An encounter with an amazing man

This column appears in this week's regional INM papers in Ireland.

By Michael Commane
I met an amazing man last week. His name is Bruno Cadoré.

Bruno’s mother is French and his father from Martinique in the Caribbean and last September he was elected master of the Dominican Order. I’m not too gone on the title ‘master’ but that’s what the boss man of the world-wide Dominicans is called.

Every nine years the Order elects a new chief and that’s how the story begins for me. Before being elected to the job he was provincial of the French province of the Dominicans. He is 57 and joined the Dominicans when he was 25. Before joining he was a medical doctor and had spent a short time working in Haiti.

Bruno taught medical ethics at the university in Lille before being elected prior of the Dominican community in that city. Before joining the Dominicans he worked as a doctor in Haiti.. It was in Haiti that Bruno first began to understand what Christianity was all about. At the end of his second term as prior he was due to be assigned to Haiti. But then he was elected provincial and then in September was elected master of the Order.

Last week Bruno was visiting the Irish province of the Dominican Order and I had the good fortune of spending over an hour with the man.

If you read this column on a regular basis you will by now be aware that I have a jaundiced opinion of the institutional church and also of many of the people in positions of leadership in the church. Indeed, on a number of occasions it has been hinted to me that I should give it a break and stop making enemies for myself.

It was arranged that I would meet Bruno at the Dominican priory in Dublin’s Dorset Street. I had not been in the house in a number of years and was nervous going in.

For the occasion I had put on a good suit and white shirt and over it was a high visibility jacket as I had cycled from my place of work on the south side of the city. I wanted to look tidy and neat, meeting the head man but no way was I going to dress in clerical gear. Never.

Have you ever had the good fortune of meeting someone with whom you feel completely at ease – someone you feel is carefully listening to you and has all the time in the world for you?

That’s what happened me last week when I met Bruno Cadoré.

He was in Ireland having a look around at the Irish province of the order, introducing himself to the personnel and learning about the work and programmes the province is undertaking. He knows very little about Ireland and knows just a handful of Irish Dominicans.

Naturally our conversation was of a private nature and certainly this is not the forum to discuss the content of our meeting. But I do think I am free to tell you that I met one of the most extraordinary church leaders in my 43 years in the Dominican Order.

I am convinced he listened to me in a genuine and authentic manner. He was simple, honest and above all real. There was none of that spiel from him that is so often part and parcel of people in authority. And to add to that he was the quintessential gentleman.

But maybe I am in such praise of the man because I felt somewhere in my being that he was empathising with what I was saying. And of course there were occasional hints from him that he and I were on the same wavelength. But dare I put words in his mouth.

At times I feel greatly alienated within the church, confused and irritated with what appears to me to be a growing silly conservative trend. The time, energy and money that is being spent on the new Roman missal that is to appear on the first Sunday in Advent is in some small way symptomatic of a mood or tone in the church that scares me. Something else that I find difficult to take is the ever growing popularity of EWTN – the US based TV station that churns out hours upon hours of an understanding of church that I simply cannot take.

And then I met Bruno Cadoré. Later that evening cycling down Dublin’s O’Connell Street I kept saying to myself any organisation that can elect such a man as its boss must have something going for it. I also realised, that with all my feeling of alienation, the order surely had to be my genuine home.

Conscious that I have already said that this is not the forum to discuss the content of our discussion, I think it’s in order to say that Bruno kept stressing to me the importance of our humanity and also the wonder of the mercy of God.