New pastor leads Roebling’s Holy Assumption church

The Rev. Francis Hanudel takes over

By:Scott Morgan
   ROEBLING — It is about 24 hours since the official installation, and by now, the church has fallen somber, reflective and meditative.
   The Rev. Francis Hanudel flips on the overhead lights, which add little to the sumptuous, soft-white bath embracing the pews.
   Standing at the altar’s edge Tuesday, the Rev. Hanudel drinks in the ethereal still frame of his new home.
   From here, the pews, now 24 hours silent, stare back in an intimidating, multi-rowed grin. To imagine delivering spiritual escort to the layers of eager, faithful eyes who sat there just a day ago would rattle the steadiest of nerves.
   But the Rev. Hanudel shrugs off such tosh. Jangled nerves belong to younger men and fainter hearts, and not to those who command an entire parish.
   Twenty-nine years ago, the newly ordained Rev. Hanudel felt those jittery pangs. As a young deacon at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Boston, the Rev. Hanudel scripted his homilies and read them like speeches.
   After all, with academic giants from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology staring back at him, there obviously was pressure to get it right.
   But now, at age 56, the Rev. Hanudel, a veteran of several parishes and several pastorships along the eastern seaboard, sees not separate, intimidating faces, but simply the many faces of himself; the extended family who, just 24 hours before, welcomed him as the new pastor of Holy Assumption Roman Catholic Church.
   To put it more simply, perhaps, the Rev. Hanudel sees a congregation unified by its devotion to God and its dedication to man.
   "We do not go to church," he said. "We are the church. We reach out not from a sense of obligation or burden, but from a sense of joy."
   The Rev. Hanudel flips off the lights and alludes to the biblical story of Jesus dining with beggars and prostitutes and thieves.
   The message, he said, is simple: reach out to those who are need in need of salvation. There is little need to bring sweeping change to the pastorship, he said, but only to embrace the challenges it presents.
   "The first thing people ask me is how long I preach." He said this with the slimmest of grins and never hints at an answer. "The second thing they ask is what changes I intend to make. Well, I didn’t come here to make changes — I came to accept challenges."
   He explains his three primary challenges this way: First, to "gather round the table of the Lord as a family;" second, to "open our doors and arms" to those who have drifted away and need to find their way back to God: and third, to "open our eyes through faith" and meet the dynamism of the continually growing church.
   This third objective strikes a particularly resonant chord with the Rev. Hanudel. The future, he explains, as viewed through the church’s recent past, offers limitless possibilities for hope and growth.
   "The Church has advanced greatly in social concerns," he said. He cited the growth of the Church over the 20th century, an era in which he said the American bishopric fused the bridge between its stated beliefs and its actions.
   The American bishops recently have taken stands against capital punishment, the dangers of nuclear arms and the perils of avarice in an increasingly capitalistic world, he said.
   Especially meaningful, the Rev. said, is the Church’s reassessment of its fundamentalism; the taming of the bitter, vengeful God of fire and brimstone. He is careful to relate the dangers of religious fundamentalism to today’s world.
   To view the Bible as a literal document rather than a spiritual allegory, he said, leads to the types of events the world has experienced in the past several weeks.
   This softened view of the Church’s place in the world, he said, is progress indeed for a denomination historically seen as ground in guilt and shame.
   "All this is a sign of growth," he said. "The Catholic Church is not static," adding that to continue such growth among his flock will be the true measure of his mission.
   It is about 25 hours since the last celebrant of the installation left the Holy Assumption Church, and the Rev. Hanudel stoops to lock the door with his key.
   Outside, the children of Holy Assumption Elementary School screech with playful glee during their Monday morning recess.
   For a fleeting moment, the Rev. Hanudel, enrobed in his traditional Franciscan frock, listening to the children at play, appears as quietly pious as his Order’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi.
   But the Rev. Hanudel shrugs off such tosh.
   "I’m not quite that," he said, with the slimmest of grins.