Catholic of the Year: A generous man in a mean world

Wall Street investment banker, champion of the arts and human rights campaigner devoted to the poor, John Studzinski

In the neon-lit hellholes of the developing world, young women dressed as sex workers keep a wary eye on the street. Would-be customers who approach them will get nowhere – for these women are not prostitutes but undercover Catholic nuns risking their lives to rescue girls from pimps and sex traffickers.

In April this year, Gramophone magazine named as its Recording of the Month a performance by The Sixteen of the Stabat Mater by James MacMillan, the first setting of the beloved Marian hymn by an important composer for many decades.

Near Victoria Station in London, volunteers at The Passage Day Centre, founded by Cardinal Basil Hume, hand out food to the homeless. They include a man with a gentle American accent who has been working in soup kitchens since the 1970s.

At the British Museum until April, there is “an exhibition so powerful it makes you cry”, according to the Daily Telegraph. Living with gods gathers 160 objects that represent 40,000 years of mankind’s search for the sacred. It begins with an Ice Age sculpture of a creature, half-lion, half-man, and ends with an installation made from the shirts of two tiny children whose bodies were washed up on the island of Lesbos during the Syrian refugee crisis. It was this that made the Telegraph’s critic cry.

The undercover nuns, the new Stabat Mater, the soup kitchen and the heart-wrenching exhibition have one thing in common – or, rather, one person.

He is John Studzinski, a transatlantic investment banker who, after a stellar career at Morgan Stanley, is now one of the most senior figures at Blackstone, the private equity giant.

“Studs”, as his friends call him, is many things: a Wall Street veteran, a connoisseur of the arts, a human rights campaigner, a New England Anglophile with dual British citizenship and a CBE. It goes without saying that he is an exceedingly rich man.

Above all, though, he is a Catholic who was giving his time and money to the poor long before anyone knew about it – and before he had tens of millions of pounds to devote to deserving causes. But now he does.

Those heroic nuns, for example, belong to a network of Sisters in consecrated life known as Talitha Kum, the Aramaic expression used by Jesus in St Mark’s Gospel when he told the daughter of Jairus: “Young girl, arise”. Studzinski started the Arise Foundation to support these nuns and other frontline groups in 2014, “to underscore the fact this is a world that has lost innocence, where dark forces are active”.

The Stabat Mater – premiered to huge acclaim at the Barbican last year – was commissioned by his Genesis Foundation, which has donated £10 million of his own personal money to young artists in every field. It was also the sole sponsor of Living with gods, which accompanied the Radio 4 series by Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum.

And, as you may have guessed, “Studs” is the soft-spoken American who volunteers at The Passage, which he helped found. Basil Hume was one of his spiritual mentors, something he has in common with Cardinal Vincent Nichols.

Studzinski is one of the key supporters of Nichols’s campaign against modern slavery, perhaps the Cardinal’s signature achievement, on which the two men have worked closely in the past year. Through the Genesis Foundation, he also sponsored a service of Vespers at Hampton Court Palace in 2016 led by the Cardinal and the then Bishop of London, Richard Chartres – the first Catholic worship in the palace’s Chapel Royal since the Reformation.

He promotes his causes and projects with the same determination with which he manages gigantic sums of money. Although he cannot imagine not giving away money (“it would be like cutting off a leg”), no one could accuse Studzinski of being a soft touch for an ill-conceived charitable venture. He brings to mind Margaret Thatcher’s controversial observation that no one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions.

But, crucially, the toughness of his philanthropy is a reflection of the dauntingly high standards he sets for himself in his religious life. Not many Catholic businessmen have private chapels – but, then again, not many of them subject themselves to such rigorous spiritual exercises. He writes prayers, beautiful ones, influenced – and read – by Benedict XVI, the Pope Emeritus, with whom he stays in touch.

He has a vision of a world shrugging off materialism and rediscovering spirituality. Perhaps that is naïve. But one could argue that Studzinski represents a revival of Catholic philanthropy that is becoming more and more vigorous in his native United States, and which he is bringing to England.

There is an old Puritan saying of which he’s very fond: “You have what you gave; you had what you spent; you lost what you kept.” Studzinski has spent many years working on a Catholic expression of this impulse, one that recognises the innate and often hidden spirituality of works of art that are ostensibly secular. He sees in them the heritage of Catholic civilisation, whose ethos also inspires human rights campaigns and other projects run by non-believers.

