Fr. John Druhan, S.J.

"The friends thou hast and their adoption tried
Grapple them to thy heart with hoops of steel."

That part, at least of the parting advice of Polonius to his son, Laertes, has stuck in my mind ever since the ghost of Hamlet's father swam into my ken in those now distant high school days. My professor stated that the lines were often quoted. My experience in the interim attests that they are more often lived than quoted. For each of us has chosen from among the rest of us someone to whom we generously confide the best of us; someone whom we wittingly or unwittingly classify with Horace's dimidium animae pars meae. The object of our tender affections may be any variety of the multiform human characters who cross our paths as we tread life's highway. It is not often, however, someone around whom the years in their recession cast an ever more pronounced aureole of heroic sanctity. To feel that we have known one in the flesh who was made up of the stuff of which saints are made, or one who, saving the authoritative decision of Holy Mother Church, has in the popular mind gained the martyr's crown – that is, indeed, ample consolation for the mortification or wearing the grappling irons and hoops of steel so lauded by the master interpreter of human affections.

Hence it is then, that as the writer reviews the four years that have passed since Nov. 23rd, 1927, when Miguel Pro, priest of the Society of Jesus, refusing a blindfold, stood before a firing squad in Mexico City to receive a sanctifying volley of Mexican bullets in defense of the rights of Christ the King, the same writer derives more and more consolation from the friendship which was literally formed in the twinkling of an eye.

It was late December 1924, the Christmas holidays in fact, when we first met in Maison St. Augustin, Enghien, Belgium. There whilst the Christ spirit reigned as it does truly reign in a religious house of studies, we were gathered in the recreation room to enjoy those indoor sports towards which a wintry day in Belgium naturally inclines one. The sport of the moment was a game of pool, bottle or straight or Kelly, I know not which, and one of the most vigorous of the contestants was the then Mr. Pro, S.J., to whom we had just been introduced. Every shot of his was an exhibition of that self which has merited for him, in one author's mind at least, the title of "God's Jester." It has been said of him that he liked to use American slang and to croon America's inimitably syncopated melodies. This is quite true. For, in the present instance, with Caesarian dexterity, whilst shooting pool he was at the same time enjoying a smoke and amusing his late acquaintance with random bars of a song which was quite popular during the war and in which a doughboy pledged a tryst with a certain Katherine while the moon was shining over the cowshed. The eyes of the cue artist and singer so bewitched the beholder that it was impossible to suspect that even at the moment, Pro, the jolly scholastic, was suffering from the ulcerated intestine which was soon to spoil the fourth year of theology of Pro, the priest. His eyes were indeed the windows of his soul, but the curtains were not infrequently drawn, thus hiding the inner life of the man.

These are my freshest and most vivid impressions of my first acquaintance with Miguel Pro. Had they alone remained, he would still be worth knowing as the jovial Mexican who in a French house on a Belgian winter's day made Christmas happy for an American citizen.

But thanks to some guiding spirit, this was not to be our last meeting nor where these to be my last impressions of him. We were to meet a year later in the same month, December, of the year 1925. The intervening August had brought to Pro the crown of earthly joys, his ordination to the sacred priesthood. Ordination had imprinted a new and indelible character on his generous soul, but it had not changed his wholesome disposition, for it is the property of grace not to destroy but to elevate nature. Nor had ordination mended the ways of his refractory stomach. Hew was more of a cheerful sufferer than ever, and in due course was forced to submit to a serious and painful operation, a gaster-enterostomy in medical parlance, but more graphical described to me later by an Englishman aboard ship as a "short circuit." Clinique St. Rémi in Brussels – a private hospital under the administration of French sisters with a splendid German doctor as chief physician and surgeon (Shades of the Louvain Library and its abandoned inscription!) – was the scene of his operation and convalescence. Father Pro knew no German, but he commanded French in which the Herr Doctor was also well versed, so he convalesced with less difficulty than do those patients who labor under a linguistic handicap. Truth to tell, Father Pro's quips and pranks and infectious good humor spoke all languages with equal fluency.

