Some Thoughts about Pope Francis

When I heard Cardinal Tauran announce that the new Pope was "Georgium S.R.E. Cardinalem Bergoglio," my first thought, before he got to the last name, was, "What Cardinal is named George?" I couldn't think of any. I did recognize the last name, but I couldn't have told you anything about him. Since then, of course, I've read and learned a fair amount.

My impression is that he will change things more than any Pope since John XXIII and Paul VI. Pope Paul VI made some significant changes in the trappings of the papacy, doing away with the portable throne in which popes had been carried at public events, doing away with the triple crown with which popes had been crowned, and traveling outside Italy — the first pope in ages to do so voluntarily. John Paul I, in his month as Pope gave an image of a papacy that was approachable. His successors followed suit in this scaled back version of Renaissance monarchy.

Of course, what John XXIII did was to summon the Second Vatican Council, which, in turn, gave the Church a new way of understanding itself and its work. George Weigel has suggested that with Vatican II the Counter-Reformation was over. Conventional wisdom is that it takes decades for the Church to assimilate the work of a council, and John Paul II and Benedict XVI did a lot to further that assimilation with their teaching.

Now comes Pope Francis. It's obvious from his actions of the past couple of days — ditching the red shoes in favor of black, popping into the hotel to pay his bill, placing his own call to the Superior General of the Jesuits — that the monarchical trappings are going to be much further reduced. But I think that the direction the actual work of the Church will take under his papacy is far more significant. Here he'll bring the most change since John XXIII and the Council.

Recently the phrase "New Evangelization" has become very common as a way of describing the task before the Church now that we're leaving the Counter-Reformation behind. As I understand it, it consists of an outreach to people around the world, but especially perhaps in lands and cultures which were formerly Christian but are now thoroughly secularized. This outreach, unlike that of earlier times, is seen as the responsibility of all members of the Church, not just priests and nuns. This is a role for which the laity need to be prepared.

In a pre-conclave piece on Cardinal Bergoglio as a possible Pope, John Allen had this to say:

Bergoglio has supported the social justice ethos of Latin American Catholicism, including a robust defense of the poor.

"We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least," Bergoglio said during a gathering of Latin American bishops in 2007. "The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers."

and

Bergoglio may be basically conservative on many issues, but he's no defender of clerical privilege, or insensitive to pastoral realities. In September 2012, he delivered a blistering attack on priests who refuse to baptize children born out of wedlock, calling it a form of "rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism."

and

He's also seen as a genuinely spiritual soul, and a man of deep prayer.

"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 Sant'Uffizio or 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."

and, finally

"We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of a self-referential church," Bergoglio said recently. "It's true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that's sick because it's self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former."

Elsewhere, I've read of his visits to the poorer areas of Buenos Aires. What this all sounds like to me is what we read about Jesus: that he went around the villages of Galilee proclaiming the kingdom of God to all. All of which leads me to expect that the face of the New Evangelization will be more like the face of Jesus and less that of an institution recruiting new members than it would have been if Francis were not Pope. I'm hopeful.