So when, for example, the very liberal South African actress Janet Suzman – a strong opponent of certain Catholic teachings – told him that “we’ve got to make sure that all the actors and actresses in the world are not just from the upper-middle class”, he seized the initiative and started the Genesis Foundation. It’s not a Catholic organisation, except in the sense that everything Studzinski funds is a working-out of his faith.

That faith is orthodox but not partisan. At a time when many leading Catholics are plunging into American-style culture wars, he stays away from the barricades. When he talks of “dark forces”, he is referring to the twin evils of moral blindness and fanaticism that have been repudiated as firmly by Pope Francis as they were by his predecessor. He fights these forces at grand dinner parties, in the boardroom, in his prayer life and, by proxy, in the slums of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

Studzinski is, to be sure, a virtuoso networker, employing deal-making skills developed in the overheated markets of Gordon Gecko-era corporate America. But those skills are deployed in a spirit that is intended to undermine the dehumanising philosophy of both money-obsessed capitalists and their equally materialistic hard-Left enemies. He’s a generous man in a mean world, opening his wallet when – alas – some other wealthy Catholics give as little as they can get away with. In short, the Church needs more networkers like John Studzinski and that is why the Catholic Herald is delighted to name him as our Catholic of the Year.

John Studzinski: Key dates
1956 Born in Peabody, Massachusetts, to a Polish Catholic family

1980 Joins Morgan Stanley in New York

2000 Receives the Prince of Wales Ambassador Award for his work with the homeless

2001 Establishes the Genesis Foundation and is made a Knight of the Order of St Gregory by Pope John Paul II

2003 Moves to HSBC

2004 Awarded the Beacon Prize for Philanthropy

2006 Joins Blackstone

2007 Voted banker of the year by the Bank of England

2008 Named a Commander of the British Empire for services to the arts and charity in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list

2016 Appointed a non-executive director of the Home Office

2017 Awarded the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award for the UK

Chargesheet Against ISIS Suspect Says He Planned Attack On Kolkata’s Mother House

A chargesheet has been filed against Mohammad Musa, a suspected ISIS man who had allegedly been tasked with killing foreigners visiting Kolkata. The chargesheet reveals that he was drawing up plans to attack Missionaries of Charity Headquarters in Kolkata since many foreigners congregate there.

Investigators say that he had intended to carry out lone wolf attack, as in the Orlando in the US and France’s Nice.

Mother House is the resting place of Mother Teresa, who was canonised on September 4. Mother Teresa worked throughout her life from the premises and her tomb draws many international visitors.

Officers of the National Investigation agency said Musa had close contact with Bangladesh-based Jamat Ul Mujahideen Bangladesh or JMB, which is said to be responsible for the attack on Dhaka’s Holey Artisan cafe that killed 20 people, including an Indian student, in July this year.

Investigators from Bangladesh have already interrogated him about his links to Abu Suleman, the mastermind of the Dhaka bakery attack. He had earlier revealed that Abu Suleman had visited Kolkata.

Musa had been also been interrogated recently by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the US regarding his links with the ISIS.

A resident of Bengal’s Birbhum district, Musa was arrested in July from the Burdwan railway station in July. Officials said he had been radicalised through social media.

The NIA is still trying to identify his ISIS handler, who, they say, had instructed him to carry out attacks on foreigners, primarily US and British citizens, as revenge for the war in Syria.

Over 1.5 Million Staples Used To Create This Portrait Of Mother Teresa

NEW DELHI: Armed with just a stapler, Albanian artist Saimir Strati has created a stunning portrait of Mother Teresa, now known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Mr Strati used more than 1.5 million wire staples to create what the Guinness World Records officially calls the world’s largest staple mosaic. Built in less than a month, the 10-square-metre mosaic portrait will hang permanently at the National Museum of Kosovo in the capital, Pristina.

Made up of sparkling silver and copper staples, the mosaic includes the words “Peace begins with a smile.”
This isn’t the first Guinness World Record that Mr Strati has set. The artist also holds the records for the world’s largest cork mosaic, the largest drinking straw mosaic and the largest brush mosaic among others.

Take a closer look at how Mr Strati made this particular mosaic:

Darjeeling Road Named After Mother Teresa

 Mother Teresa |  

December 17, 2017

A road in Darjeeling has been named after St. Teresa of Calcutta who was canonized at the Vatican on September 4. The renamed road — earlier known as Rockville Road — runs past a Missionaries of Charity home that was set up by Mother Teresa many years ago.

The hill town had a special place in Mother Teresa’s life. It was on a journey from Kolkata to Loreto Convent there in September 1946 that she got her call to set up the Missionaries of Charity and serve the poorest of the poor.

