Paul Vallely, writing in The Tablet, introduced his commentary about the fourth anniversary of the election of Pope Francis with an interesting but most probably an apocryphal anecdote.
Pope Francis was being driven through St Peter’s Square when he spotted a group enthusiastically waving the Argentinian flag. Ordering the popemobile to stop, he chatted to his fellow countrymen. His security officials were not amused. The Pope laughed, saying: “What harm could come from them? They are a group of pilgrims, not cardinals from Rome.”
This anecdote highlights both the resentment there is against him in several corridors of the Roman Curia as well as his determination to overcome the underhanded struggle being waged against Church reform.
Pope Benedict XVI was the victim of these shady cabals of latter-day Borgias. He realised that because of his frail health he could not reform the Roman Curia. The reform baton was passed on to Francis. He is now doing the structural changes and reforms that Benedict paid the ultimate price for, so that these reforms could be done by his successor.
The reform of the Roman Curia is very important as its power to hinder or facilitate the reform of the Church is enormous. Francis wants the Curia to be the servant, not the ruler of the universal Church, which he wants to involve in the making of decisions in the spirit of solidarity and collegiality. This is why he gave new life to episcopal conferences and to the synod of bishops.
In June 2013, Francis described synods as “one of the fruits of the Second Vatican Council” and a structure “at the service of the mission and communion of the Church, as an expression of collegiality”. In his encyclicals he quotes from documents of the episcopal conferences – a first in such documents.
Structural reforms are very important, but structures without a soul implode. This soul that Francis is trying to resuscitate will help the Church to trudge along wounded among the wounded; both as a teacher of the Word of God and as one eager to learn from human experience. This is a Church whose members at all levels experience sin as a wound. But then this experience is transformed into an occasion for an intimate embrace with the loving Father. This is a Church that can offer the mercy of God; but it is also a Church that thirsts for this mercy which it needs over and over again to heal itself.
Pope Francis pushes for a Church that is the carer in a battlefield hospital rather than the proclaimer of a long list of dogmas and rules that must be accepted. This Church acts as a channel for the love of God and a place of encounter between God’s mercy and men and women as they live the concrete joys and sorrows of life on Earth.
Francis’s Church does not fixate over rules and regulations but does obsess about people’s needs
Francis’s Church does not fixate over rules and regulations but does obsess about people’s needs. In Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) he addresses the needs of married couples, particularly those living in difficult and complex situations. Instead of throwing the book at these couples he proposes the possibility of a heartfelt hug. Instead of a solid wall of ‘noes’ he gives the hope of an opening.
In Laudato si’, his magna carta about the environment, he addresses the needs of our common home as well as our duties: “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” In line with the long tradition of the social teaching of the Church, Pope Francis offers a profound critique of consumer capitalism that sprouts a “throwaway society” rooted in an economy of exclusion, an economy that kills.
His criticism of capitalism earned him the scorn of the American neo-liberal lobby and of assorted conservatives. Francis’s clear pronouncement provide a coherent alternative to the economic nationalism and cultural chauvinism advocated by the likes of President Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and other right-wing leaders.
Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) oozes pastoral discernment. It acknowledges that “the Church has rules or precepts which may have been quite effective in their time, but no longer have the same usefulness for directing and shaping people’s lives”.
The spreading of the Gospel is intimately connected to social justice:
“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving?”
One can rightly say that there are very few things that other popes have not said before Francis. The phrase “new evangelisation” was not coined by him. But the way other popes communicated these truths and the way Francis communicates them is different. His way of communicating grabs people’s attention because it is more concrete, more direct, more in touch with peoples’ feeling. The big picture is more important.
In November 2015, on his return from Africa, he was asked about the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS. He refused to be drawn into the controversy, saying that there are more important issues. He mentioned malnutrition, exploitation, slave labour, the lack of drinking water, social injustice and environmental injustice. No other pope would have answered the way Francis answered.
The photos of the nice, smiling Pope kissing babies is just one part of his personality. This is clearly a pope with a mission he is determined to fulfil. He wants to bring the Gospel out of church buildings and into the world. To succeed, his mission has to be nourished both by the spirit of the Franciscan ‘dove’ and the determined strategy of the Jesuit ‘snake’.
Fortunately Francis is both a spiritual pastor as well as a consummate politician.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt