Audience of the Master of the Order with the Holy Father Francis

Holy See, December 7th, 2019

Fr. Gérard Francisco Timoner III, Master of the Order of Friars Preachers (Dominican),

expressed his gratitude and greetings on behalf of the Order of Preachers with these words:

Holy Father,

At the beginning of my service as Master of the Order of Preachers, I come to ask for your blessing. I renew Domingo de Guzman’s promise to be faithful to Peter, pastor of the Church. My capitular brothers have decided to elect a brother from the distant Philippines. Perhaps they were inspired by your example of choosing people in the peripheries! At the General Chapter, I said to the brothers: The mission of the Order is to help build the communion of the Church, the Body of Christ, as St. Francis and St. Dominic did when the Church desperately needed a “new” evangelization in the 13th century.

On behalf of the Order, I wish to renew to you the invitation to celebrate the Eucharist in Bologna on May 24th, 2021, on the occasion of the eighth centenary of the dies natalis of our founder Saint Dominic.

I would like to thank you for your fatherly interest in the Order, in particular for the kind support you gave to my predecessor, brother Bruno Cadoré. I hope to receive the same paternal support. I also thank you for approving the canonization of our brother, Saint Bartholomew of the Martyrs, author of Stimulus Pastorum, who, with Saint Charles Borromeo, supported the reform of the Church, beginning with the bishops.

I would like to thank you personally for appointing me to the International Theological Commission. Ten of us worked on the document on synodality in the life and mission of the Church that you approved for publication. It was a learning experience for me, and by working together, we became synodoi, travelling companions.

Then the Master offered the Holy Father the book on Saint Dominic, another book and a letter from the sisters as well as the booklet “Hospitalidad en Familia Dominicana“, then a conversation was born spontaneously between them;

Photographers immortalized these moments of the Master of the Order’s first greeting to the Holy Father.

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