AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

Why Faith Leads Us to Lobby Lawmakers with Tom Mulloy

From the Jesuit Media Lab, this is AMDG. I’m Mike Jordan Laskey. Today’s episode is the fourth and final one in our series on faith and politics leading up to the 2024 presidential election here in the U.S. Our guest is the Jesuit Conference’s very own Tom Mulloy, who serves as our director of government relations. Sometimes people are surprised to find out that we have a director of government relations and that our Office of Justice and Ecology spends the majority of its time here in Washington meeting with lawmakers and others in power, trying to influence laws and policies. Tom is a lobbyist, essentially, but you have to think about that word differently in this case. Instead of lobbying on behalf of big oil or a tech behemoth like Google, Tom works alongside other faith groups and NGOs to advocate for a more just and peaceful world. He brings the voices and experiences of the huge Jesuit network to the halls of power in order to humanize issues ranging from immigration to tax policy to indigenous housing. Host Mike Jordan Laskey asked Tom to share how he got into this work and why his faith calls him to bring Gospel values to Capitol Hill. They also talked about how all of us can be informed, faith-filled advocates on behalf of justice. Because the work of politics is not just about elections. It’s about making sure those we elect pursue the common good. The Jesuit Conference Office of Justice and Ecology: https://www.jesuits.org/our-work/justice-and-ecology/oje/ AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, which is a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. Go Yankees. www.jesuits.org/ www.beajesuit.org/ twitter.com/jesuitnews facebook.com/Jesuits instagram.com/wearethejesuits youtube.com/societyofjesus www.jesuitmedialab.org/ AMDG is a production of the Jesuit M

Duration:: 38m
Broadcast on:: 23 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) From the Jesuit Media Lab, this is AMDG. I'm Mike Jordan-Lasky. Today's episode is the fourth and final one in our series on faith in politics, leading up to the 2024 presidential election here in the US. If you missed the first few, you can go back through our feed to find Mike conversations with, through the tenant governor turned Jesuit Cyrus Habib, and with the religion professor, Dr. Nicole Flores, and just last week, NPR's Scott Detrow. Today's conversation is with the Jesuit conference's very own Tom Malloy, who serves as our director of government relations. Sometimes people are surprised to find out that we have a director of government relations at all, and that our office of justice and ecology spends most of its time here in Washington, meeting with lawmakers and others in power. They try to influence laws and policies. Tom is a lobbyist, essentially. But you have to think about that word differently in this case. Instead of lobbying on behalf of big oil or a tech behemoth like Google, Tom works alongside other faith groups and NGOs to advocate for a more just and peaceful world. He brings the voices and the experiences of our huge Jesuit network to the halls of power. He humanizes issues alongside these folks, ranging from immigration to tax policy to indigenous housing. I asked Tom to share how he got into this work and why his faith calls him to bring gospel values to Capitol Hill. We also talked about how all of us can be informed, faith-filled advocates on behalf of justice, because the work of politics is not just about elections. It's about making sure those we elect pursue the common good. You'll notice at the beginning of the show, we talked about our favorite baseball teams, Tom's New York Mets and my New York Yankees. He was afraid we were going to jinx the Mets. Well, they did make the postseason then lost after a valiant run. My Yankees are still alive. We're hoping for the best there. Thanks for joining us. (gentle music) Tom Aloy, welcome to AMDG, live in studio. So good to see you, how you doing? - It's great to be here. Thank you so much for the opportunity to have this conversation. This is my second AMDG. - A two-timer. - So I don't know, yeah. - That's good. The first one must have been good enough that they will invite you back. I'm a little personally biased. You're my son's godfather. So in addition to being a colleague, so I'm in favor of your appearances. You know, you could really start your own, as we were saying before. We are fans of the opposing New York baseball teams who are both looking playoff-bound. So we're both feeling good with that little bit of dread hanging out in the background. - Thank you for jinxing the Mets and they will now not be playoff-bound. - I guess they haven't clinched yet. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, Tom and I have known each other a good long while and our buds and it's a pleasure to work with you. And while we work together, you know, what you do is kind of a mystery sometimes to me is, you know, you're all having meetings with people and setting things up and I'm not always there or never there, really. So I am curious to hear kind of more about like how you spend your time with us and what this means. So maybe I thought we could start by just like looking at your job title and then like unpacking what that means, which sounds like super boring, but I promise it won't be because you have an interesting job. So your job title is the director of government relations for the Jesuit conference of Canada and the United States, which is what your job is within the office of justice and ecology. So, you know, a Catholic world, we like to have these super long bureaucratic titles for things. So maybe for folks