As a young Catholic who considered service in the Peace Corps before settling on a different volunteer path, I was moved and again inspired upon reading the countless obituaries this week on the life of Sargent Shriver. No matter the publication, no one could leave out Shriver's dedication to his Catholic faith, which in turn paved the path of his public life. Likewise, another inseparable element of that life was his wife, the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who shared both his faith and cherished vision for a world built on upholding the dignity of all people.
Of all the obits, I was most struck by Father Raymond DeSouza’s in the National Post. Father DeSouza quoted Shriver’s biographer Scott Stossel, who once wrote: “Sarge regards serving Eunice and serving God; Eunice regards Sarge as her spiritual and intellectual anchor. Theirs is a formidable marriage.”
Father DeSouza also paraphrased Shriver’s former speechwriter and friend, Colman McCarthy, “who has suggested that one day Sargent and Eunice Shriver will be canonized as saints. It’s the right category to consider his legacy, for the true platform of Shriver’s life was the Gospel.”
He emphasized how Shriver lived his life as God intended:
A faithful husband and devoted father, he applied his considerable talent and influence on behalf of the weak and the poor. He knew the glamour of the spotlight, but worked for those in the shadows.
It was then that it struck me how the life of this high-profile Catholic duo, this “power couple” par excellence, deeply paralleled that of another married couple just north of the border -- a couple who is, in fact, on the path to sainthood.
“Soldier, diplomat, vice-regal representative-- and probable saint,” is how Father DeSouza (in a much older column) described the late Georges Philias Vanier, governor-general of Canada from 1959 to 1967.
To quickly recap a long and impressive history (with a little help from Wikipedia), Vanier was born in Quebec, earned a law degree and went on to serve in the Canadian army during WWI. On the battlefields he was severely wounded and lost a limb, but was commended for his actions with a number of decorations from the King. He remained active in the military, commanding troops on the home front until 1945.
Following the fall of Vichy France in 1944, Vanier was posted as Canada's first ambassador to France. While serving in that role, he toured the just-liberated Buchenwald concentration camp and, on a return trip to Canada, delivered a speech expressing his shame over Canada's inaction. Back in Paris, he and his wife Pauline continued to help the refugees who arrived at the embassy, arranging for them food and temporary shelter. The couple, with the assistance of numerous others, eventually pushed the government of Canada to revise the regulations of immigration, and more than 186,000 European refugees settled in Canada between 1947 and 1953. In 1959, he was appointed governor general of Canada, a post he occupied until his death in 1967.
As soon as Vanier took residence in Ottawa as governor general, he asked that a bilingual sign be placed at the main gates of the residence and that a chapel be constructed on the property, two requests that reflected Vanier's driving forces: religion and unity. An ardent defender of the peaceful co-habitation of Anglophone and Francophone Canadians, Vanier was also known for his piety and love of humanity, his wife becoming one of the first Companions of the Order of Canada for her outstanding humanitarian work.
Father DeSouza wrote:
Both Georges and his wife Pauline were devout Catholics, devoting considerable time to prayer and spiritual reading, attending daily Mass in the little chapel they had built at Rideau Hall. [Georges] spoke with great ease about his Christian faith, a witness that the worlds of religion and public service are deeply compatible and, indeed, need each other. His son Jean Vanier founded the L'Arche movement, an international organization of homes for people with intellectual disabilities. After Georges's death in 1967, Pauline declined to become a society matron in Montreal and moved instead to the L'Arche community in France to live with her son, caring for the mentally disabled for the last twenty years of her life.
Some interesting parallels between both lives include Sargent’s pursuit of a Yale law degree as well as his World War II service as a U.S. Navy officer overseas. Similar to Vanier, Shriver was awarded a Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds he received during the bombardment of Guadalcanal.
In 1963, Shriver accepted President Lyndon Johnson's offer to administer the Office of Economic Opportunity, and he became known as the architect of the administration's war on poverty. Shriver later accepted the post of ambassador to France, from 1968 to 1970.
As summarized by CNS:
In addition to creating the Peace Corps, Shriver founded many social programs and organizations, including Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Special Olympics (with his wife), Legal Services, the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services (now the Shriver Center), Indian and Migrant Opportunities, and Neighborhood Health Services.
In an interview with Headline Bistro contributor David Naglieri, Tim Shriver, son of the late Sargent Shriver, shared some reflections on the life of his parents:
Anybody you think doesn’t count, counts. That’s the Catholic message to me. I think my parents understood that at a very fundamental level… both of them, brought the idea of human dignity from their religious tradition ... into social and political life ... and we’re ready to fight for it.
It’s hard to ignore the similarities between the life paths and visions of these two couples. A commitment to unity and dignity stand out as the two principles which they embodied and tirelessly promoted in their respective countries. And at the center (or “centre”) of it all was an undeniable dedication to living the Gospel out loud.
I remember proudly gazing at the stained glass reproduction of the Vaniers at the Toronto Newman Center chapel. Now, America can also boast such a remarkable couple of their own – one whose legacy should become, for all, an individual duty to carry forward.
Michèle Nuzzo-Naglieri
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