Last Wednesday at around 6.30pm I tore myself away from TV to go to listen to Mozart’s Requiem in Mdina Cathedral. For about half an hour a seagull had perched on the chimney out of which black or white smoke was expected any minute, giving rise to some mildly irreverent online comments about ‘divine’ intervention.
It remains to be seen whether Francis will be a reformer in name or in deed
I got to Mdina and no sooner had I found a seat than a vibration from my mobile proclaimed the message “Habemus Papam”.
Surreptitiously peering at a silent iPhone showing BBC World’s live transmission of the cheering masses in St Peter’s Square I could not help noticing two very large Maltese flags practically dominating the square.
The long wait till the name of the new pope was announced was apparently due to the fact that he refused to wear the traditional red silk and gold embroidered chasuble and wanted only the plain white robes. Gamarelli, the papal tailors, must have had a rather difficult time.
Following all this to the strains of Mozart’s Dies Irae was practically bizarre. So now we have a Jesuit Pope from Argentina known for his spirituality and his asceticism who is second generation Italian, who is not too young and yet not excessively old but who most significantly took on the name of Francis as his papal name.
I have always found St Francis to be a most likeable saint; I can never watch Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun Sister Moon without being intensely moved. The Poverello is to me the most Christlike of the saints. The fact that he divested himself of all material goods and chattels which we human beings cling to and yet which are, most times, a liability, echoes the parable of The Rich Young Man.
Francis followed Jesus’s injunction to the letter. The meditations of St Francis and the famous canticle of the Sun and the Moon in addition to his unprecedented love of animals make him a saint that we can understand, identify with and love.
What is also surprising is that this Jesuit Pope took the name of Francis and not Ignatius, but then when one comes to think of it the lives of Francis and Ignatius were not so different. Both were soldiers and both were disgusted by war and strife and were ‘converted’ during a period of convalescence. Both men founded orders with very stiff asctetic rules and while the Franciscans were a mendicant order the Jesuits became the soldiers of the Church and to a large extent still are. They are not popular. They speak their mind and are considered by the establishment to be dangerous. They have in their long history been expelled and many attempts have been made to repress them, however they have survived and thrived in adversity to the point that today, one of them, for the first time in history, has become Pope.
I am proud to have been educated by the Jesuits. They instilled in me a deep sense of right and wrong and the courage to stand by my convictions. There is an old Jesuit joke about which religious order was the most pleasing to the Lord which goes like this: a Franciscan, a Dominican, a Carmelite and a Jesuit had dinner together and indulged in a post-prandial discussion about which of their orders was the most pleasing in the sight to the Lord. The merits and virtues of each order were spelled out and yet they could not reach any conclusion. Then one of them suggested that they should write a letter to the Lord to ask him.
They ran to the nearest letterbox and as soon as they posted the letter there was a large thunderclap and an envelope floated down from the sky. The priests opened it and found the Lord’s reply. “My dear children. Why are you arguing? Your religious orders are all equally pleasing in my sight. (Signed) God SJ!”
Francis I takes over an institution that is lacerated by internal strife and steeped in scandal. Yet somehow the Church survives. It remains to be seen whether Francis will be a reformer in name or in deed.
There is the story of how, after having dragged Pope Pius VII Chiaramonte to Paris to crown him, Napoleon then crowned himself to turn tradition upside down and conclude France’s revenge for the ignominious defeat at Pavia centuries before.
He is supposed to have told Pius that he, Napoleon would destroy the Church to which, famously, Pius replied that it was impossible, for the clergy had been trying to do precisely that for centuries and hadn’t managed. Yet one cannot help thinking that the clergy today are sailing very close to the wind. There are cardinals implicated in all sorts of scandals and the shock resignation of Pope Benedict, which a couple of months ago would have been deemed unthinkable, is still the subject of speculation. And yet when one saw this new pope, looking almost shell-shocked, at the balcony dominating what I would imagine to be Bernini’s greatest artistic political statement, one cannot help feeling that those circular colonnades that embrace the world are still a valid symbol in today’s materialistic world and that no matter how hard we try to banish all religions to the realm of fairytale our innate need to believe in something better than ourselves will remain the aspiration of human beings of goodwill the world over.