Both a global American magazine, Time, and The Times of London, elected Pope Francis as their ‘Person of the Year’ for 2013. Time perhaps encapsulated best the reason why this was such a popular choice. “For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world’s largest Church to confronting its deepest needs and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is Time’s Person of the Year.”
Pope Francis surprised the world only 10 months ago when he stepped out onto the balcony above St Peter’s Square in Rome as the 266th Pope. Since his election this Argentine cardinal has won plaudits for his humility, common touch and way with words as he has said repeatedly he wants to lead “a poor Church, for the poor”.
On his first major visit abroad in Brazil, he injected a spring in the Church’s step in the largest Roman Catholic country. In a long press conference on the flight home, he underlined the new style that his papacy has brought, heralding a softer tone on sexual issues and a tougher line on Vatican cliques – the latter having been the undoing of his cerebral predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Humble and plain-speaking, Francis’s energy and urgency are in marked contrast with the sense of drift that afflicted the Church in the last decade. At a meeting of bishops, he called for a new “missionary spirit” and decried “obsolete structures”. These are strictures which may strike a chord with the hierarchy of our own Church in Malta.
Whether the Pope’s new style will be a long-term success will not be clear for a few years. But the last few months have underlined Francis’s image as the “barefoot pope” who lives in a hostel, not the luxurious papal apartments, cares deeply for the poor and is endowed with a human warmth.
A new pope invariably enjoys a period of euphoria among Catholics. John-Paul II was seen as an exciting figure from the east, who promised political leadership. Benedict XVI was seen as a defender of doctrinal orthodoxy, who offered theological guidance.
Pope Francis arrives as the first non-European Pope for more than 1,200 years, riding on a wave of global hope. Some 483 million Catholics, nearly 40 per cent of the world’s total, live in Latin America.
In his first few months he has earned worldwide praise for his simple taste and humble style.
Francis represents the spirituality of poverty, once promoted by his namesake, Francis of Assisi, which may well appeal to Catholic men of goodwill on both sides of the Catholic liberal-conservative divide, and perhaps 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 pull off the squaring of many circles and the healing of much antagonism in the Catholic Church.
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.
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.