who, I mean, this is this podcast, it's from the Jesuit conference, but maybe we could just start like, so what is the Jesuit conference and redefine it, especially like from your perspective is like, who are you representing when you're doing government relations work? - Yeah, so I think of when people ask me like who are you and who do you represent, I always start with, well, do you know who the Jesuits are? Like because some people don't know who the Jesuits are. The Jesuits are this huge order of priests worldwide, but not everybody knows. And so I'll explain who the Jesuits are and then say that it's our job as the government relations office to bring the needs, the experiences, the expertise of that big, vast Jesuit network to bear on Congress and on policymakers. And that's everybody from the provincials to international Jesuits, to the students in schools, to the folks who end up at the border, working with the, you know, border initiative, or del Camino Ministries, to the folks who look for services at the Pope Francis Center, it's all of that. So we have a huge constituency. - Yeah, sometimes when I meet folks who don't know the Jesuits, I'll just find out where they're from and list the Jesuit schools that are near them. You can usually kind of do that. So we have this, obviously, this big educational network where you'd have experts. And then also, as you're saying, these ministries are on the ground, serving those on the margins and hearing their stories. I remember one cool thing I did before you got here was going to Capitol Hill to a big Senate briefing and hearing a woman who was connected to a Jesuit parish, sharing the story of her family's challenge with migration. She herself was a dreamer had been brought here as a young kid by her parents and didn't have legal authorization here, but was such a huge contributor to her parish and her community and her school. And was able to share that story with Congress because there was this bridge built from there where they are on the ground to we had our folks here in Washington saying, "Okay, here, let's set this up." So then when you're making those decisions about what laws to pass or what you're going to say at your press conference, then you're informed by real life people and not just like the big cable news talking points. So Jesuit conference kind of reflecting a huge amount of stuff that's happening all around. Government relations. So yeah, what does that mean? What is your day to day like? - Yeah, it's building the relationships with those public officials, whether it be in the administration or on Congress that represent Jesuit institutions, Jesuit ministries and ought to want to, right? Here from there, constituents. I began my career just as a preface. I began my career on the Hill. I worked for a member of Congress for five years, four on the Hill and one in a local office. And that's that framework where you are constantly pulled in 3,000 directions. You have a cacophony of voices and opinions coming at you. And it's not very often that you do have the voices of the affected populations, the folks that we care about, right, at the margins, coming and demanding a voice at the table. And so that's what appeals to me in this work. It's how can we do a better job of getting those voices that aren't always heard in the policy-making debates and at the policy-making table there and giving them space so that they can tell their stories. That's really compelling. It's really compelling work. It's important work because it's not done nearly enough up on the Hill. And maybe we can just even thinking about the nature of the existence of this office or your job. I can imagine folks who might not have heard of this type of work before thinking, wait a minute, this is like a religious group and I'm one of many who are going into government and trying to influence public policy. Isn't that like, it seems like a mix of church and state in a way that doesn't, it feels risky or inappropriate. The church, they add to politics. What about, yeah, this separation we have in this pluralistic society? So I know that's a, I'm sure a question you have heard and one you spent time with but that's a softball for you. Why don't you swing away at that one as if you were a member of the Yankees and describe why actually being at the table as a faith-based institution is essential and not in violation of our constitution or our creed. - Yeah, it's a question that we get from time to time and I think there's plenty of validation and support for the argument for the work that we do in Catholic social teaching. So not only do, we're not the only Catholic group doing this work, right, the bishops of the United States have a pretty robust government relations office as well. Catholic Charities USA, Catholic Health Association, all of these Catholic organizations have policy and government relations shops that bring the concerns of their constituents up to the hill. So what we're doing is not novel within the Catholic world or within the faith-based world that also is true for all different types of faiths. But the reason being is what I find so compelling is that because as Catholics, we believe that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, right, that we all have this Imago Day. And as a result of that, we're all, we have human rights and human needs. There's, we have a right to housing, we have a right to rest, we have a right to work, we have a right to food and to security and all these things, that's what our teaching tells us. And so, we, as the body, as the church have a moral responsibility to make sure that all of our brothers and sisters have those needs met and the government and the policymakers are a critical, play a