On Saturday, Bishop Stephen Lepcha of Darjeeling led a small road naming ceremony where several sisters of the Missionaries of Charity were present.

Father Peter Lingdam, of the Lay Missionaries of Charity’s Darjeeling Branch Director said, “Today’s ride in toy train is symbolic. Maybe some of us will also be enlightened like her.”

The Cathedral of Immaculate Conception at Loreto Convent in Darjeeling also houses an oratory (a place of worship) in her name.

Saint Teresa was a Loreto nun who used to pray there and had even taken her vows as a nun in this Cathedral. Saint Teresa’s relics are kept in this oratory.

Pope Francis Shuts Holy Door at Saint Peter’s After Packed 12 Months

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will bring to a close his “Year of Mercy” on Sunday, shutting the Holy Door at Saint Peter’s after a packed 12 months that has seen him raise Mother Teresa to sainthood and reinstate Syrian refugees.

The Argentine, who has modelled himself on Saint Francis of Assisi, spent the year with the downtrodden, holding special masses and passing one Friday every month with refugees, victims of sex trafficking, the sick, the elderly, and vulnerable children.

He will close the panelled bronze doors at the Vatican’s basilica, which will later be walled up from the inside as per tradition.

The “extraordinary Jubilee”, only the third since the tradition began 700 years ago, kicked off amid security concerns, with fears of possible jihadist attacks. Police with submachine guns stood guard next to Swiss guards around the tiny state.

In defiance, not one but two men in white attended the opening ceremony: Francis welcoming his predecessor Benedict XVI in a move that marked the first time a current and former Pope launched a jubilee year together.

The watchword, ‘mercy’, meant helping the unfortunate and welcoming back into the fold sinners and outcasts — an attitude of compassion the Pope hoped would not only counter xenophobia but also bump up the numbers in church pews.

Francis ruled that during the jubilee every priest in the world would be able to absolve the sin of abortion, and handpicked over 1,000 “missionaries of mercy” dubbed “super confessors”.

They were able to forgive sins usually only pardonable by the Pontiff, from attempting to kill the holy father to defiling the Eucharist — the rite of consuming consecrated bread and wine in Church — by spitting it out or using it in a Satanic ritual.

The 79-year old also decreed so-called “Holy Doors” should be opened across the world for the first time, so that people everywhere could pass through them and have their sin slate wiped clean as long as they were truly repentant.

He eschewed tradition to open the first one himself not at Saint Peter’s but in the cathedral of Bangui in the Central African Republic, in a sign of the importance of dioceses far from Rome.

In a crowd-pleasing move, Francis had the remains of Saint Padre Pio — a favourite among those looking for compassion and healing — brought to Rome and carried through the streets to the Vatican.

Thousands turned out to glimpse the body of a man reputed by believers to have been able to levitate, read minds and bi-locate, appearing in foreign lands while remaining at the same time in his friary.

Over 100,000 pilgrims, including Queen Sofia of Spain and 1,500 homeless people, flocked to the Vatican in September for the canonisation of Mother Teresa, who Pope Francis held up as an icon who challenged the powerful and defended the poor.

But the Pope ensured the majority of the jubilee events centered on those who were outcast or abandoned, holding special masses for the disabled, poor, homeless and prisoners — including some serving life sentences.

He opened a free medical clinic for the homeless next to Saint Peter’s Square.

Unafraid of angering traditionalists, Pope Francis said protecting the environment should be added to the seven corporal works of mercy drawn from the Gospels, such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick.

And in perhaps the highlight of the year, he ended a one-day trip to the Greek island of Lesbos — Europe’s migration hot-spot at the time — by taking three Syrian refugee families, all Muslim, back to Rome with him.

‘I was sure that it was Mother Teresa who healed me’

The Brazilian man who received the miracle allowing for Mother Teresa’s canonization says that he and his wife were ordinary believers who received an extraordinary sign of God’s mercy.

“From the beginning, the diagnoses weren’t good and they seemed only worse. (But) from that moment, inside this great suffering, we understood that something had happened,” Marcilio Haddad Andrino said of his miraculous healing.

“I was sure that it was Mother Teresa who healed me.”

Andrino, who comes from Santos, Brazil, was healed through the intercession of Mother Teresa – the miracle that paved the way for her canonization last year on Sept. 4.

He spoke with journalists during the August 2016 Rimini Meeting in Italy alongside his wife Fernanda, who each shared their own perspective of Marcilio’s illness and miraculous healing.

