A constant of Vatican reportage is that there is a serious rift between Catholics in the United States — or at least their bishops — and Pope Francis. Yet that isn’t true regarding the Eucharist, the heart of the Catholic faith. 

The national Eucharistic pilgrimages now underway demonstrate that no other national episcopate has embraced so enthusiastically the urgent calls of the Holy Father to rediscover Eucharistic adoration. The Eucharistic piety of Pope Francis is exceptionally focused on adoration. His insistent appeals for adoration have met a fulsome answer in the United States. That is worth noting by both the press and prelates alike.

Last November, the apostolic nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, gave a rather undiplomatic interview in which he said of the American clergy that “there are some priests and religious and bishops who are terribly against Francis as if he was the scapegoat [for] all the failures of the Church or of society.” 

That was likely the high (or low) point of the telling of the tale of Francis-American tension. 

Yet by November 2023, Pope Francis had spent six months imploring the Church to rediscover Eucharistic adoration — a “campaign” begun when he received in Rome the leaders of the U.S. National Eucharistic Revival. When Cardinal Pierre spoke, American Catholics were six months away from the largest Eucharistic adoration initiative anywhere in the world — the four-directional, 65-day, continental Eucharistic pilgrimages.

Corpus Christi Sunday marked a liturgical highpoint for the national Eucharistic pilgrimages on the way to Indianapolis. Combined with the countless parish processions, that solemnity may have been the most “processioned” day in U.S. Catholic history. The great Eucharistic hymns were sung in praise of the Lord who has “dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth!” (Psalm 72:8).

 

Off Notes From Papal Friends

Certain off notes have partially obscured the reality that American Catholics have been exceptionally responsive to the adoration appeal of Pope Francis. Those off notes have, oddly enough, been sounded by bishops who otherwise consider themselves most attentive to the Holy Father’s priorities. 

In the spring of 2023, there were reports that this year’s processions in the Archdiocese of Chicago would be restricted; the Blessed Sacrament would not be permitted to be carried in a monstrance. After the massive success of the pilgrimage to date, it will be worth watching what happens when it arrives in Chicago later this month. 

While Cardinal Blase Cupich will welcome the pilgrimage in his archdiocese, it was notable that the pilgrimage did not have any stops in the Archdiocese of Newark, despite spending some 10 total days in nearby New York and Philadelphia, and visiting other New Jersey dioceses. Is it possible that it was an oversight? It’s hard to imagine pilgrimage organizers not accommodating Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin if he had wanted the pilgrimage at Sacred Heart Cathedral or the Statue of Liberty.

Instead of Cardinal Timothy Dolan blessed Liberty Island himself — the Eucharist as the true food of the masses yearning to be free. And Cardinal Dolan blessed Manhattan, the caput mundi, capital of the world. Only Rome has a blessing urbi et orbi — to the City and to the World — but if any other city were to qualify today, it would be New York. Cardinal Dolan’s waterborne blessing of his city quickly became the most memorable image of Eucharistic Benediction since Pope Francis blessed his city and the world in an empty St. Peter’s Square during the pandemic.

 

The Pope of Silent Prayer

Every pontificate has a few signature images. For Pope Francis, his solitary adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in March 2020 will be one of them. In the solitude of the pandemic, the Holy Father was alone in the square. But he was not alone, because he was together with the Eucharist, and the world was not alone because the universal pastor extended the monstrance toward the ends of the earth.

While the Holy Father is capable of great eloquence — consider his address on that occasion, or at Yad Vashem, for example — he has also shown a preference for silent prayer in public. On two memorable occasions — at Our Lady of Guadalupe and at Auschwitz — he chose to spend a lengthy time in silent prayer. In neither case was it Eucharistic adoration, but the dynamic was similar. 

Silence before the Lord is at heart of the Holy Father’s spirituality. In his most complete magisterial treatment of the Mass, the 2022 apostolic letter Desiderio Desideravi, Pope Francis speaks of the centrality of silent prayer:

Among the ritual acts that belong to the whole assembly, silence occupies a place of absolute importance. Many times it is expressly prescribed in the rubrics. The entire Eucharistic celebration is immersed in the silence which precedes its beginning and which marks every moment of its ritual unfolding (#52).

At papal Masses, Pope Francis continues the custom introduced by Pope Benedict XVI of periods of extended silence after the homily and after Holy Communion.

