As it's come to be understood in the 21st century, the papacy is
really an impossible job. A pope is expected to be the CEO of a global
religious organization, a political heavyweight, an intellectual giant, and a
media rock star, not to mention a living saint. Any one of those things is a
life's work; rolled together, they're a prescription for perpetual frustration.
Yet at
his six-month mark, which falls today, Pope Francis is drawing better reviews
on those five scores than anyone might reasonably have anticipated back on
March 13, either in terms of the magnitude of the task or the background of
76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
When he stepped onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square,
this was immediately a pope of firsts: the first pontiff from the developing
world, the first from Latin America, the first non-European in almost 1,300
years, the first Jesuit and, of course, the first to take the name Francis. The
new pope charmed the world that night by humbly asking the crowd to bless him
before he blessed them and by referring to himself as "bishop of
Rome" rather than more exalted titles.
Since that memorable debut, Francis over and over again has
demonstrated a capacity to surprise.
He plunges willy-nilly into crowds, to the delight of the masses
and the horror of his security team. He speaks his mind with sometimes
startling frankness, such as his famous "Who am I to judge?" line
with regard to gays. He makes phone calls to people out of the blue, including ordinary
folks who've written him to share some personal struggle, and involves himself
daringly in the issues of the day, such as his recent full-court press against
military strikes in Syria.
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This week, Francis was back in the headlines twice. On Tuesday, he
visited a facility in Rome run by the Jesuit Refugee Service, where he proposed
that unused convents and monasteries could be converted into housing for
immigrants and refugees. On Wednesday, the Italian daily La Repubblicasplashed a letter from the pope across its
front page, written to a renowned leftist and atheist journalist, assuring him
that God's mercy reaches nonbelievers, too.
Make no mistake: Francis is a phenomenon, a force of nature who's
raised expectations, upset predictions, created a new sense of possibility, set
tongues wagging and, in some quarters, sent anxieties soaring, all in the short
span of half a year.
Although he's drawn blowback, including from anti-immigrant politicians,
liturgical traditionalists, a few of the more militant voices in the pro-life
world, and some remnants of the Vatican's old guard, he's also basking in a
level of popular acclaim and media favor the papacy hasn't seen since the peak
of the John Paul years.
Six months into the Francis era, it's a good time to recap what
we've seen on each of the five fronts mentioned above.
Pope as CEO
Francis was elected on a reform mandate. The cardinals who
propelled this Latin American outsider to the papacy understood themselves to
be voting for change -- not in teaching or discipline, but in methods of
management they believed had begun to go off the rails during the late John
Paul II years and that derailed completely under Benedict, producing meltdowns
such as the Holocaust-denying bishop affair and the Vatican leaks scandal.
Over and over again, cardinals said they expected the new pontiff,
whoever it might be, to deliver a Vatican that's more efficient, more
accountable, more transparent and more collegial in the way it operates.
Perhaps the two most important management moves so far have been
creating an eight-member council of cardinals from around the world to advise
the pope on governance of the universal church and the Aug. 31 appointment of
Italian Archbishop Pietro Parolin to serve as Secretary of State, traditionally
the pope's "prime minister."
If the new council suggests a break with the past, a gesture
toward collegiality and a statement that the Vatican must be at the service of
the local churches, the Parolin appointment is about continuity -- if not with
the eight years of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who held the job under Benedict,
then with an earlier era in which seasoned Italians from the Vatican's
diplomatic corps were perceived to keep the trains in Rome running on time.
Beyond that, Francis has created two commissions in addition to
the council of cardinals to ponder reform: one to study the Institute for the
Works of Religion, the so-called "Vatican bank," and another for the
broader economic and administrative structures of the Vatican.
Although it's too early to say what these various bodies may
recommend, Francis is no naïf, and he therefore realizes that their mere
existence has created expectations of action.