Fernanda, sharing her perspective of her husband’s long, drawn-out illness, explained that Marcilio had been sick for two years and had seen countless doctors, but with no diagnosis.

“It was a wait full of anguish, because he was very sick for two years and we didn’t know what was wrong,” she said, explaining that the first attempt for treatment “was unsuccessful. So the doctor changed therapy, but Marcilio continued to deteriorate.”

She recalled how it wasn’t until Marcilio was hospitalized in October 2008 that they finally received their answer.

After running a series of tests “the doctor looked at the exam and, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, understood that Marcilio had eight brain abscesses,” she said.

“We always prayed to Mother Teresa,” she said, noting that her parish priest had given her a relic of Mother Teresa before the couple got married.

“I put the relic on Marcilio’s head, where he had the abscesses. I recited the prayer of beatification and also what came from my heart,” she said, noting that “it wasn’t easy, but this period enriched me a lot, it enriched our love, our faith … today I can say it was worth it.”

Marcilio, speaking of the moment he was healed, said he woke up Dec. 9, 2008, just a few months after he was diagnosed, with an “unbearable” headache that left him unable to speak, and asked his wife to pray for him.

“From that moment many doctors came to visit me and found that my situation was very serious,” he said, explaining that he was eventually taken to the hospital and prepped for surgery.

However, Marcilio said he never made it in. Instead, he awoke inside the operating room with “a great peace inside me and I no longer had the headache. I didn’t understand what was happening to me.”

The doctors, he said, told him that since he was feeling better they were going to move him to intensive care and put off the surgery until the next day.

Marcilio said he slept through the night without any problems, and that when he met with the doctor the next day, was told to return to his room if the headache still hadn’t come back.

Upon returning to the room, “I learned that the abscesses were greatly reduced, just as the hydrocephalus,” Marcilio said, referring to the medical term for the abnormal build-up of fluid in the skull, causing the brain to swell.

“The abscesses were reduced by 70% and the hydrocephalus had disappeared,” he said, explaining that after another three days of testing “not even the scars of the abscesses were visible.”

“At that time I discovered that I was cured,” he said, noting that he was able to return home for Christmas.

Fernanda, recounting her experience of the event, said that when she returned to the hospital with Marcilio’s parents the day after he was admitted, the doctors told her he was stable and had returned to his room, instead of going into surgery.

“(The doctor) didn’t tell me that he was cured but I already knew it strongly from what I had prayed to God through the intercession of Mother Teresa,” she said, adding that when she went to Marcilio’s room and saw him sitting up and speaking, “I understood that Mother Teresa had healed him.”

She said Marcilio was “very surprised” by what happened and attributed the fact that he was feeling better to one of the antibiotics he took after being admitted.

But the doctor, Fernanda recalled, told them that “No antibiotic exists that takes effect immediately, the day after … someone up there loves you a lot.”

Marcilio explained that after leaving the hospital, he and Fernanda spoke with their parish priest about what had happened. The priest, who had accompanied the couple throughout Marcilio’s illness and who had given him last rites, told them to write to the Missionaries of Charity explaining what happened.

“My case was a very difficult one clinically,” Marcilio said, explaining that his wife prayed for him “ceaselessly,” and they were certain “that a miracle happened … I was sure that it was Mother Teresa who healed me.”

He noted that the miracle didn’t just heal his brain, but went a step further.

“When I began to feel sick, Fernanda and I had been recently married,” he said, explaining that the doctor gave them the grim news that they would never be able to have children due to the treatments Marcilio would have to undergo.

Although devastated, the couple accepted it, telling themselves that “if God wants it, we will have children.”
Six months after his healing, the couple moved to Rio de Janiero and Marcilio returned to work. It was around the same time Fernanda began to experience nausea.

When the doctor told them she was pregnant, Marcilio said they didn’t initially believe it, but that after having some tests, they confirmed that “the child was there.”

Marcilio said his life has significantly changed since receiving the miracle: “My faith has grown a lot, I see the grace. I was sick, I couldn’t walk, I always had to be helped. Today I walk, I have a family, and I’m very grateful.”

Having been young when Mother Teresa was alive, Marcilio said he knew her story generally like everyone else, but only began to study her life in depth after he was healed.

Now, eight years after the miracle, he and Fernanda continue to carry their relic of Mother Teresa everywhere they go, and pray to her with their children.

“When I see my children, I see Mother Teresa. This miracle has made my family stronger and more unified,” he said, explaining that his children know everything about his illness and healing.

“They always accompany us and, when we go to the sisters to pray, they understand everything and they pray with us.”

