When I think about leadership, I often start by looking at the natural world. Wolves, in particular, have always captivated me. They are creatures of survival, but also of deep community.
Unlike lions, which sometimes kill the offspring of a defeated rival to secure their own dominance, wolves do something very different.
When a leadership change happens in a wolf pack, the new leader does not destroy the vulnerable pups left behind. Instead, the pack adopts them, nurtures them, raises them as its own.
The survival of the young becomes the responsibility of all, strengthening not only the pups, but the entire pack.
And that, to me, is a profound lesson.
That is leadership.
Not domination, not cruelty, not fear. Leadership is compassion.
Leadership is dignity.
Leadership is the understanding that our strength—whether in a wolf pack or in a human community—comes not from who we cast out, but from who we lift up.
Now, this lesson from wolves is not just about animals. It connects directly to the way we treat one another in our society.
Too often, we have behaved like lions. We have turned our backs on Indigenous people, stripping them of land, language, and dignity.
We have treated people of color as disposable, as if their survival somehow threatens our own.
We have scapegoated immigrants, forgetting that our own families came from somewhere else.
We have mocked and persecuted LGBTQ people, as if their love and their lives are anything less than sacred.
Again and again, the powerful have seen the vulnerable not as kin to protect, but as threats to eliminate.
And yet, if wolves—creatures driven by instinct—can recognize the importance of adopting and protecting the left-behind, why can’t we?
Why do we, with our scriptures, our traditions, our moral teachings, still find it so hard to extend compassion to those on the margins?
This is where my mind turns to two people who founded their own mutual aid and spiritual communities, because we’re approaching the feast day of Francis of Assisi. Some people know this as the day that some churches—Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian—bless animals.
The Italian-born Francis lived with a radical sense of kinship. He called the sun his brother, the moon his sister, and he saw dignity in every creature, human and non-human alike.
Francis reminds us that compassion is not a luxury or a side project. Compassion is central to life in community. He understood, in his bones, what wolves act out in the wild: that survival and flourishing come when we widen the circle, when we refuse to cast anyone aside.
And then there is the Spanish-born Ignatius of Loyola. His family’s coat of arms features two wolves, standing above a kettle. It’s an image of abundance. The pot had fed the family, and there was still enough to feed the wolves who came afterward.
That is not just generosity. That is a vision of leadership that shares, that trusts in God’s abundance rather than clinging to scarcity. It says: there is enough, there will always be enough, when we lead with open hands.
Francis and Ignatius, wolves and spiritual servants, together tell us something important. Leadership is not about crushing rivals or proving strength by exclusion. Leadership is about compassion, about generosity, about the dignity that comes from shared survival.
Wolves model it instinctively.
Francis preached it through his life of radical simplicity and love.
Ignatius carried it in his symbol of wolves and a pot of food that never runs out.
So when I look at our world today, I see the contrast staring us in the face.
Will we act like lions, hoarding power and destroying the vulnerable?
Or will we lead like wolves, like Francis, like Ignatius—adopting the vulnerable as our own, recognizing abundance where others only see scarcity, choosing cooperation over cruelty?
For me, the choice is clear.
I stand with the wolves.
I stand with Francis.
I stand with Ignatius.
I stand with Indigenous people, with people of color, with LGBTQ siblings, with immigrants, with all those pushed to the margins.
Because leadership without compassion is not leadership.
Power without dignity is not strength.
Survival without community is not survival at all.
And here’s the truth: our nation, our communities, our very future will only thrive if we learn this lesson from the wolves, from these two saints, from the wisdom of compassion itself.