One hugely important management challenge facing any pope is the
appointment of bishops because he depends on them to implement his vision at
the retail level. To date, Francis hasn't yet made many flagship picks, aside
from naming his own successor in Buenos Aires, but such choices are on the
horizon. Cardinal Joachim Meisner in Cologne is 79, while both Cardinal Antonio
Rouco Varela in Madrid and Francis George in Chicago are 76, all beyond the
normal retirement age.
Francis has clearly laid out the kind of bishop he wants. During a
mid-June talk to papal nuncios, or ambassadors, whose job it is to recommend
new bishops to the pope, Francis said he wants prelates "close to the
people, fathers and brothers." They should be "gentle, patient and
merciful; animated by inner poverty, the freedom of the Lord, and also by
outward simplicity and austerity of life," men who do not "have the
psychology of 'princes.' "
In terms of style, Francis is decidedly hands-on. He works the
phone by himself, collecting input from various quarters, and takes action
personally rather than delegating it to aides. When he summoned a Sept. 10
meeting of Vatican department heads to take stock of his first six months, for
instance, he convoked the gathering himself rather than asking the Secretariat
of State to play the lead role.
As things develop, that way of doing business could be a
high-risk, high-reward proposition. Taking the reins into his own hands means
Francis doesn't have to worry about subordinates getting in the way of his
agenda or about certain voices being filtered before they reach him. Playing
his cards close to the vest also means that the usual torrent of leaks in the
Vatican has dried to a trickle.
On the other hand, one role papal aides have played over the
centuries is to take the blame when things go wrong. For a pope acting as his
own chief of staff, such a strategy of deflection would be a tough sell.
Pope as politician
So far, Francis hasn't really broken new ground in terms of the
substance of the church's social and political concerns, but he has
demonstrated a flair for dramatic gestures to put those concerns front and
center.
Three issues in particular have been paramount over these first
six months: immigration, poverty and war.
On July 8, Francis used his first trip outside Rome to launch a
strong appeal against the "globalization of indifference" for
immigrants, visiting the southern Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, a major
point of arrival for impoverished migrants, mostly from Africa and the Middle
East, who are seeking to reach Europe.
Among other things, the pope tossed a wreath of yellow and white
chrysanthemums into the sea to commemorate the estimated 20,000 people who have
died making the passage, imploring host societies to ensure that the arrival of
migrants does not cause "new and even heavier forms of slavery and
humiliation."
"Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and
sisters?" the pope asked, saying that too often, the answer is, "No
one!"
While praised in some quarters, the outing drew derision in
others. One immigration hardliner in Italy, for instance, pointed out that the
Vatican doesn't exactly throw open its doors to anyone who wants to take refuge
in the papal palace.
On July 25, during his trip to Brazil, Francis visited a notorious favela of Rio de Janeiro called Varginha, a stop
added to the schedule at his specific request. He held up the poorest of the
poor like a mirror to the global conscience, insisting that "the measure
of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need,
those who have nothing apart from their poverty."
Francis didn't skirt the political subtext. Rio de Janeiro has
adopted a strategy of "pacifying" its favelas,
and Varginha in particular has been known as the city's Gaza Strip for its
bloody clashes among the various gangs vying for control as well as between the
gangs and the police.
"No amount of 'peace-building' will be able to last, nor will
harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins
or excludes a part of itself," the pope said in what came off as a direct
rebuke of government policy.
Most recently, Francis has presided over a full-court diplomatic
press from the Vatican against the idea of Western military strikes in Syria.
He sent a sharply worded letter to Russian President Vladimir
Putin ahead of the G-20 summit, asserting that a military solution would be
"futile"; he called for a day of prayer and fasting on Sept. 7,
personally presiding over a four-hour service in St. Peter's Square; and in his
Angelus address the next day, he bluntly suggested that conflicts such as Syria
may be stoked as an excuse to fuel the arms trade.
Francis has pressed the campaign against the use of force in
multiple ways, even using his Twitter account to send out anti-war messages.
Pope as intellectual
Francis released an encyclical letter, Lumen fidei, on July 5, although by his own
acknowledgment it's mostly the work of Benedict XVI. The retired pope began the
text as the final piece of a triptych on the theological virtues in tandem with
earlier encyclicals on love and hope as well as a charter for the Vatican's
"Year of Faith."
