Why is it important that the Prep engage in Philadelphia?
Fr. Swope: We Jesuits are urban animals. We work in the city and that means you wind up dealing with all of the complications and challenges of city life that come with it: poverty, violence, struggle and contention, policy battles. We tend to gravitate towards that and engage with that. We find God in there.
Fr. Frederico: When I first joined the Society, I remember a piece of art that ran in America magazine that said Benedictines took monasteries in the hillside, the Franciscans worked in the towns but the Jesuits worked in the cities. For us, in these cities, we minister to the leaders of the city but we also minister to the poorest of the poor. After the fire, it was a reality check for the Prep, to remind us what our mission is really about. It made a statement: we can help the city be better through the education that takes place in this school, by showing people the realities of what it means to live an Incarnational faith and recognize Jesus is all around us.
JS: The Prep has three great areas of concern: care for the person, care for the mission and care for the city. We want our students to be aware of what it means to be in Philadelphia and to engage with the problems our city faces. We think it makes them more mature men, develops a sense of social responsibility and almost a kind of an anger in how some things have continued to exist, and maybe inspire them as adults to act for the good of others and really care for our city. I think we all have a stake in the future of Philadelphia and we want to raise young men who are concerned with their city.
CF: One of the things that I repeat to the students is the phrase ‘men for and with others.’ That’s a transformational thing that has to take place over a course of their four years, so when they walk across the stage to receive their diploma they have real experience of how God is inviting them and their gifts. It is not just about putting their time in to get their 80 hours; it’s about going out and making a difference with other people who can really get more done together than with just one. So that ‘for and with’ is so important. What’s happening here is transforming you and hopefully enabling you to make a difference in the world.
JS: I think it’s very important for the Prep and our students to be associated with and provide service to organizations that are trying to improve people’s lives and empower the people they work with. Organizations like Project HOME, Philabundance, the Providence Center and a number of others. We want our students to watch the adults in these organizations, begin to imitate what they see, draw strength from it and be inspired. We want the boys to come away with an idea “if anything is going to happen in Philadelphia, people have got to get together.”
What impact can the Prep make on the city?
JS: The Prep shares characteristics with every private, independent institution in the city. We are looking to have an impact and we are impacted by our surroundings. There’s this flow between the city and the Prep and the Prep and the city that’s been uninterrupted for 166 years. And it keeps changing; the kinds of things that wind their way into the conversations inside the Prep have changed over these 166 years. I have this deep abiding sense that we need to be responsive to what is coming at us from the city. We see the highest percentage of deep poverty, of any city in the country. We see an addiction problem and the use of opioids is completely out of control in some of our neighborhoods. We still have a housing crisis in spite of all of the development we see around. There is a major homeless problem here, which Sr. Mary Scullion at Project HOME brings forward at every opportunity, and she is spot on and she knows exactly what she is talking about. So those things that come to us, these concerns, these problems, they see them and they reflect on them. We need to look at that and we need to respond.