critical role in actually making sure that human needs are met or depriving folks of human needs. And we have to make sure that we have an obligation to build that, to build that just equitable economy that makes sure people have enough to flourish. - Sure, so say someone hears you, but say, okay, well, churches are setting up food pantries and they're running soup kitchens and they're accompanying migrants and caring for expectant mothers. Keep doing that, yeah. Stay out of the law and politics and that ends up, you have to end up compromising your values too much. Just go and meet those immediate needs. So what's the response to that line of objection? - Yeah, we have the maintenance of daily needs, making sure that people get their daily bread. So that's the food pantries and the homeless shelters and all of those very important and critical services to make sure that human needs are met. But there also exists around that need and a system of injustices. And we're also, it's also incumbent upon us and we're also called to build a more just and equitable system so that there isn't so much human need that needs to be met. So we have to do both and the faith calls to do it because it calls to charity, make sure that those daily needs are met and justice to make sure that we're trying to break down the systems that perpetuate that need. - How did you get into this work? Where for you to become a kind of a big part of your vocation to see, oh, you wanted to work for a more just world and faith-based settings connected to policy, where in a suit to work and going to places of power and having these high stakes meetings with different policy makers and their staff. So what's your story? How'd you get into it? - Yeah, I usually point to a couple of events earlier in my life that really affected me. And that was, I studied abroad in Spain and when I was an undergraduate at John Carroll University and I came home really wanting to use that Spanish and not knowing how. And I was like, I think it was a native volunteer opportunity. So I volunteered at the summer program for the children of migrant workers. My home grew way out in the suburbs/almost rural areas of Philadelphia and there was a big agriculture community and a big migrant population. And so I spent the summer working with this program of the children of migrant workers. And it really, the transiency of that population and the lack of stability in those kids' lives really just jarred me. And it, again, we were providing the charity, right? We were making sure that these kids got a basic education and that they had a little fun and they got to do some art. But these children were living in a system that they had no control over, right? And their parents had very little control over. They were just trying to find the work to make ends meet. And that meant moving as they could to find work, to find agricultural work. And it just never sat right with me that that was the system that these children who had no control over their lives had to be a part of. And then what more could I do about that? And then the second story is I was a Jesuit volunteer. I graduated from John Carroll, didn't know what to do or where to go and put my senior year. I had heard about the Jesuit volunteer corps and I was like, this sounds like an amazing opportunity for me to try to begin to understand what I want to do, like what my vocation is. And so I ended up in San Diego, California, working with the Sherman Heights Community Center in the Sherman Heights neighborhood, not very far away from the Jesuit Paris there. And it was there, again, that I was working in a homework program with children after school program and with the senior citizens. So making sure that the children had their homework done and they got a little bit of food and they got a little bit of socialization and senior citizens the same way. But experienced some pretty jarring injustices over the course of my year there. And having to talk to children whose parents were gone for a very long time, just trying to find work or having to go all the way up Northern California just to make a couple bucks or their parents got picked up and taken away and deported. And so coming and going, as a big white guy, being able to come and go across the border with very few people batting an eye, but my neighbors, my Latino neighbors, getting scrutinized and the suspicion that was visited upon them in a lot of places. And again, those injustices that I experienced as I was trying to meet the needs of my community members really just stuck with me. And then you realize that, oh, those injustices are created by policy and those injustices can be broken down or can be remedied by policy. And then that's where to go. That's what you need to do. You gotta go to meet power where it is and try to convince them to be better. - Sure. So the Office of Justice and Ecology is doing that and trying to go into the halls of power and inviting them to be better, pressuring them to be better, depending on the day, I guess. So could you share what are some of the issues specifically, just so folks get a sense of some of the things you're working on. It runs a pretty wide range. But yeah, what are some of the big ones that have been on the office's mind and that you're working on these days? - It does run, it runs the gamut. We are working pretty hard on the issue of Native American housing, Jesuits, minister, and I believe it's 16 Native communities across the country in six states and affordable housing, the lack of affordable housing, I should say, rather, is a huge problem in Native communities. And that shelter is the basis of human need. We can't do much of anything if we don't feel secure and if we don't have a place