One Sunday morning in 2019, President Jimmy Carter asked the attendees of the Sunday morning service at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia to raise their hand if they had someone that they disliked.
Many hands went up. He then asked, if anyone wished to be reconciled with that person, and most hands remained raised.
“Well, do it,” Carter said then paused. “Invite them to have coffee with you, and be reconciled.”
Father Pablo Migone, Bishop of Savannah and the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Port Wentworth and Corpus Christi in Pooler was in the crowd that day, and chronicled the experience in a blog post then, which he reposted the day Carter died at 100 on Dec. 29, 2024.
“I was reminded that it is possible to have disagreements and run ins with others, but above all is charity and reconciliation,” Migone writes. “Division and bitterness never lead to the conversion of hearts, but love, kindness, and gentleness do.”
Migone said it was not the action of reconciliation with anyone that day or after that drove him to capture that day, that moment in his post. It was the greater importance of recognizing or asking for forgiveness.
“It’s not like there’s nobody I need to be reconciled with,” Migone said in an interview last week. “But recognizing when I’ve done something wrong, said something wrong, owning up to it. As a Catholic Priest, a leader in the community, you want to become an instrument of bringing people together, and we should all be agents of bringing people together rather than dividing. I think that’s what made his message that day resound with me.”
Pablo Migone and Jimmy Carter at a dinner in 2019.
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More than a decade ago, Migone lived in Warner-Robbins, about an hour and a half from Plains, Georgia, where the late Carter was born, raised and laid to rest Jan. 9.
When Migone lived there, maybe two or three times a year he would escape away to Plains to get away for the night, and stay at the Plains Historic Inn, visit Carters’ childhood home, go to the Carter Library. He met the pastor of Maranatha Baptist Church, Carter’s longtime place of worship, and other people who knew the former president. His experiences in Plains grew his interest in the man and his desire to attend one of Carter’s Sunday morning Bible studies.
“But, I’m a priest,” Migone said. “So, Sunday morning, I’m busy, so I thought it was going to be impossible for me to ever go, but I would still go to Plains, and I enjoyed being there.”
An opportunity did present itself that year, when a Catholic school from California reached out to then-Bishop of South Georgia to join them on their trip to Plains, and Migone tagged along. They attended the Sunday service, and then that evening the late President Carter joined them for mass at Maranatha Baptist Church.
“That was very, very special,” Migone recalled. “I thought it spoke highly of the President that he was wanting to attend the Catholic service, and that Maranatha Baptist was willing to welcome us to have our mass there. There were some points of disagreement between the Catholic Church and some of Carter’s positions during his presidency, but I think despite that there was the ability from both sides to recognize the goodness that is there.”
Migone said the interaction, however short, left a lasting mark on him.
“When we think of presidents, in general, they just seem so distant,” Migone said. “That experience made Jimmy Carter a part of my life, my experiences, and I was able to capture a little bit of who he was, even as an elderly man.”
Destini Ambus is the general assignment reporter for the Savannah Morning News, covering the municipalities, and community and cultural programs. You can reach her at DAmbus@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Local Pastor reflects on memories of Jimmy Carter