by Duncan MacLaren

In my forty years of working for the Catholic Church and Church-related institutions, this is the first time that I have written about a pal of mine becoming a Cardinal. The former Master of the Dominican Order, wise theologian and spiritual guru, Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP, has just been nominated a Cardinal by Pope Francis and will receive the red hat on 8th December, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, in St Peter’s in Rome.

In my email congratulating him, I said he was now a ‘national treasure’. His reply was typical of the man - ’If I were to become a national treasure, I would have to get stuffed! It would be great to see you sometime and enjoy a glass. Much love, Timothy’. No pious words, no grandeur, no Eminence, just a witticism and a wish to meet up for a glass of wine with a friend.

One of his many fans who would enjoy a glass of wine with him is Pope Francis. He invited Timothy to give reflections at the beginning of the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality in October 2023 and did  the same at the 2024 Synod. He followed the Pope’s words on priests ’smelling the sheep’ by saying of theologians that they, ’like good pastors, also smell of the people and the street and, by their reflection, pour oil and wine on the wounds of men and women’.

Friendship

I got to know Timothy first in my early thirties when I was on my tentative way to becoming a friar, having first been entranced by the Dominicans through the preaching, humanity and friendship of Fr Anthony Ross OP when I lived in Edinburgh and was a parishioner at the chaplaincy of Edinburgh University. Timothy became Provincial of the English (and Scottish) Province of the Dominicans and made his way to Scotland to interview me. We talked for hours but it was peppered with a great deal of laughter.

We cemented our friendship when he was Master living in Rome at the same time as I was Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis in the Vatican. I was encouraged by his fellow friars to take the Master out for a pizza, especially if he had had a tough day with the Vatican Curia. I said in a faux solemn way to him that I took that pleasant task as part of my filial commitment to the Order as a lay Dominican. He giggled.

Dr Duncan MacLaren is the current Convenor of the Glasgow Lay Dominicans and, most recently, a former member of the International Dominican Commission on Justice and Peace.