The community of communities who were touched by Joe’s life and ministry gathered at Our Lady Queen of Peace to celebrate his life on Saturday, December 21 – and what a beautiful celebration it was! Our Lady Queen of Peace parish team – everyone! – the Franciscans of Our Lady of Guadalupe Province, Assisi Community and so many other communities that Joe served honored our beloved friend with a beautiful liturgy which is recorded here: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/15RgcckFWg/ or on the parish YouTube page. Over four thousand people have participated in the celebration through the livestream and recording.
Posted below is the lovely eulogy presented by Marie Dennis, PAX Member, cofounder of the Assisi Community, and dear friend of Joe’s. Thank you, Marie!
Joe Nangle, OFM
For the last few weeks of his life, I had the great privilege of reading to Joe the beautiful messages you and so many others sent him. You knew him as loving, joyful, kind, compassionate, wise, humble, prophetic, a peacemaker; dedicated to social justice, to community, to simplicity, to nonviolence; attentive to the signs of the times; a witness to justice. He was all of that and so much more!
I am so aware of who you are and what you represent – a truly beloved community of communities – those of you who are here in person and so many others who are with us virtually: Joe’s family (he loved you very much), his Franciscan brothers from the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe and so many other Franciscans, Assisi Community, Our Lady Queen of Peace, the Pax Community, Nova Community, Caldwell Community; Pax Christi USA, Pax Christi International, Franciscan Mission Service and so many more.
I believe that he is with us (as Rahner says, “Those whom death has taken … are not even absent, but living near to us, transfigured…). He is wrapping his arms around us all, telling us that he “loves us to the moon and back.”
Some of you were here a little over a year ago when Pax Christi USA honored Joe as their 2023 Teacher of Peace. I am so grateful that I was asked to introduce him that night so that he could hear at least a portion of what I will say now!
At the core of his being, Joe was a Franciscan Friar. He had a happy childhood in Lexington MA with baseball, hockey and wonderful friends, but once he “put on the brown,” he never looked back. That was central to every other step he took – as priest, pastor and radicalized missioner in Bolivia and Peru; in every organization he served and every ministry he embraced.
As George said so well, Joe was a storyteller. His stories from 15 years in Bolivia and Peru were about a people he loved and what they taught him as a young Franciscan missioner about injustice, about social sin, about the Gospel. Through stories, he shared with all of us his passion for social justice, his deep understanding of liberation theology, his monumental love and respect for people living on the margins of society. Clearly his experience in mission shaped him – his faith, his worldview, his spirituality, his theology, his politics and how he has lived his Franciscan vocation.
He was sent back to the U.S. from Peru by the Church in Latin America transformed at Medellin, by the People of God who themselves were the Church – and by Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of liberation theology – with a clear mission to address the root causes in U.S. foreign policy and U.S. culture of the suffering he had witnessed in Latin America. How well he honored that commitment over the past 50 years – by word and witness, by living simply, by loving widely.
Life in all its beauty, its brokenness, its complexity, its “ordinariness” continued to be the subject of Joe’s stories to the end of his life. They were deep, powerful, radical, funny, poignant. They grounded his theology and his politics and helped to make relevant to all of us both his homilies and his writing.
He challenged his brother Franciscans and the US Catholic Church, the US government, men’s religious communities and formators in women’s religious communities. He challenged all of us – in his homilies, his books and many articles – to do the social analysis and theological reflection that would help us see and embrace a different, more just way forward. He was never afraid to speak truth to power- and he had ample opportunity to do so!
He challenged our society and the global North whether he was in this country, in Central America, in the Middle East, in the Philippines or elsewhere around the world, and he did so in public, in private, in word and in action. He accompanied public figures in El Salvador and Guatemala when they were threatened by death squads, and Salvadoran refugees when they were ready to return home “en masse” from exile – against the advice of the UN, the Church, the government, the Red Cross. He risked arrest in Washington DC for justice in Central America, in Haiti, in Iraq, on the US Mexico border.
He also served, deeply loved and was loved by immigrants from Latin America living in the U.S. — especially by the Spanish speaking community here at Our Lady Queen of Peace.
You know that Joe was a person of great integrity. He himself faithfully lived what he believed and what he preached – about social justice and voluntary poverty –in Bolivia, in Peru, in Boston taking care of his mother in her last years, in his search for a community committed to justice and simplicity.
He helped imagine and create Assisi Community 38 years ago with a focus on simple living, social justice and witness and he lived in the community since then – with married couples and single lay people, vowed religious, women and men, often children or teenagers. Joe brought all his gifts, his stories and his beautiful spirit to the community every day. At times, as with Sister Dianna Ortiz and a few others, he helped our community heal deep trauma, some of which, like Dianna’s was very public, but for several others was intensely private. Ours is a community of equals and he was always completely at home with that equality – he cooked, cleaned and did other household chores when it was his turn. At the same time, his celebration of the Eucharist for Assisi Community was a unique gift of immense value to all of us. How he loved the Eucharistic prayers focused on nonviolence written by the Association of US Catholic Priests!
And always he was thoroughly pastoral. Joe could give the most radical homilies — thoughtfully, intentionally stirring up “good trouble” — and everyone would applaud! We all loved his weekly reflections published by Pax Christi USA because they are clear and interesting and challenging, but also because they were written in the voice of a Franciscan pastor who clearly loved with tremendous generosity.
Joe was constantly growing – intellectually and spiritually. In his later years he became more and more a contemplative, treasuring the early morning hours for quiet prayer. He came to appreciate the immense mystery of the cosmos that we are just now beginning see thanks to the Hubble and Webb telescopes. He reflected deeply on Gospel nonviolence and became an enthusiastic supporter and promoter of Pax Christi’s Catholic Nonviolence Initiative. He followed the synodal process carefully and was delighted by a comment by author Austen Ivereigh in The Tablet about how the Amazon Synod impacted the Synod on Synodality (“The Amazon is flowing into the Tiber”).
His memory was amazing. I listened in a completely different way because he proclaimed the Gospel from memory — and am sure you did as well. For a long time my stomach would be in knots as he recited the Gospel, but I don’t think I ever saw him freeze. His memory served him well throughout his life. I watched him in the last few weeks as he remembered every visitor, every person who called or sent a message – not just who you were, but fine details of his interaction with you or your family – all the Baptisms, First Communions, weddings, funerals.
When the pandemic (and aging) began to slow him down – when blessing ashes on Ash Wednesday in front of the White House or walking the Way of the Cross across the city of Washington DC on Good Friday became less possible, he figured out ways to do more of his pastoral work from home – by phoning many of you to see how you were doing or by agreeing to do spiritual direction at home, though he kept up well with Our Lady Queen of Peace and the independent Eucharistic communities he loves.
He always worried that he had not stayed well enough in touch with his family and old friends, but for years he spent Sunday afternoon calling one after another – especially making sure that he contacted loved ones going through hard times.
I am blessed beyond measure to have walked with Joe Nangle for almost 50 years – to have called him my other half, my soul mate – in a completely honest and beautiful relationship that was so intensely focused outward toward a hurting world. He loved the line from Les Miserables: “to love another person is to see the face of God.” God’s presence in Joe’s life was vivid and visible. Day by day he showed me by example how to move full of grace toward the end of life without ever pulling away from the challenges and joys of doing God’s work here. And now he has shown me – all of us – how to die. Joseph Nangle, OFM, beloved friend to so many, how well you held God’s people in your heart!
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness …“ Blessed are you, Joseph Nangle OFM, Presente!
-Marie Dennis, December 21, 2024