 

Bishop Stowe Gets Adoration and Pope Francis Wrong

Critics of Eucharistic adoration, and the National Eucharistic Revival, miss this key aspect of Pope Francis. Last July 5, Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, wrote a strongly critical essay in Commonweal, claiming that the Eucharistic revival was: 

“a mega-event featuring plenty of pre-conciliar piety and theology has replaced the focus on the Synod for a Synodal Church in the USCCB. It does not strike me as coincidental that much of the Eucharistic Revival focuses on eucharistic adoration, passive in nature, and so offers an easy alternative to the active engagement of walking together synodally.”

Perhaps the bishop’s essay had been drafted before he had a chance to read what Pope Francis himself said to the organizers of the National Eucharistic Revival at an audience on June 19, 2023:

I believe that we have lost the sense of adoration in our day. We must rediscover the sense of adoration in silence. It is a form of prayer that we have lost. Too few people know what it is. It is up to the Bishops to catechize the faithful about praying through adoration. The Eucharist requires it of us. 

 

Campaign for Adoration

That June 2023 address marked a period where Pope Francis hammered away at the need to rediscover adoration. It may well be that the American Eucharistic Revival gave impetus to the Holy Father’s urging.

At World Youth Day in Lisbon, on Aug. 2, 2023:

“How do I pray? Only in adoration, only before the Lord can the taste and passion for evangelization be recovered.”

One month later, on his visit to Mongolia, on Sept. 2, 2023, he said: 

 “A Christian is one who is capable of adoration, worshiping in silence. And then, out of this adoration springs activity. Yet, do not forget adoration. We have somewhat lost the meaning of adoration in this pragmatic century: do not forget to adore and, from adoration, to act.”

And later that month, on his visit to Marseille, Sept. 22, 2023:

 “I recommend especially [the prayer] of adoration, for today we have lost the meaning of adoration a little bit and we need to get it back, so I recommend it to you."

And then, explicitly contrary to Bishop Stowe’s contraposing “passive” Eucharistic adoration with the “active” engagement in synodality, Pope Francis closed the synodal assembly on Oct. 29, 2023, with this:

“Let us devote time every day to intimacy with Jesus the Good Shepherd, adoring him in the tabernacle. May the Church adore: in every diocese, in every parish, in every community, let us adore the Lord! Only in this way will we turn to Jesus and not to ourselves. For only through silent adoration will the Word of God live in our words; only in His presence will we be purified, transformed and renewed by the fire of his Spirit. Brothers and sisters, let us adore the Lord Jesus!"

 

A Pontificate of Adoration

While the Eucharistic revival in the U.S. may have prompted some of those exhortations, Francis has had a pontificate of adoration since the beginning. 

On his first Corpus Christi Thursday in Rome as pope, Pope Francis went to St. John Lateran, cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. He spoke about adoration:

“Let us ask ourselves this evening, adoring the Christ truly present in the Eucharist: do I let myself be transformed by Him? Do I let the Lord who gives Himself to me, guide me to come out more and more from my little fence, to get out and be not afraid to give, to share, to love Him and others?”

A few days later, on Corpus Christi Sunday, Pope Francis led a global Holy Hour, with simultaneous adoration taking place all over the world. The Holy Father was in St. Peter’s and he did not preach, but simply prayed in silence. 

In his famous interview with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro in August 2013, Pope Francis spoke of his own prayer life: 

“What I really prefer is adoration in the evening, even when I get distracted and think of other things, or even fall asleep praying. In the evening then, between seven and eight o’clock, I stay in front of the Blessed Sacrament for an hour in adoration.”

Traveling to Fatima for the centennial celebrations and the canonization of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, Pope Francis said this on May 13, 2017:

“We can take as our examples St. Francisco and St. Jacinta, whom the Virgin Mary introduced into the immense ocean of God’s light and taught to adore him. That was the source of their strength in overcoming opposition and suffering. God’s presence became constant in their lives, as is evident from their insistent prayers for sinners and their desire to remain ever near ‘the hidden Jesus’ in the tabernacle.”

While St. John Paul the Great wrote about the Eucharistic adoration and Pope Benedict XVI introduced adoration to the World Youth Day vigil, neither spoke so frequently or insistently as Francis does about adoration. 

The American Eucharistic pilgrimages — replete with so many moving scenes in the first few weeks — are the most complete response to the Holy Father’s call. Thus, on a matter of supreme importance — the Most Holy Eucharist — it cannot be said that there is any distance at all between the Holy Father and the U.S. bishops.