to call home. And those pressures are more acutely felt in Native communities, so we're working really hard to make sure that Native American housing has adequate resources and they get the money that they need to be able to build and rehabilitate housing and infrastructure, make capital investments, all that stuff. Another thing that we are constantly keeping our eye on is a little bit more broadly speaking is what are those policies that help families, especially working families, at-risk families, families living in or near poverty? What are the policies that help them achieve financial stability? That's the child tax credit, which is an enormous and very powerful anti-poverty policy. It's women infants and children support so that expectant moms and new moms can get the food and nutrition that they need and that their babies need. Snap the supplemental nutrition program so that folks don't go hungry. All of those policies that go into building and supporting stable families. - So if these are some of the priorities on your plate right now, then what does your work look like when you're trying to then advocate for those things? I know you have database with all the members of Congress and staff members and you're having a lot of meetings and you're maybe looking for folks who have some Jesuit background or some interest. So yeah, kind of tell us about the behind the scenes of kind of your daily ins and outs. - Yeah, there's no, I have found in the work that, there is no magic formula for the work that we do. Sometimes it's a matter of, we set up a meeting with this public official who's really important to the policy that we're supporting, but we don't necessarily have a constituency there, but they need to hear this, they need to hear this. And so we set up that meeting or we work in coalition. It's really important to work in coalition too and go in with a common voice. And then there's other times where this specific politician needs to hear from their constituents. And so we have a ministry or an organization or a group of concerned folks at a parish who really wanna make sure that their representatives are listening to them. And so we set up that type of meeting as well. So it sort of goes both ways. Sometimes we're the voice just trying to get policymakers attention and convince them that this is the best thing to do. But then other times, because we live in a representative democracy, right? And members of Congress have constituents and that's who they ought to be. And they are in tuned with. And those are the opinions that they need to hear. And so we'll try to build that link between the constituents and Congress. And so sometimes that means, I'll give an example, we're coming up on the Ignatian family teaching. And so that's a big event held by the Ignatian Solidarity Network. And so, man, last year, I think it was last year, we had Patrick Govon, who is a Program Coordinator at the Jesuit Social Research Institute in New Orleans, come in and give a very compelling moving speech, talk about what it means to be incarcerated, what it means to experience solitary confinement, and the injustice of that, the inhumanity of that, and they need to change that. And then we built, we worked with Patrick and some of his colleagues to get up to the hill and meet with their policymakers and say, this is what I experienced, Patrick was an amazing constituent because he spoke with just so much power and so much eloquence about injustice. And what needs to be done to build a more fair system, a more rehabilitative system. And so we had him in meetings with his congressional officials. - So I know sometimes when folks think like, oh, lobbyists, advocates, it's just really the big money that has the impact that gets the ear. But there are times that you've been doing this work again for the bishops, for the society to save Vincent de Paul, for us here at the Jesuits, where you have seen in coalition or there have been times in which actually, this moral voice, the organized people of God coming together to speak up to those in power does have an impact. And I'm wondering if you have any stories, I'm sure the work is hard working in politics, especially where it feels like we're so gridlocked all the time, sure is frustrating. But I'm sure you have some of those stories you can go back to and think, oh, well, this made it worth it. We were able to really kind of move something that might not have happened, otherwise, if the faith community wasn't involved. So do you have like a favorite story you could share? - I think I got it. - Yeah, one of the things I'm most proud of is the work that we've done, the work that I did, excuse me, with earlier in my career, on payday lending. It is a horrible issue. It's, the injustice of it is pretty clear. These very high interest loans are targeted at people who are working families, working families. They're payday loans, right? So we're targeting working folks who are really struggling to make ends meet and saddling them with predatory loan products. It is economic exploitation at its purest. And so there was a coalition of a bunch of Christian groups, Catholics, Evangelicals, Baptists, came together to begin to try to figure out what to do about this. And this was all the way back in, I wanna say 2012 or 2013. And it was started by Bishop Stephen Blair, who I worked for at the time, who went to a speech, who went to a talk somewhere, and got all fired up about it and said, we need to do something about this. And so we put together this coalition. And I'm telling the story because we did that in 2013, 2014, and then earlier this year, just a couple months ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was finally able to dispose of some of the