"Learning to Be Good"

I began my internship with the Holy See at the Organization of American States in perhaps the most unremarkable way possible. I simply walked into that building on 17th Street, passed security, sat in the chair behind the ambassadors in the Permanent Council chamber, and tried not to look lost. I had no expectations of looking or even being impressive or memorable, and, to be honest, I did not want that. I only wanted to understand what was placed in my lap and to do the work entrusted to me well. That simplicity became the quiet center of every step that followed.

My responsibilities were to attend Permanent Council meetings and special dialogues as instructed by my ambassador, Monsignor Juan Antonio Cruz Serrano and his Senior Advisor Dr. Eugene McCarthy, and was sometimes given the opportunity to sit in on meetings regarding the organization’s budget and global security, in addition to becoming the first scholar to conducting research and form a cohesive work on the Holy See’s involvement on brokering a ceasefire in the 1965 Trujillo Crisis in the Dominican Republic by using the Organization’s Columbus Memorial library. I was to write reports on these meetings detailing each speaker’s or country’s intervention to accurately capture what was being said and its significance. Perhaps it sounds simple now, but learning to listen at the level of attention to detail needed was difficult at first, especially when one has to dig through diplomatic jargon to get to the heart of the matter being said. Diplomacy is not loud; it is subtle, layered, and carefully processed through various kinds of thank you’s and subtle disagreements. A single sentence has the capacity to reveal more about a country’s position than a whole intervention could. A pause can carry the weight of an unspoken truth. It was then I began to understand that the work was not just hearing and recording words, but it was about learning how to notice all that surrounded them.

Most days, I sat quietly with my laptop or behind a notebook, writing until my fingers hurt. I was not there to contribute to policy or to speak at one of the numerous microphones at the round table, but what I was there to do was to witness, to record, to make sure that what was being said was immortalized on the page. In other words, I acted as my ambassador’s scribe. As small as it may seem, this task, for me, required a kind of interior discipline that I absolutely adored. I fell in love with the accuracy, the notes, the capturing of the true meaning behind niceties and hidden warnings. Writing for the Holy See meant that accuracy was not optional as much as a responsibility, and the words I wrote became something I cherished. They had to be right.

What I did not expect from this internship experience was how different the OAS would feel compared to the Canon Law tribunal where I had worked the previous summer in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The tribunal was rather warm and personal with the various judges knowing each other well. There was a shared rhythm to the work where everyone felt as if they were all known as a person. The OAS was something else entirely. It is not a community in a formal sense; this organization is a system that runs on protocol, structure, formalities, and the distance required between states. The environment simply is not built for closeness nor the recognition of souls. Not one person was unkind, but it was that difference that gave me a kind of clarity that I did not know I needed personally.

Here, I learned that sometimes the most wintry mountains offer the cleanest air, that goodness does not mean comfort. Working in a place that felt distant required a kind of steadiness that I had not practiced before, and I quickly grasped how to bring my own sense of meaning to the work I was assigned despite my rather apparent invisibleness instead of receiving it from the environment around me. This was new, and it was necessary.

Separately, the culture of the Holy See’s Mission, however, felt deeply grounding, for the office is uniquely molded by patience, seriousness, and a silent moral clarity that bleeds into everything it touches. Perhaps in thanks to Monsignor Serrano, I see that the Holy See, although perhaps not speaking frequently, speaks with purpose when it chooses. I admired that. There was no rush to respond, no unnecessary remarks, but there was a deliberate attention to the dignity of every person. This was the moderation and steadiness that influenced me far more than I expected.

It was here where I found the warmness that the organization itself was missing. It was in how nearly every ambassador looked to Monsignor Cruz Serrano with such deep admiration and relied on him to offer not only moral guidance, but pastoral care and kind wisdom. It was in this that I found my purpose. I looked to my Vatican-appointed ambassador and realized almost immediately why he was picked, because in that distant and bureaucratic system that is the Organization of American States, I found a Church held in one man, a man whose role broke those same protocols and formalities into something softer, something holier than cold words hidden behind politesse.

My theology studies influenced how I listened, for my lessons in Catholic social teaching, moral theology, and the Church’s vision of human dignity made hearing suffering without an interior response nearly impossible. I understand that my role of action was only to write the truth of the interventions carefully, I feel it was still a kind of moral response. Listening became an integral part of being attentive instead of passive. Writing became an act of stewardship. 

