Almost 16 centuries after his death, countless men and women continue to walk in St. Augustine’s footsteps, inspired by his wisdom, spirituality, and enduring quest for truth.
Today, the Augustinian heritage and order have taken on new visibility with the election of Pope Leo XIV, who once led the Order of St. Augustine as Prior General.
In September 2025, the newly elected Pope visited the Augustinianum in Rome to meet with his successor as leader of the Augustinian family, the Order’s new Prior General, Father Joseph L. Farrell.
EWTN News’ Deputy Vatican Editor, Hannah Brockhaus, met with Father Farrell to discuss his journey in the Augustinian Order, its mission in the Church today, and how he received the news of his own election as Prior General.
In September of 2013, I came to the general chapter with our prior provincial from the province of St. Thomas of Villanova in the States to elect the next leadership. And the plan, the Joe Farrell plan, was then to go back to the United States. But instead, I was elected to the position, as you mentioned, as vicar general. So I’ve had that honor to serve for the past 12 years, and now since this most recent general chapter of September, now is the prior general. And it’s been a wonderful experience. We kind of hit the ground running with visitations and other province chapters. But one of the benefits is that I don’t do it alone. I have a good team to work with, and we support each other.
Explain more, if you can, about what the job encompasses. Maybe someone doesn’t know. What does it look like to be the leader of a worldwide religious order? What does that look like day-to-day, let’s say?
One of the main parts of being Prior General is to work towards assisting our brothers and our sisters throughout the world in coming to an understanding of what it means to be one, right? Community is something that’s vital for us as Augustinians. And it takes work to build community, to maintain community, and to work towards that unification of us. We all have so much in common, and we all bring our own diversities, our differences together. So one of the main kind of objectives of having a Prior General is to serve the order to help us maintain that unity among ourselves.
I’m curious if you have noticed, a way that your understanding of the charism maybe of the Augustinians and the mission of the Augustinians, if that’s changed from when you first joined, thinking back, since then till now, how that has evolved over time.
My understanding when I first joined the Augustinians, I knew them as teachers. Really, I knew them working in high school and at the university. And that’s what really attracted me to the Augustinians, that I saw them working together in the field of education. After entering is when I learned that the Augustinians do so much more. Along with teaching, we’re in pastoral ministry. We’re in counseling. advocacy work, missionary work. And so my eyes were open to realize that the Augustinians were not dedicated to one particular ministry. And through our formation, I learned that even from the beginning, when we were established as the Order of St. Augustine in the year 1244, we were established to respond to the needs of the world and the church at any particular moment in history. So that’s what we do. We respond. We have to pay attention to the signs of the times. We listen to what’s going on in the world, and that’s how we continue to serve.
Since Pope Leo XIV’s election as Pope, I was wondering if the order has seen an increase in interest, maybe in people interested in vocations. Has there been any kind of Leo effect? following his election.
When Pope Leo came to the loggia and announced to the world that he’s a son of Augustine, an Augustinian, certainly our chest pushed out a little bit. We were very proud of that and still are. Our sisters are proud of it. Our friars are proud of that. And that small phrase brought, in a sense, a certain spotlight on the Augustinians that had not been there before. We were the worker bees, keeping our heads down, doing our business. But now there’s a spotlight that we’re still getting used to. It’s unchartered territory for us. And so our vocation directors are working a lot harder than they had in the past. They’re working together with each other. And we are seeing an increase in candidates, which means there’s an increase in that accompaniment that needs to take place. as discernment. No matter what the vocation is in life, people have to go through a discernment period. And so that’s what we’re working with now. It’s only been a year. We hope it continues for a long time, but we’re in that period now of discerning with each other how to walk with our sisters and our brothers who are expressing this interest.
Produced by Bénédicte Cedergren; camera by Alberto Basile, Fabio Gonnella.