Though spokespersons for the pope have never quite said so out
loud, the most personal touch from Francis in the 90-page document probably
came in an opening to the "seekers" of the post-modern world.
"To the extent that they are sincerely open to love and set
out with whatever light they can find, they are already, even without knowing
it, on the path leading to faith," it says. "Anyone who sets off on
the path of doing good to others is already drawing near to God."
Francis returned to that theme in a mid-September letter to
Eugenio Scalfari, a renowned Italian journalist and a longstanding fixture on
the political left, who's also a self-professed atheist.
Scalfari had floated some questions for Francis in a piece he
published in July aboutLumen fidei, and the pope actually
responded, assuring him, among other things, that God's mercy "has no
limits" and that sin for a nonbeliever wouldn't be a lack of faith in God,
but rather a failure to obey one's conscience.
Popes sometimes stimulate thought as much by their example as by
their own intellectual contributions, and there seem four areas where a
hermeneutic of Francis' papacy might unfold.
The first is ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the church,
especially in terms of the episcopacy and the papal office. In ways large and
small, Francis has rejected many of the usual modes in which ecclesiastical
VIPs exalt themselves, and some experts believe his example could have both
theological and ecumenical significance.
"In the feudal era, we developed this notion of bishops as
princes," said Capuchin Fr. William Henn, a veteran ecumenist who teaches
at Rome's Gregorian University. "With Francis, I think other Christians
can see episcopal ministry more clearly as a service to communion, and will
become more open to it."
Second is Catholic social teaching, where, among other things,
Francis may go down as the pope who finally healed the decades-old wound
surrounding liberation theology. Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian theologian
considered the father of the movement, recently co-authored a book with the
Vatican's doctrinal prefect, German Archbishop Gerhard Müller, who's an old
friend, and is set to meet Pope Francis personally in the coming days.
The third area where Francis could stimulate reflection is
liturgical theology.
The new pope takes a more informal and somewhat "low
church" approach, a trait that's already having an impact in Rome. Clergy
who chafed under what they perceived as a mounting fastidiousness during the
late John Paul II and Benedict years -- showing up for a papal Mass, for
instance, only to be told they weren't properly dressed because they weren't
sporting enough crimson and lace -- report all that ended in mid-March.
If Benedict prodded the church to recover the cosmic and spiritual
depth of the liturgy, Francis may stimulate renewed emphasis on the service and
communal dimensions.
Fourth, Francis may inspire new thought about the theology of the
sacraments through his approach to the vexed question of divorced and remarried
Catholics.
If he moves in the direction of greater flexibility, it may cause
Catholic sacramental theology to steal a page from the Orthodox --
understanding the sacraments to a greater degree not just as expressions of
communion in faith, but also as "medicine for the sick soul."
Pope as media figure
If you ask people who knew Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires
for their biggest surprise watching him now as pope, they'll usually say it's
his comfort on the public stage.
During his run as archbishop, Bergoglio was notoriously
media-adverse, shunning the public spotlight as much as possible. Admirers
styled that as humility while critics called him "boring" and
"gray," but in any event, it was a settled aspect of his style.
As a result, seeing him now take the world by storm -- sending
crowds in Brazil into such a frenzy that they basically hijacked his motorcade,
for instance, and rushed him like teenagers at a Justin Bieber concert -- has
struck even his oldest friends and family members as a revelation.
"He was close to the people here in Argentina, but today he
seems even closer and better able to express his feelings, which I suppose is
the Holy Spirit helping him," said Maria Elena Bergoglio, the pope's only
surviving sibling, in a mid-April interview with NCR.
Whatever the explanation, politicians and celebrities alike
probably would kill to have the pope's appeal.
In July, the Italian edition of Vanity Fair declared
him its "Man of the Year," including snippets of praise from unlikely
quarters such as Elton John, who termed the pontiff "a miracle of humility
in the era of vanity."
