VATICAN CITY — Gazing at the lavish Italian-style gardens and intricate topiaries of the pope’s vast summer estate just outside of Rome, a local priest who immigrated to Waukegan from Mexico as a child marveled that he’s been entrusted with their care.
The grounds are home to the Vatican’s seminal ecological project, the Borgo Laudato Si’, a 135-acre experiment in sustainable farming and environmental education. It’s designed to serve as a model for intertwining the protection of both creation and often-vulnerable populations such as migrants, refugees and those in poverty, said the Rev. Manuel Dorantes, the initiative’s managing director and a longtime Archdiocese of Chicago priest with deep ties to several area parishes.
“We all need to come together to be able to promote environmental sustainability and uplift human dignity, especially of the most vulnerable,” Dorantes, 42, said.
Chicago native Pope Leo XIV formally inaugurated the Borgo Laudato Si’ on Friday, declaring that “care for creation is truly a vocation for every human being.”
During the dedication, the Holy Father reaffirmed his commitment to ecological preservation and education, carrying on the legacy of his predecessor Pope Francis, whose writings inspired the Borgo Laudato Si’.
“What we see today is a synthesis of extraordinary beauty, where spirituality, daily life and technology dwell together in harmony,” the pope said during his visit according to Vatican News. “It is a place of closeness and convivial proximity, and a seed that can bear fruits of justice and peace.”
The inauguration featured a performance by renowned Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli and his son Matteo. The Holy Father toured the project grounds, fed fish, petted horses and celebrated a liturgy for the program’s students, workers and their families.
The sprawling roughly 2,000-year-old property includes ancient Roman archaeological sites, farmlands, pontifical villas and lush papal gardens, with areas for organic farming and regenerative cultivation. More than 3,000 plants from 300 species thrive on the land, Dorantes said.
The site also houses the Laudato Si’ Centre for Higher Education, which will offer education on sustainable practices and classes on integral ecology, as well as vocational training for refugees, migrants, people who were formerly incarcerated, single mothers, survivors of abuse and others in often-marginalized communities.
Another Chicago connection to the project was announced Friday: Chicago restaurateurs Phil Stefani and Art Smith, former private chef to talk show host and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, plan to develop and lead the first restaurant at the papal summer retreat.
Expected to open in spring, the restaurant “will serve as a gathering place where ecological awareness and cultural exchange meet around the table,” according to a news release.
“To be part of a culinary experience on Vatican property is deeply meaningful to us,” Stefani said in a statement. “But we also share this honor with the city of Chicago. We have the unique opportunity to bring a taste of home, some of that unique Chicago spirit, to a global audience.”
Dorantes told the Tribune the restaurant will embody the broader mission of the Borgo Laudato Si’: Vocational training in hospitality and culinary work will be provided to people in need; then participants will be able to work at the restaurant to gain job experience and build their resumes.
Some of the food served will come from the papal estate’s farms while the rest will be brought in from local farmers who follow similar principles of sustainability and care for the environment, the priest said.
“We have to live by the very things that we are saying,” Dorantes said. “Therefore, we are also uplifting the local communities, the local farmers, in our context. … There’s something greater here that we have to serve, outside of ourselves.”
A visit to the papal gardens
Perched in the Alban Hills, the papal summer residence offers visitors panoramic views of the tranquil waters of Lake Albano as well as the surrounding countryside of Castel Gandolfo, a town just southeast of Vatican City.
For centuries, the land was the private dwelling of emperors and pontiffs until 2014, when Pope Francis opened the papal gardens to the public. The decision moved then-President Barack Obama to present the Holy Father with a custom-made chest full of a variety of fruit and vegetable seeds from the White House garden.
Dorantes took the Tribune on a tour of the Borgo Laudato Si’ in May, shortly after the start of Pope Leo’s papacy.
Looking out across the three-tiered Belvedere Garden, which features a hedge labyrinth and complex geometric patterns, the priest explained humanity’s role in environmental sustainability.
“To achieve this sort of beauty, it requires not only nature but the intellect and the strength of the human mind,” he said. “The gardens don’t just come up like this by themselves. … It’s the collaboration between God, nature and humanity.”
The lawn of the Magnolia Garden is decorated with the coat of arms of Pope Pius XI designed in the foliage. In the center is a large Magnolia tree, which Dorantes plans to turn into the garden’s Christmas tree this winter.
“I think of the Lincoln Park Zoo and Zoo Lights,” he said. “I think we could do a Zoo Lights experience here.”
In November, Dorantes was appointed managing director of the Borgo Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis, who envisioned the project as a concrete manifestation of the principles laid out in its namesake, his landmark environmental encyclical “Laudato Si’,” which was released a decade ago.
The document called for urgent global solutions to protect “our common home” from environmental and social crises rapidly unfolding. In a recent interview with the Tribune, Archdiocese of Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich recalled speaking with Pope Francis about the Borgo Laudato Si in its early planning stages.
“He wanted people to remember that we don’t own this world, we are stewards of it,” said Cupich, who visited the site a few months ago. “I think that has a deeply spiritual impact on all of our lives, keeping us humble rather than giving us the impression we can do whatever we want with this world.”
Pope Francis died in April, before the Borgo Laudato Si’ could be formally dedicated. Five months after Pope Francis’ death, Pope Leo reconfirmed the Vatican’s commitment to the initiative — and Dorantes —with the dedication ceremony Friday.
