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St. Pope John Paul II said that a priest should have the heart of Christ the Good Shepherd.
Far too many saccharine paintings of effeminate Jesuses in the midst of delicate lambs have conduced toward a misconstrual of this image as something sentimental and harmless.
But shepherds not only had the smell of their sheep (to use Pope Francis’ language), but they also wielded a stick to bring back strays and fend off threats. Real shepherding was, and is, a dirty, hard-edged business.
John Michael McDonagh’s film Calvary shows, with extraordinary vividness, what authentic spiritual shepherding looks like and how it feels for a priest to have a shepherd’s heart.