I believe that my Global Studies course work also shaped my internship experience without me noticing at first. My lessons on migration patterns and theory, global governance structures, development, linguistic patterns, and international systems appeared almost in every meeting I attended. The Culture Map became unexpectedly useful in that I was able to see how diverse communication tactics played out through direct and indirect contexts. Care for neighbors, carefulness of difficult and controversial topics, and power distance often shaped how ideas were formed into interventions and how relationships unfolded in the roundtable. 

My research on the 1965 Trujillo Crisis and the Holy See deepened my understanding of how to read archival documents, and through those documents, I saw how the Vatican entered moments of political tension in ways I had no idea they could. The Holy See enters not to seek any advantage, but to offer conscience, to restore dignity, and to bring glory to God through works. There is a consistency of the Holy See’s mission that has been revealed not just throughout the decades, but through thousands of years. The very nature of the Church’s diplomatic presence is not that she searches for power. The Church serves as witness and as a true bride of Christ.

It was through this, and the kindness of Monsignor Cruz Serrano that I was able to meet and speak with Pope Leo XIV in Rome during the summer months of this internship as a representative of the ambassador and his work. Meeting the pope in this way was incredibly humbling for me and my family and stands out as one of the most incredible experiences of our lives, kissing his hands, trying to pick an appropriate gift for His Eminence according to diplomatic protocol, and explaining the good work the Nunciature was doing here in the United States on behalf of the dignity of all people.

There was something about sitting day after day in a quiet room and trying to listen to people speak about their nation that forces one to face themself. There is no longer the version of yourself that performs well in class or can show up prepared with notes and a study guide, but there is someone who wonders what kind of person you really are beneath each role, each job, each expectation.

This is what this internship gifted me: this was not clarity about a career, not exposure to how the Church works on a global scale, not how to work within language barriers, although it did do all those things. This internship gave me clarity about my soul.

I realized that early on, I was not being formed or shaped into someone with more impressive skills, nor was I being positioned for prestige or trained for a more viable visibility. I was learning something far simpler and far more demanding during my time with the Holy See.

I was learning how to be good.

Not exceptional. Not impressive. Not outstanding.

Just good.

Good in the sense Saint Gabriel Possenti of Our Lady of Sorrows meant when he visited and spoke to Gemma Galgani. His “Be good” rang throughout each day I wrote a report as if those two little words held the weight of holiness. This was a steady goodness, one that was honest, one that does not require a compliment for work done. I learned that goodness is not practiced only when the conditions are perfect. This is something that needs to be practiced when no one knows your name, when the work is quiet, when the task is small, when your presence changes nothing about the outcome. It is found in patience, humility, and courage.

The more the months passed into December, I realized that I was not learning how to be a diplomat but how to be a person who carries responsibility silently and can carry another’s reality with reverence. I know now that what I have learned in my own personal life, in prayer, in study, in writing, that the lesson is the same everywhere. Knowledge means nothing without humility. And life means nothing if not lived in love.

This internship did not create a newfound ambition in me. It gave me clarity that the person I want to be is not extraordinary but faithful.

In ways I never expected, this internship became one of the greatest graces of my undergraduate years. It drew me into a quieter, more faithful way of seeing the world. It taught me that formation does not always come through dramatic moments; sometimes the best things God gives us are the quiet assignments that change the soul from the inside out.

If ever a student asked me what I took from this internship, I would not speak about procedures or institutional culture or the reports needed to be written. I would instead tell them about what is quieter, simpler. It would be that the work will not ask you to be impressive. 

It will ask you to be present.

It will not ask you to stand out. It will ask you to pay attention.

It will not ask you to speak. It will ask you to listen in a way that changes you.

One may hope to enter to build experience. What they realize is that what was built in you becomes a firm foundation of steadiness, a seriousness, a desire for goodness that is older and deeper than ambition.

If everything I did during my time this past semester was forgotten, I would want one truth of my soul to remain, which is how goodness is worth choosing even when no one sees it. Especially when no one sees it. 

I hope I was good. 

And I hope I continue to be.

Photo provided by Francesca Thérèse Ramos