It was President Barack Obama who coined the phrase “the audacity of hope” to signify the attempt, as he saw it, to find the middle ground between reactionary conservatism and overly idealistic liberalism. I have no hesitation in using it in the context of Pope Francis.
As we are seeing today in Malta, leaders are at their most powerful when they first take office. A new Pope invariably also enjoys a period of euphoria among Catholics.
In Francis there is real cause to hope that we are at the onset of a Vatican Spring
Pope Francis arrives as the first non-European Pontiff for more than 1,200 years, riding in on a wave of global hope. Almost half a billion Catholics, nearly 40 per cent of the world’s total, live in Latin America. In his first few days he earned worldwide praise for his simple taste and humble style, an impression strengthened when he said he wanted “a poor Church, for the poor”.
This message has been reinforced by the impassioned speech he reportedly made to fellow cardinals in the formal meetings before the conclave. “The vanity of power is a sin for the Church,” he reportedly told them. “The Church must walk among people and be in step with the poor,” he added, calling for its “purification” in the wake of the multiplicity of recent scandals.
Francis represents the spirituality of poverty, once promoted by Francis of Assisi, which may well appeal to men of goodwill on both sides of the Catholic liberal-conservative divide and beyond. His simplicity, his refusal to wear the Pope’s traditional red shoes and cape (as one commentator quipped, the Pope no longer wears Prada), his simple iron cross, his pastoral experience far from the Roman centre of power, together with a Jesuit’s flair for subtlety, may enable him to achieve the healing of much antagonism in the Catholic Church.
Hopes are alive that he will inspire and lead a ‘Vatican Spring’ by seizing the opportunity to make radical changes the Church needs. But we may not be in for a long papacy. At 76, as a previously heavy chain smoker with only one lung, he could resign in only a few years, laid low by age or ill-health.
What is certain is that the Church’s centre of gravity has shifted towards the Americas. After years of sexual and financial scandal under the ailing papacy of Benedict XVI, the cardinals who turned to Latin America (albeit to a man born of Italian parents) in search of untainted leadership must hope for a fresh start for the worldwide Catholic Church.
But even this geographical shift carries with it some risks. As Argentina’s search proceeds for a final rendering of accounts in its ‘dirty war’, in which thousands of Argentines ‘disappeared’, there could be embarrassing revelations about Francis’s former role as Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires. The Catholic Church must hope that the Vatican’s strong denial of any collusion with the Argentine military junta will not uncover a different sort of pain to that of the paedophilia and corruption, which have so wracked the Church throughout Benedict’s reign.
Francis is now tackling a formidable in-tray. At a time when the reputation of the Catholic clergy is deeply tainted by the child molestation scandals and when the Vatican’s bureaucracy is embroiled in corruption and intrigue and the Vatican bank is suspected of money-laundering, the Church’s privileged bastions could do with some sharp shocks and a return to basics. The managerial failures of the last two Popes have been so great that they have turned away even loyal followers.
Pope Francis has to hold together a vast centrifugal, fragmenting community spread across the globe. Catholics do not march in step, nor sing from the same hymn sheet. On every continent there are problems, conflicts and disputes. In every European country, including Malta, Church attendance is draining away. The provision of priests is in crisis throughout the developed world.
The reform of the Vatican Curia by Francis will surely be one of his first tasks. It has been discredited by the ‘Vatileaks’ scandal involving confidential files from Benedict’s private apartments and allegations of in-fighting, corruption, cronyism and worse. His first test, therefore, will be to clean up the Vatican bureaucracy. The bureaucratic machine has a history of perpetuating its manipulation of power. Francis will have to select a trusted team of administrators to achieve a root and branch clean-up.
The litmus test for the liberal wing of the Church will be his regard for the decrees of the reforming Vatican Council II of 1962-65, especially in the way it called for “collegiality” (how power and responsibility were to be shared between the Pope and the College of Bishops) and its engagement with the secular world.
The challenges facing Pope Francis have at their heart the growing gulf between traditionalism and liberalism in the Church and the widening gap in the world between rich and poor, north and south, secular and faith. It requires a Pope of formidable and extraordinary stature to heal the wounds and overcome the divisions that have opened up over the past eight years of Benedict’s reign.
In Francis there is real cause to hope after his dazzling start that we are at the onset of a Vatican Spring that could see the Catholic Church turning the corner towards a more democratic and open institution as advocated by Pope John XIII.