By Anthony Barich
A YOUNG Australian nun who founded a religious congregation focused on the charism and spirituality of Pope John Paul II proclaimed the second reading at the 1 May beatification Mass for John Paul II in Rome.
Sr Bernadette Pike, 32, said she has been “blessed” to be able to attend the ceremony and do the reading after being contacted by the postulator’s office for the cause of the late Pontiff. Her voice was also heard by the over one million people in St Peter’s Square for the event – and the millions more watching the event around the world on TV – as she provided English translations of instructions to the congreagation during the Mass.
Sr Bernadette, born Clare Pike, completed a law degree at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, before spending time in Religious Orders in Poland – John Paul II’s homeland – to train to be a Mother Superior of the Missionaries of the Gospel (MG). Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey, vice president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, approved the MGs’ provisional statutes in 2007, when Sr Bernadette enrolled as a postulant. “Please pray that God helps me with my nerves in front of that huge crowd which includes the Pope,” Sr Bernadette posted on her Facebook page on 30 April.
The MGs are “contemplative-active missionaries” who, through “being a sincere gift of self”, according to Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, strive to help others encounter Christ, recognise and bring to fruition their dignity and develop their relationships with God and others and help build community.
“We believe that through John Paul II, our Lord was teaching us a way of responding to the problems of modern society, that He is calling the whole Church through us, to consider a special way of ‘being with’ people and with God that opens, transforms and unites hearts to Christ,” Sr Bernadette told The Record.
The idea for the MGs came to Sr Bernadette in 2004, and she immediately wrote to the then-Pope to share the good news, and told Archbishop Hickey, who responded that he believed the idea of the community was the will of God and “it is time.”
In 2005, the Archbishop confirmed that the community should encompass more than just Sisters, and extend to include “John Paul II priests and Brothers and lay men and women”. The umbrella name of Missionaries of the Gospel was later given to this larger group.
Sr Bernadette – who is currently doing additional studies at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia, a graduate school affiliated with the Legion of Christ – said that John Paul II “had a way of really listening to you, of making you feel like your experiences and thoughts were important”.
“He emphasised your dignity, and affirmed that you are important, simply because you are,” she told The Record.