He’s blown off the Papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace to sleep in a residence, he doesn’t bother with red shoes or fancy lace, he makes cold-calls to people who write him letters, he gives homework at his weekly audience, he kisses every baby he can, and stops to hug anyone who is sick or handicapped. He’s doing away with the papal “gentlemen”, he washed the tattooed feet of teenagers in a juvenile detention center (See Francesco Frenzy), he ends his Sunday Angelus with “buon appetito”, he wrote a letter to a newspapers engaging a prominent atheist, and he intends to drive a used car around the Vatican. All that is just the surface stuff. So let’s scratch a little bit deeper.
Pope Francis said “who am I to judge?” homosexuals, he drew a crowd of 100,000 for a day of fasting and prayer against western military intervention in Syria, he made his first trip outside the Vatican to the little island of Lampedusa to pray for immigrants lost at sea trying to reach Italy (See Goosebumps in Lampedusa), he changed his schedule in Brazil to visit a favela, he is shaking up the Vatican bank and the cleaning up the Vatican hierarchy.
It has taken nearly six months for this to sink in, but I think we may be dealing with a revolutionary Pope. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary “revolutionary” means, “constituting or bringing about a major or fundamental change.” Well, I think what Pope Francis is doing qualifies. I began covering the Vatican in 1993, and I have never seen anything like this, although I admit I missed Pope John Paul II in his early years when he took on communism in Eastern Europe. Pope John Paul II changed the relationship of the Catholic Church with the rest of the world, but he did not reform from within. It looks like this is what Pope Francis is going to do.
Pope Francis is 76-years-old, and his papacy won’t last forever but if the first six months are any indication, he will turn the Vatican upside down and make crucial changes to the Catholic Church.
Today as I was about to post, unexpectedly Civilta’ Cattolica — a Jesuit Magazine– released a lengthy interview with the Pope where he laid out his vision for the future and gave his thoughts and opinions on a wide variety of issues. Luke Coppen, Editor of The Catholic Herald described it as “brilliant, breath-taking, and deeply revealing.” The Pope seemed to be opening up the Church on questions of homosexuality, contraception, and abortion. If you want all the details I suggest you read the articles by AP’s star Vaticanista, Nicole Winfield — you can find them through her twitter account @nwinfield.
Just a quick highlight from one of her stories:
“The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently,” Francis said. “We have to find a new balance…Rather, he said, the Catholic Church must be like a “field hospital after battle,” healing the wounds of its faithful and going out to find those who have been hurt, excluded or have fallen away.
“It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars!” Francis said. “You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.”
And here is a quote from the interview with Pope Francis on women:
“The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised.
And on change and reform:
Many think that changes and reforms can take place in a short time. I believe that we always need time to lay the foundations for real, effective change. And this is the time of discernment. Sometimes discernment instead urges us to do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later. And that is what has happened to me in recent months. Discernment is always done in the presence of the Lord, looking at the signs, listening to the things that happen, the feeling of the people, especially the poor….
On a personal note, at AP Television we’ve gone from covering the Pope’s weekly audience which used to me a one and a half hour affair every Wednesday, with the Pope delivering a theological message to the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square, to covering a three hour bonanza with tens of thousands of people gathered in the St. Peter’s Square and the Pope dedicating at least one hour to greeting and blessing as many people as he can. We see him up lost charismatic, energized, and dedicated.
Finally in the interview the Pope mentioned some of his favorite artists and literature — and I found out he shares my passion for Caravaggio (Caravaggio’s Women – Check out the Toenails).
I don’t think we are going to see women priests in the next few weeks, or the end to priestly celibacy…but things are changing faster than I expected at the Vatican so stay tuned….
Don’t worry, the disjointed multitude of doctrines Francis was talking about was not magisterial teaching / catechism, which reflects the immutability of God and forms a coherent whole. Rather the Pope was speaking as a doctor about the application of the healing balm of truth and the Medicine that is Christ and his salvation. Once the initial dose is received, then the steady work of living a virtuous life, of striving to enter through the narrow gate begins. Don’t expect too much to change other than yourself. Everything else will remain very much as it is, above all Jesus Christ and the deposit of our apostolic faith entrusted to our Mother, the Church. As he described very beautifully in this interview, once our wounds have been healed in the Sacrament of Confession, then we can talk about everything else. The implication being that everything else (how we live our lives thereafter) matters a lot. The Pope is calling people to conversion, to change within themselves, to become more like Christ each day. That is where the revolution must begin and end. Getting carried away with the prospect of massive change within the church is to miss the point and a mistake. Best wishes.
Thank you Chris for this comment. I hope that I am not getting “carried away with the prospect of massive change within the church.” I thought carefully about whether or not to use the work “revolutionary” and after looking it up in the dictionary decided that it was appropriate. Even if you just look at the surface stuff I listed at the beginning, it is a big change. As far as the questions regarding social doctrine and issues such as homosexuality, divorce, abortion, and the role of women in the church, I am still trying to come to grips with this interview– people are seeing it in lots of different ways. Below I am going to copy and paste some quotes from some interviews I did today as I was getting reactions to the Pope’s Interview.