Two points about the "Man of the Year" designation are
especially striking: First, he'd only been pope for about two and a half
months; and second, the year wasn't even half over. Apparently Vanity Fair's calculation was that no one in the
rest of calendar 2013 could top Francis' debut.
Polling shows strong approval ratings. A recent survey in Italy
showed Francis' popularity at 85 percent, with spillover effects for the
church: The percentage of Italians saying they trust the church was up to 63
percent from 46 percent in January during the twilight of Benedict's papacy.
"There has been a worldwide change in attitudes toward the
papacy since the election of Francis," said veteran Vatican watcher Marco
Politi, a columnist for the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.
"There has been a great outpouring of sympathy, not only among believers
but also from people who are very secular or far from the church."
Lest the word "outpouring" seem like hype, recall that
Francis drew a crowd in excess of 3 million to Rio de Janeiro's famed
Copacabana beach in late July, shattering the previous record set by the
Rolling Stones on the world's most famous stretch of sand and surf -- and
Francis did it in the dead of the Brazilian winter, twice.
It remains to be seen how long Francis' celebrity will endure.
John Paul II was also a rock star in his day, but that didn't prevent
significant opposition from arising or scandals from breaking out that, at
least in the eyes of some, mar his legacy. Six months in, however, the new pope
remains a hot commodity.
Pope as inspirer-in-chief
Though popes wear many hats, from a spiritual point of view, their
most important responsibility is to promote lives of holiness.
Sometimes, that involves tweaking church teaching or saying
"no" to cultural trajectories that appear to veer off course, but for
most ordinary people, all that is secondary to the core question they ask of
any religious leader: Does this person inspire?
On the spiritual plane, Francis' signature touch so far has been a
strong accent on mercy, expressed in a repeated emphasis on God's endless
capacity to forgive.
In a recent essay for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Enzo Bianchi, founder of the
celebrated ecumenical monastery of Bose, offered a statistical analysis of the
words used most frequently by Francis since his election. He found that the
single most commonly used term was "joy," more than 100 times,
followed closely by "mercy," which the pope has used almost a hundred
times.
Francis made mercy the heart of his first homily at the Vatican's
parish church of St. Anne's on March 17, and he returned to it later that day
in his first Angelus address: "For me, and I say this humbly, the
strongest message of the Lord is mercy," Francis said.
That emphasis flows from a pastoral outlook developed over a
lifetime, which has always emphasized the need for Christ's representatives to
exude mercy and compassion.
"Only someone who has encountered mercy, who has been
caressed by the tenderness of mercy, is happy and comfortable with the
Lord," Bergoglio said in 2001.
"I beg the theologians who are present not to turn me in to
the Inquisition; however, forcing things a bit, I dare to say that the
privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on
my sin."
The importance of mercy is also expressed in the motto Francis has
taken as pope:Miserando atque eligendo, which means, roughly,
"by having mercy and by choosing."
Given this emphasis, Francis has always had a special passion for
the sacrament of reconciliation. When he visited Saints Elizabeth and Zechariah
Parish on the northern outskirts of Rome on May 31, for instance, he heard
several confessions before saying Mass, something John Paul and Benedict didn't
do on their trips to Roman parishes.
This suggests a final insight into what we've learned about
Francis from his first six months.
When the end eventually comes for Francis, Vaticanologists and
historians will likely focus on whether he delivered the reforms he was elected
to enact, such as cleaning up the Vatican bank.
Politicians and diplomats will ask whether he shaped history,
successfully moving the ball on the church's concerns and shaping the
"poor church for the poor" he's declared to be his dream. Media types
will look at his poll numbers and whether the new lease on life for the
Catholic church his election seemed to herald actually led to something.
Those are all, in their way, perfectly legitimate yardsticks. Yet
if one wonders how Francis himself might assess his success or failure, he'd
likely phrase it differently: Does he leave behind a more merciful church and a
more merciful world?
Whatever the answer turns out to be, Francis would probably say
it's at least the right question to ask.
[John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior
correspondent. His email address isjallen@ncronline.org.
Follow him on Twitter: @JohnLAllenJr.]
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