It was at Clinique St. Rémi, then, between the 6th and 13th of December, 1925, that the grapling process commended by Polonius began between Pro and me. By the first of the above dates hew was out of bed and walking about. His "daily dozen" consisted chiefly of genuflections, in remote preparation for the celebration of Mass which he longed to resume. When informed that there was a fellow religious and acquaintance of his in the Clinique for treatment, he proved by his immediate presence in the room of the patient that misery is not averse to companionship. By tactful inquiries he was soon in possession of almost as much knowledge of the newcomer's trouble as the doctor himself had acquired by sounding and pounding. If it be true that laughter is an excellent tonic, he applied a natural remedy at once when, beaming with good humor and speaking American slang with a Mexican accent, he summarized the patient's condition in the terse remark: "You poor sap!" And as the events of the past year faded into my mental vision I was fully convinced that his diagnosis was quite as accurate as any which medical research had offered!

It was in the week that followed this enlightening interview that Pro and I became friends, though once the week was up we were never to see each other again. The little rotund sister in charge of him had laughed so much at his tricks and jokes that it is certain she welcomed the presence of someone who would distract him from the sidesplitting work in which he was continually engaged. It was now three weeks since his operation and hence three weeks since he had said Mass. Most of his comedy was directed to the ulterior purpose of convincing the Mother Superior, a woman who combined both these attributes delightfully, that he was now well enough to resume the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. Concealing his discomfort, he would demonstrate how easily he could genuflect and turn at the altar, if he were there. Her resistance finally weakened and he obtained the desired permission. When, however, the ordeal was over he confessed – not tot he sisters – that his devotion had outrun his judgement.

After long abstinence from smoking he was anxious to resume the use of the soothing weed. Never will I forget the little smoke we stole together on the foot-and-a-half balcony outside one of the windows of his room, a spot removed from the vigilance of the sister's loving eye. Men fall to story-telling when they smoke. We were men. One of the stories swapped stuck with Father Pro for sometime. It was about a tippling husband who, upon his nocturnal return home, heard his poor distressed consort sigh: "Ich! Drunk again," and promptly retorted: "Hic, So am I." Fr. Pro's recent surgical encounter caused him to hiccup a bit after meals. After the above story he frequently apologized for his distress by repeating: "Hic, So am I!"

One other event of that now eventful week deserves mention. Why should I ever have taken a picture of Father Pro? He was just another Jesuit scholastic out of the five or six hundred whom I had met during the past eleven years, and the weather outside was an additional reason for discouragement. Yet the presence of the camera in the room, and on doubt, my guardian angel, suggested the thought of my doing so. Accordingly the cameras was placed on a rather unsteady support – one of those hospital tables of which you cannot predict whether the meal will remain on its surface or be transposed to your lap – and the dials were set for a time exposure indoors, "one window, heavy draperies and no sun outside."

Photo of Fr. Pro by Fr. Druhan

Father Pro sat in a large armchair with a small volume in his hand, as if he were reading. (This volume, by the way, was I am fairly certain a small commentary on the encyclical Rerum Novarum which he was reading at the time.) The exposure was so long that the subject confessed he nearly ruptured his inner sutures under the strain of suppressed mirth. A month later the developed picture and print proved that the foolhardy virtue of amateur photographers sometimes brings its own reward. Two years later its stock went up considerably, when on Thanksgiving Day 1927, while most Americans were considering their prospect of turkey for dinner, Father Pro knelt in prayer to derive the strength and to thank his God for being called to face the firing squad in defense of his religion. Today the owner of the film will part with it – not for money – but only for love of his friend Father Miguel Pro, S.J., who in the interim in countless little ways and in some big ways too has shown that he also lives the much quoted lines: "The friends thou hast and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy heart with hoops of steel."

And if in the course of this article undue stress appears to have been placed on the purely human and natural traits of the man and the priest, it is because we have wished to show that a heroic life is not infrequently hidden behind a smiling countenance.

John Druhan, S.J.