final lawsuits that were brought against the rule that they proposed to deal with predatory payday lending. And then that rule is gonna go into effect, I believe early next year. And so that's over a decade of sustained advocacy, sustained pressure, sustained meetings, sustained coalition building to try to get one policy. And sometimes it takes that because we're talking about things that people don't otherwise talk about. Like payday lending is not something that finds its way onto the congressional calendar, it's not funny, it's way into the rulemaking process. You have to force it. And I think it was about a year ago, I was talking to somebody who was part of the coalition, and they said, were it not for the faith community's persistent voice on this issue, the center, excuse me, the CFPB may not have moved on it, and it was critical and consequential to doing that. So, you know, at the risk of butchering the quote, there is that prayer that we are prophets of a future, not around. We're building something that we may not see someday. And that's part of where I draw hope from, is that we're doing important work, we're doing important work to try to build a more just economy. And it might not come to fruition now, but we have to have hope that it's going to sometime soon. - Is that something that is important to keep in mind, especially again, when it feels like, hey, it's an election year, Congress doesn't get a lot done anyway, but then at the same time, though, you're working on some of these issues. Everyone describing housing on reservations or for indigenous community. That's not on the headlines. Is that something that when it's not on the headlines, you can actually make some inroads on, because people aren't afraid to come together to work across party lines to make stuff happen. There's some of that stuff, again, that's happening away from the spotlight that maybe can actually have a real impact on people's lives. - Yeah, working for faith-based institutions can be, can lead to some of those interesting conversations because you're not marching in with partisan talking points, whether it be left or right. The Jesuit network, one of the things I love working for, about working for the Jesuits is the network is so vast. And not only the ministries, but the alumni. We have, pardon the expression, there's this Jesuit brand. We can walk into an office and people will offer, when they hear that we work for the Jesuit conference, they will offer their Jesuit connection. They're like, oh my, I went to, feelin' like my husband or my wife went to, we love the Jesuits, or we were Jesuit-educated. And that's a really powerful tool to breaking down some of the partisan conversations because we're Jesuit alumni all over, they're up in, they're working in Republican offices, they're working in Democratic offices, they worked in the previous administration and they're working with this administration. And so that can be a really powerful tool to sort of level set a conversation so that you're not just hurling partisan talking points back and forth, but we're grounding a conversation in, this is what our faith teaches and this is what policy-making ought to look like if we're really true to work Catholic ideals. I know that some of the work that happens in the Jesuit network does and encourage folks to do advocacy too. You mentioned that the teach-in, which brings in a couple thousand high school and college students, mostly from Jesuit schools, and they spend part of their time when they're here going up and having those meetings. Jesuit refugee service does the same thing, encourages people to kind of get out there. I know that can kind of feel intimidating sometimes, you have to go and meet with folks in power to go to those offices, whether in your own district where you live or here in Washington. Can you demystify the process a little bit of what that means and what your experience is like when you're going in? If I'm kind of on the fence about kind of doing that, if I'm more comfortable kind of sitting back or just like even sending an email or something. Yeah, what about the in-person meeting? Why is that important and what is it like? Yeah, it can be, it can feel very intimidating and oh, I'm going in and talking to these staffers or talking to members of Congress and they're experts and I don't know that much about this issue. So it can be intimidating and the way that I try to address the intimidation is first of all, two things. We are not called to be policy experts. We have an opinion about the way policy impacts you, your family, your community, your organization, your institution and that is worthy of being shared. That ought to be shared with your members of Congress. So you might not be an expert on how that policy gets created or what exactly it says, but you're definitely an expert on the impact of that policy on your community and on you and that needs to be shared with your member of Congress. So the expertise thing can be a little bit of a, it can be discouraging but it ought not to be because we're the expert, we're the constituents. And the second part about that is going back to an earlier comment that I made about, they represent us. It's a representative democracy and every two years, I don't think, I don't think I'm breaking news here to say that there's an election coming up. And that election could be very consequential for the makeup of Congress and the makeup of the president, the White House next year. And regardless of how that goes, there's gonna be a lot of new faces up there, there's gonna be a lot of new people and they don't know everything about their district, they don't know everything about their states, they don't know about everything about