wonderful opportunity. It was great to be able to work with Pope Francis, and it is great to work with Pope Leo. And that’s what we’re for. Within the somewhat complex structure of the Church, to have a few people who are really somehow specially dedicated to helping the Holy Father to carry out his mission, I think it’s really cool.

Robert Duncan: What are your hopes for the way you will carry out Pope Leo’s vision of the Church? Do you feel it’s in continuity with what you’ve been doing?

Cardinal Czerny: Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. No, because the Holy Father is not the custodian of issues. The Holy Father is the custodian of the Gospel and of our response, living the Gospel as Church. He’s the successor of St. Peter. He’s not a world guru or a world professor or a world politician. So, yes, each person has their gifts, and so whatever I can bring to helping him, I’m really happy to do that. And I do have now some experience here also in the Vatican, so that’s of some help. But also just having had the wonderful life I’ve had and living and working in different places and doing things like we’ve talked about, it’s all a contribution, I guess.

Robert Duncan: I asked you at the beginning of the interview about the reframing of questions. You did that a couple of times to me, which I’m grateful for. I wonder, what are the things that Catholics are not talking about that you wish we would talk about more?

Cardinal Czerny: I wish we would... I mean, there’s a one-word answer, and I haven’t given it yet, but I can give it now, and the answer is synod. I wish we would live and therefore talk about the synodal process more, more and more and more. And before you ask, I will tell you, no, I’m not impatient. I think we’ve made a very good start. These things take a while. Rushing is not going to help. But if you ask me what I wish for, I really wish that every parish, every Christian, every person responsible in the church, whether ordained or not, every church leader, whether bishop or others, that we all get involved, each according to our calling in the synodal process. And that would answer most of the questions you asked me.

Robert Duncan: I’m hoping that people who are not Catholic are also listening to this podcast, and synodality may sound like church speak to them. What does this process that the Church is going through and has been going through for some years now have to do with, or does it have to do with the wider world?

Cardinal Czerny: I would suggest that the people who are listening who don’t know what the word synod means is ask themselves, is anyone listening to me? Is anyone listening to me? And what synodality intends to do is to help the different parts or elements or components of the church to listen to one another so that together we may find how Jesus is calling us to live our faith and how we are supposed to help and serve the world. So Pope Francis went quite far. He said that listening was not only the first step, it was also the solution. And of all the difficult things we talked about during this interview, you could go back at each one and say, now what would happen to this issue if we listened? And I think you’d see that we would find our way forward. But as we tend not to listen, which is part of the human condition, it’s sin at work in us, so we need help. And the synodal process, the effort to be a Church that moves forward by listening is a very great step forward.

Robert Duncan: What do you think we will hear? What will we hear if we listen?

Cardinal Czerny: We’ll hear the, it’s like asking, what do you hear when you hear a symphony? That’s the answer.

Robert Duncan: Cardinal Michael Czerny, thanks for your time.

Cardinal Czerny: You’re very welcome.