“Are you staying for the procession?”

 As I arrived at St. Cecilia for Mass on the feast of Corpus Christi, our parish liturgical coordinator, Basia, asked me this question. 

“Yes,” I answered. 

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“Good,” she said, “You will carry the Cross at the head of the procession.”

The week before Mass was a time of great emotion. I had just arrived back in Toronto from a week-long team meeting in Montreal with all our staff from across Canada. Just before we gathered for the meeting, our executive director, Carl Hétu, passed away after a long battle with cancer.  Together we mourned his death and celebrated his life.

It has become a tradition at DPCC staff meetings to make a puzzle out of the previous year’s all-staff picture. The puzzle usually sits at the back of the meeting room where people work on it over the lunches and breaks of the week. The puzzle this year was symbolic for me. Carl’s death broke us into 500 pieces. 

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But with time for prayer, reflection, tears, stories, and even some laugher, we could begin to put ourselves back together. We could not have done so over Zoom. Just as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is essential to our faith, so too was our real presence to each other essential in this time of grief. To be able to cry together, to be able to embrace each other – this is the power of real presence. We were able to then focus on our work, knowing too that our dedication to living our mission well is how to best honour Carl’s legacy. 

Carl was chosen to lead Development & Peace – Caritas Canada in 2022 because he had the attributes of a synodal leader that our National Council was looking for. He believed that we were one directors’ team with him, not underlings to serve his own vision. He knew how to listen to people and how to give them space to lead while still using his authority to ensure that we were walking in the same direction together. 

Direction was important. He was always mission oriented. And key to keeping us mission oriented was his deep faith. Carl understood that the soul of DPCC is a Catholic soul. He was proud of it, and he embodied it. He was not afraid to share his faith in public; to show that the reason we at DPCC fight the root causes of poverty, oppression and inequality in the world is because we believe that God requires it. In this, he inspires me to do the same. 

Processing out of the Church and onto Annette Street with my St. Cecilia parish community and the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist was a powerful moment of public faith for me. While I live my faith publicly in many places, I do not often do so in my own neighbourhood where I live. The Holy Father’s words, given on the same Sunday in his sermon in Madrid, articulate what I felt as I walked at the head of the procession with the Cross held aloft, “Just as Christ gives himself as food in the Eucharistic celebration, the procession shows that he is not confined to the church, but comes out to meet us… The Christ who processes through the streets in the monstrance is the same one who identifies with the poor, the downtrodden, those who are alone and forsaken.”

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Carl knew this. His last speech in public was at rally on Parliament Hill to close our Jubilee campaign; Turn Debt Into Hope. He closed it with a prayer that fits perfectly with the feast of Corpus Christi and so I give him the last word. 

“Lord Jesus, you offer us your life as food. Help us to receive it with gratitude. Where people are hungry, help us to feed them. Where people are wounded, help us to become doctors of the soul and body. Where people are isolated, help us to become friends without borders. Lord Jesus, you established the Eucharist as a sacrament of your perpetual presence; help us to make you ever more visible by our way of life. Where your voice fades in the tumult of daily life, help us to speak in your name. Where your body is broken alongside those who are captive, help us to promote freedom. Where your blood flows besides the blood of the innocent, help us in the struggle for justice. Amen.”