Although he was Catholic before his illness, Marcilio said his faith has grown since his healing, and now he is convinced that miracles exist.

“Mother Teresa’s message is that the mercy of God is for everyone,” he said, noting that he and Fernanda are just “normal people” like everyone else.

“God chooses those who make his mercy known so as to reach everyone, as in the case of Mother Teresa, who cured everyone without distinction,” he said, expressing his hope that her canonization “teaches all peoples to have compassion on each other.”

While he is one of the few to experience a miracle such as this, Marcilio stressed that “God’ mercy is for everyone. I received this miracle, but God also chooses you. We are all chosen.”

Fernanda, for her part, said she feels an “enormous gratitude” whenever she sees Marcilio and their children.

“I thank God and Mother Teresa each time I look at them, each time I see them, my gratitude grows,” she said, expressing her confidence that “all the prayers were heard by God” and that “he always gives us his love.”

Did you know Mother Teresa experienced visions of Jesus?

Even her friend of more than 30 years, Father Sebastian Vazhakala, did not know Mother Teresa had conversations with and visions of Jesus before forming the Missionaries of Charity.

It wasn’t until after her death, for the vast majority of people, that this part of Mother Teresa’s spiritual life was uncovered. “It was a big discovery,” Missionary of Charity priest, Fr. Vazhakala told CNA.

When Mother Teresa’s cause for canonization was opened, just two years after her death in 1997, documents were found in the archives of the Jesuits in Calcutta, with the spiritual director and another of Mother Teresa’s close priest friends, and in the office of the bishop, containing her accounts of the communications.

Fr. Vazhakala, who co-founded the contemplative branch of the Missionaries of Charity alongside Mother Teresa, said he has a document handwritten by Mother Teresa where she discusses what Jesus spoke to her directly during the time of the locutions and visions.
During a period lasting from Sept. 10, 1946 to Dec. 3, 1947, Mother Teresa had ongoing communication with Jesus through words and visions, Fr. Vazhakala said. This all happened while she was a missionary sister in the Irish order of the Sisters of Loreto, teaching at St. Mary’s school in Calcutta.

Mother Teresa wrote that one day at Holy Communion, she heard Jesus say, “I want Indian nuns, victims of my love, who would be Mary and Martha, who would be so united to me as to radiate my love on souls.”

It was through these communications of the Eucharistic Jesus that Mother Teresa received her directions for forming her congregation of the Missionaries of Charity.

“She was so united with Jesus,” Fr. Vazhakala explained, “that she was able to radiate not her love, but Jesus’ love through her, and with a human expression.”

Jesus told her what sort of nuns he wanted her order to be filled with: “’I want free nuns covered with the poverty of the Cross. I want obedient nuns covered with the obedience of the Cross. I want full-of-love nuns covered with the charity of the Cross,’” Fr. Vazhakala related.

According to the Missionary, Jesus asked her, “Would you refuse to do this for me?” “In fact, Jesus told her in 1947,” Fr. Vazhakala explained, “’I cannot go alone to the poor people, you carry me with you into them.’”

After this period of joy and consolation, around 1949, Mother Teresa started to experience a “terrible darkness and dryness” in her spiritual life, said Fr. Vazhakala. “And in the beginning she thought it was because of her own sinfulness, unworthiness, her own weakness.”

Mother Teresa’s spiritual director at the time helped her to understand that this spiritual dryness was just another way that Jesus wanted her to share in the poverty of the poor of Calcutta.

This period lasted nearly 50 years, until her death, and she found it very painful. But, Fr. Vazhakala shared that she said, “If my darkness and dryness can be a light to some soul let me be the first one to do that. If my life, if my suffering, is going to help souls to be saved, then I will prefer from the creation of the world to the end of time to suffer and die.”

People around the world know about Mother Teresa’s visible acts of charity toward the poor and sick in the slums of Calcutta, but “the interior life of Mother is not known to people,” said Fr. Vazhakala.

Mother Teresa’s motto, and the motto of her congregation, was the words of Jesus, “I thirst.” And that they could quench the thirst of Jesus by bringing souls to him. “And in every breathing, each sigh, each act of mind, shall be an act of love divine. That was her daily prayer. That was what was motivating her and all the sacrifices, even until that age of 87, and without resting,” he said.

Mother Teresa never rested from her work during her life on earth, and she continues to “work” for souls from heaven. “When I die and go home to God, I can bring more souls to God,” she said at one point, Fr. Vazhakala noted.

She said, “I’m not going to sleep in heaven, but I’m going to work harder in another form.”

Mary Shovlain contributed to this report.