The first is with a young man named Christian Collia who was walking on the street near St. Peter’s Square. I stopped him and asked him what he thought about the Pope’s interview. This is what he said, “”I believe above all that the Pope is open-minded towards the new problems of modern society, he is very young-minded. These are the realities that have to be faced sooner or later. I believe that he is the only Pope that has had the courage to recognize the problems of the church and to try to face them, and to attempt to face problems, to accept situations like homosexuality, marriages that end in separation, all these questions that we cannot hide, and a Pope has to try to get closer to the issues facing the faithful.”
I thought this was an excellent and right-on response. The Pope is addressing issues that the faithful are facing – he is not just saying “no, not allowed, don’t want you” he is saying “come on in, let’s talk”. That is a pretty big change. Then – always near St. Peter’s Square I bumped into Father Thomas Rosica, the Director of Salt and Light TV, and this is what he had to say:”I had tears in my eyes reading this, this is a remarkable interview and he is talking to people on the peripheries, on the fringes, people who are hanging on for a lifeline, and he saying “no, this is not a small, restricted church for an elite group, but the net is thrown wide. Come, come closer and see.”
He then added, “”he is reaching out to gays, he is reaching out to those who have been divorced and separated, he is saying that women have to play a much greater role in decision making in the church. He is not saying what people want him to say, so you can distort anything you wish, but if you read it carefully, you realize that the man who is occupying the See of St. Peter right now is a pastor with a Shepherd’s heart who is concerned with people who are hurting.”
Finally, I had an appointment with Greg Burke, a media consultant for the Vatican Secretary of State. I asked him if the new openness was a condemnation of his predecessors hard line on social doctrine and here is what he had to say: “”the Pope is not condemning his predecessors, what he is saying is that we have spent a lot of time talking about the boundaries, we have spent a lot of time talking about what is sin and what is not, now let’s move on, let’s talk about mercy, let’s talk about love.”
For me, anyway you look at it, it is pretty revolutionary. Just the fact that the Pope sat down with a journalist and gave such a long interview is a big change too.
Well, I think I will go re-read it right now!!
I am so encouraged by the words and actions of our new pope Trisha, and I do hope it leads to changes within the church. It would go a long way toward getting many disenfranchised Catholics back to the fold – and to engaging new followers too. His remarks in that interview were like a breath of fresh air.
I agree Linda. It has been so fascinating watching this Pope up close and seeing how he is changing things at the Vatican and in the Catholic Church.
Brilliant! And so is the Pope, so exciting to watch, hear, feel the energy coming from. He is the breath of God in the church, I believe, though I do not accept him as the Vicar or Administrator of God, I do hear and feel him now as the breath, – though, not all the breath, for many others have fresher air to bring, and we know that the Pope has been breathing the fresh air of many, which has given him the voice he is using now. Well done, Trisha.
Thank you Nancy. I hope you have had a chance to read the entire interview. I am very curious to hear your thoughts on what he said about women, homosexuality and a whole range of other issues. In case you haven’t seen the whole interview, here is a link POPE INTERVIEW
As Linda says he is a breath of fresh air. I can only imagine though, that the faction in the Vatican and elsewhere in the Church that disagrees with his changes (and I have no doubt whatsoever it exists )is building against Pope Francis and his new ideas. Frankly that is troubling. Also I wonder how those who disagree with him square their disagreements with the concept of Papal Infallibility? This is all drawing me in so much. I am truly surprised and pleased. I hope you write often about the Pope.
You are always so insightful Adri — as you say, they enemies are certainly there and appear to be laying low for the moment. We shall see what happens.
I’ve heard about that interview and I’m going to spend some time this weekend to read it! I love that he’s such a quotable Pope too!
Very quotable. I read through it again yesterday and I think I may stick some of my favorite quotes on another blog post.
Hmmmmm!
I do not think the Catholic Church needs many changes at least if we refer to principles; what the Pope is doing is to change people in key places inside the Vatican and to give hope to people who thought they were not accepted by the Church for their beliefs or for their conditions. The real revolution of Pope Francesco has to be found in his way of talking about issues that no one ever has the courage to talk about such as the uselessness of war that benefits only the “illegal market of arms” and also about a sort of “economics religion” that privileges money not taking instead care of human needs.
The Pope is talking clearly about the “System”. This is the new peaceful revolution of Pope Francesco, and I believe he is the one and only one who has the power to unveil such hidden issues, that no one has the courage to discuss or to dispute.
The “miracle” of Pope Benedict who had the courage to resign has given the Church the strength to start again asserting the rights of the single persons against the abuse of power of a restricted privileged community.
In any case Trisha congratulations for your interesting work of informing people about the activities of the Pope. I must say you do it in a very professional and well balanced way.
D.
Thank you Dario for this very sincere and insightful comment. I think you have raised some very important points that I had missed. I suppose that Pope Francis is challenging the system and will find that he has quite a few enemies for doing so. I think it is interesting that you described Pope Benedict’s resignation as a “miracle”, but in a way you might be right, he had the courage to see that he could not correct the course of the church at this moment in history, so he stepped out of the driver’s seat (the first to do so in over 600 years) and let someone else, more fitted to the position take over.