their country. It's incumbent upon us to educate them, to tell them, like this is the lived reality of my community, of my family. And that, again, you don't have to be a policy expert to tell your member of Congress who might be new and who got elected with 50.7% of the vote that I'm a constituent too. And this is important to me. And then the other thing is I said, that's why organizations like the Jesuit conference exist. It's to help with that. It's to, okay, we'll set up the meeting. So if you're in a Jesuit ministry or you're in a Jesuit institution, that's part of, that's why we exist. We exist to help with that. I spent last week, just as an example, I spent last week with an international Jesuit who contacted the office and really wanted to make sure that he could set up some meetings with Hill officials and with administration officials to talk about the way that American policy impacts the communities that he and his brother, Jesuit, serve halfway around the world. And so we helped set up those meetings. I accompanied Father to those meetings and they were really impactful. Those are stories, those are voices that those policy makers don't otherwise hear on a daily basis. And so that's why we're here. We're here to help. We're here to help demystify, but to help make those connections as well. - And one thing I really like about Jesuit conference and the Jesuit network more broadly, working with the Ignatian Solidarity Network and the keynote border initiative and Jesuit refugees or all these things we listed is that you come together to work and then there are policy experts in our ranks who can then kind of say, oh, these are some of the things we're gonna focus on. This particular bill that might come up before Congress and has this number and it will do this. And this is something that if you wanna reach out to your member of Congress to talk about, that would be really helpful. And so we're kind of plugging into the network. So you're not just like on your own, but you're kind of together united with this broader Jesuit family. So I guess that's the pitch to kind of get on email lists and to connect with what we're doing. So how can folks, if they're interested in kind of connecting with your office, the Office of Justice and Ecology to kind of like their voice heard, how can they kind of sign up to make sure that they're getting updates? - Yeah, I was, just to that point, I was having a conversation last week when I was with this Jesuit with one of the staffers up on the Hill and I sort of made a joke about myself. I said, I'm a mile wide and an inch deep on a lot of things because there's so much to cover and so little time. Like I don't know about sustainable agriculture practices all over the world. I need the experience and the insights of everybody in the Jesuit network. And so the way to get involved is to go to Jesuits.org, OJ, backslash OGE, sign up for our action alerts. If you are part of an institution, whether it be a crystal race school or if you went to the Pope Francis, if you went to a Jesuit ministry and they really helped you and you wanna share your story, go back and ask them how to get involved. Yes, sign up for the Justice and Policy newsletter at our website that'll also frequently have stories and ways to get involved. Great, well, Tom Loy, thank you so much for coming on and for the work you do. And again, I think it's so important to remember like this work, it happens away from the spotlight during election seasons and not during election seasons. It's something that we're kind of always working at in a kind of persistent way. And it brings me a lot of consolation to know that the Jesuits and so many other Catholic, Christian, other faith traditions, folks of good will, are kind of out there speaking up on behalf of those who are often forgotten. Yeah, it's, you bring up a last, let's end on that and that is we're about, we're deep in an election cycle and it can be a lot, right? The political advertisements, the text messages, the emails are nonstop and they can be exhausting. But after the election come January, Congress and the new administration, whoever that is, is going to have to get to the business of policymaking and of legislating and actually doing things and so yeah, it's really important for us to remain engaged all year round. It's not just an election season. I think sometimes it feels like we, everything revolves in a round on election cycle, but they are, they're legislating and they're policymaking and that's where we need to, that's where we need our voices heard all year round. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, which is a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. We're based in Washington, DC. The show is edited by Marcus Bleach. Our theme music is by Kevin Lasky. The Jesuit Conference Communications Team is Marcus Bleach, Eric Clayton, Becky Sindelar and me. Connect with the Jesuits online at Jesuits.org. On Instagram at wearethe Jesuits. On X at Jesuitnews and facebook.com/jesuits. Sign up for weekly email reflections by visiting Jesuits.org/weekly. The Jesuit Media Lab offers courses and resources at the intersection of Ignatian spirituality and creativity. If you are a writer, podcaster, filmmaker, visual artist or other creator, check out our offerings at JesuitMediaLab.org. If you or someone you know might be called to discern a vocation to the Jesuits, connect with a Jesuit vocation promoter at beajesuit.org. Drop us an email with questions or comments at medialab@jesuits.org. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. An ascending nation of Loyola may or may not have said, go and set the world on fire. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) You [BLANK_AUDIO]