Looking for a fight: Pope Francis, a saint for reform

Perhaps the photo above the November 26 Washington Post story says it all about Pope Francis. His views of society are shaking the comfortable stables of the wealthy and the powerful while warming the hearts of the poor, the lost and those of diminished hope.

It’s a profile shot with a circle of light behind the pontiff’s head, reminiscent of the halos depicted around the heads of saints seen in many Renaissance paintings.

Whether or not he is saintly, Francis does appear concerned with reforming the Catholic Church and at a time when the excesses haven’t just bedeviled society, but the church in particular and religion in general.

Francis follows two papal reformers Pope John XXIII, elected pontiff in 1958, and Pope John Paul I, elected in 1978. Both men led short papal reigns. The 66-year-old John Paul I died after only 33 days, leading to conspiracy theories, and John XXIII died, at age 81, five years after his election.

John XXIII, though, was apparently meant to serve, like Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, who served nearly eight years before deciding to retire with the title pope emeritus, short-term, a sort of interim period between popes.

Though their papal reigns were short, John XXIII and John Paul I introduced reforms that set the church in new directions that many welcomed and many, even today, disapproved, but those changes, despite efforts to reverse them, remain and seem un-reversible.

Like Francis, Pope John XXIII wasted no time in abandoning old views and establishing new ones for a church that was already feeling the pressures brought by modernity. One of his first acts was to confess the church’s centuries of anti-Semitism.

His most significant reform, which altered the church, was calling what became known as the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II. The council has reshaped church teachings and views that many Catholics found liberation in them while others could only find gloom in the change to traditions such as having mass said in English instead of Latin.

According to religion writer and pope biographer George Weigel in a July 2001 article, when John XXIII called for Vatican II in 1959, Cardinal Giovanni Montini, who became the next pope a few years later, said to a friend: “This holy old boy doesn't realize what a hornet's nest he's stirring up.”

John Paul I also wasted no time in instituting reforms in what became one of the shortest reigns in papal history. He made changes to humanize the papacy, referring to himself in the first person instead of the third person “we.” He rejected the “papal coronation” for a simple mass.

He also was preparing an encyclical or papal letter to confirm Vatican II’s reforms before his death hardly a month after his election as pope. The Vatican has never investigated as suspicious John Paul’s death, despite books and articles claiming a conspiracy. The Vatican’s official view has been that he died mostly likely of a heart attack.

Francis appears to be directing the church to a new, perhaps higher level of reforms. He forgoes the trappings of papal power, insists on living sparingly, foregoes accouterments of papal wardrobes, and wades into humanity.

 

He returned to his hotel by bus to pay his bill the day of his election. He cradled in his arms a man whose face was covered in boils from a disfigurement caused by a genetic disorder. He washes the feet of his flock.

Francis is showing humbleness, humility and love – a trinity that he believes is severely lacking in today’s world where he sees a massive gulf between rich and poor, hope and hopelessness, hate and love.

“Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor,” Francis wrote in a statement known as an “apostolic exhortation.”

“God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spir­it which has its source in the heart of the risen Christ.”  

Francis also pointed out what he sees as an imbalance in economic scale and thinking.
 

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.

“This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system … Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”

Francis appears to be striking the right chords and connecting with hearts and minds when he speaks about the social fabric getting torn by economic injustice and inequality, and the academic theories and laws that enshrine such imbalance. A recent poll found Francis, who became pope less than nine months ago in March 2013, the most popular person on the Internet, which is the 21^st century’s version of a world audience.

 

“I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security," he wrote on his exhortation.”

Saint Francis? Perhaps, but from his actions and words attaining sainthood seems the least of his concerns, if it’s a concern at all. One thing is certain about the latest successor to Saint Peter, he’s demonstrating that he lives and teaches as Jesus of the scriptures did.