Dorantes said the decision to accept the job and leave Chicago was difficult.
“But at times when I doubt, am I in the right place and doing the right things? I think back on everything in my life that has led me to this point and that I feel God was preparing me in different ways to be here in this moment,” he said.
Born in Ixtapan de la Sal near Mexico City, Dorantes moved to Waukegan with his mother at the age of 11. He didn’t speak English initially, but he picked up the language rapidly and later graduated from Waukegan High School. He went on to attend St. Joseph College Seminary at Loyola University Chicago and Mundelein Seminary, and later earned an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.
Dorantes has served as a deacon at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines, associate pastor of St. Clement Church in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and pastor of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in the Brighton Park neighborhood. He most recently pastored at St. Mary of the Lake and Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in the Buena Park area, where weekly attendance grew from 300 parishioners to about 1,500, he said.
The priest was impressed with the congregation’s commitment to caring for the surrounding neighborhood, particularly amid the city’s recent migrant crisis, as tens of thousands of new arrivals came from the southern border in a span of a few years.
Parishioners there helped find housing for nine migrant families who were living at police stations. They also opened the church property so new arrivals could shower there, get a hot meal “and be welcomed with dignity,” he said.
“The generosity of parishioners … in really putting the gospel into action was extremely inspiring to me,” said Dorantes, a former board member of the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
Toward the end of the tour, the priest paused for a moment of reflection at the Garden of the Little Madonna, a site where generations of popes have come to pray the rosary before a statue of the Virgin Mary, often as they made weighty decisions for the global Catholic church as well as the world.
About two decades ago, Pope John Paul II had been deeply troubled by events leading up to the Iraq war. While the Vatican normally maintains neutrality on these international affairs, the pontiff sent an envoy to Washington, D.C., in 2003 to try to dissuade then-President George W. Bush from invading Iraq, viewing the war as preemptive and unjust.
“The gardeners talk about him spending a lot of time here, before this image (of the Virgin Mary) before taking that stance,” Dorantes said. “And later President Bush visited Pope John Paul II right here in the gardens during that time, to try and create negotiations and to speak about the Vatican’s position.”
Dorantes recently noted that over the summer, Pope Leo also spent much time at this particular garden.
“He has used that very same space in the tradition of the popes, praying before that same image of the Virgin Mary as he prepares to make major decisions for his pontificate and for the life of the Church,” the priest said.
‘Another way of living’
Pope Leo has already prioritized care for the environment and marginalized communities in his nascent papacy.
Dorantes believes these issues are salient to the Holy Father because of his lived experience as the grandson of immigrants born on Chicago’s diverse South Side and as a missionary in Peru, where he saw the perilous effects of climate change.
While serving in the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo, he faced torrential rains and severe flooding spurred by El Nino.
“It’s the poorest people that suffered the most. … And he’d have to be out there with his people,” Dorantes said. “It is not theoretical for him. He has lived through that.”
During Pope Leo’s May installation Mass, the pontiff lamented in his homily a world “economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest.”
Last month, the Borgo Laudato Si’ hosted a luncheon for roughly a hundred refugees, people who were homeless and others in need, as well as church volunteers who assist them.
Pope Leo told the crowd he was happy to “break bread” with the guests in “such a beautiful place that reminds us of the beauty of nature, of creation, but also makes us think that the most beautiful creature is the one created in the likeness, in the image of God, which is all of us.”
The Holy Father also celebrated an outdoor Mass “for the care of creation” on the grounds in July, which was attended by about 50 staff members from the Laudato Si center.
Referring to the surrounding gardens and farmland, the Pope noted that the liturgical service took place amid beauty in “a kind of ‘natural’ cathedral.”
And he mourned that so many people around the world suffer from natural disasters that stem at least in part from human causes.
“We must also pray for the conversion of many people, both inside and outside the Church, who still do not recognize the urgency of caring for our common home,” he said.
For the occasion, Pope Leo had worn flowing green and gold vestments custom made by Chicago retailer House of Hansen Inc., a more than century-old clerical apparel business in the Irving Park neighborhood that he patronized as a priest and bishop.
The vestments were hand-delivered to the pope by the Rev. Daniel Groody, vice president and associate provost for undergraduate education at the University of Notre Dame, who attended the Mass.
Groody said Notre Dame plans to launch a pilot class in integral ecology for its students at the Borgo Laudato Si’ in March, with the hopes of expanding the course to other universities in the future.
“To be immersed in a beautiful setting of papal gardens … is an experience of nature that I think gets people in touch with parts of the created order and parts of themselves that otherwise you can’t get in an office or library,” said Groody, a professor of theology and global affairs. “The purpose of the Borgo is to show that there is another way of living and another way of being in the world, and there is another way of relating to creation that is sustainable. I think the whole Earth depends on it.”
While the problems plaguing humanity — from political strife to poverty to natural disasters — might seem overwhelming, Dorantes said the property’s history illustrates how much the world can actually change.
The grounds once housed the elaborate palace of first century Roman Emperor Domitian, a persecutor of Christians. The remains of Domitian’s palazzo are now an archaeological site situated on the papal property.
“I look to these remains as the visages of his power, and they’re under the care of the Christian community today,” Dorantes said. “What seems to be so powerful … and omnipotent ends. So we have to think of things that are higher than ourselves. We are all longing for something higher than ourselves.”
