Dominican: 'We are all preachers'

Last weekend, he visited South Florida on the last stop of an eight-city tour of Dominican communities in the Southern U.S. Province, which encompasses 11 states, from Texas to Florida. 

“As the master, he has to visit the Dominican friars,” said Father Ed Ruane, worldwide vicar for the order and a Montana native who has worked the past six years in Rome.

On July 15, Father Cadoré preached at the Sunday Mass celebrated at Cor Jesu Chapel on the Barry University campus. Barry was founded, and continues to be sponsored, by the Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Mich.

Sister Linda Bevilacqua, president of Barry University, called it “a blessed day” for the university community. This is the third Dominican master who has visited the campus. The order was founded in the early 13th century by St. Dominic de Guzman.

Although Father Cadoré is primarily responsible for the men of the order — priests and brothers, known as friars — he noted that “we speak of the Dominican family,” which encompasses a good number of religious orders of women, both active and contemplative, as well as lay Dominicans and associates. 

In his homily, Father Cadoré focused on the Sunday readings: the story of the shepherd Amos being called by God to prophesy to the Israelites, and Jesus sending out his disciples to evangelize two-by-two. 

He said the hallmark of a prophet is that he comes from among the people and therefore knows their situation. “He wants to speak in this situation about the day that will come because the day of the Lord is, in this situation, the hope of the people.”

“We know the future of humanity is only one table for everybody,” Father Cadoré said, adding that “the truth of a prophecy is that it sounds true in our hearts.”

Dominicans are identified by the initials OP, which stand for Order of Preachers. But Father Cadoré said that “all of us, we are called and sent to the world… to preach the hope of brotherhood, the hope of community.”

“All Christians are sent as prophets,” Father Cadoré said. Every Christian, by virtue of baptism, is “sent to beg hospitality and to preach” like Jesus’ disciples, “sent to do in this world what Jesus himself did.”

“To receive this brotherhood from the Son of the Lord we need to preach peace and justice,” Father Cadoré said, “to preach against all that divides the world, all the divisions inside the person. The world needs to know and know again that the world is built by love and not by division or exclusion.”

Father Cadoré, a native of Le Creusot, France, was elected master of the order and 87th successor to St. Dominic in September 2010. He was a medical doctor before entering the Dominican novitiate in 1979 and making his first profession in the order in 1980. He spent some time in Haiti before being ordained a priest in 1986 and earned a doctorate in moral theology in 1992.