I`t would be too easy to say now that these 12 years have passed like a beautiful spring. Undoubtedly, some gestures, images, and moments will remain etched in our memory because of their significant emotional impact, and their proliferation on social media shows that
Pope Francis was perceived with empathy by ordinary people. But if we look at the merits of his pastoral teaching, we must acknowledge that the basic consensus remains generic; an actual reception is yet to come.
There is no real opposition, but within the framework of our Christianity, of income and traditions, many key words of the pontificate that has just ended seem simply incomprehensible; things from another world.
Pope Francis spoke of a “Church that goes forth,” and, paradoxically, we are happy to see that churches, in certain circumstances, are filling up again; an even more paradoxical example is that, in the lexicon of the southern regions, the “going forth” of the churches par excellence is that of processions, an expression of an ancient popular religiosity, so dear to Pope Francis, but in a certain sense out of step with the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world.
I don’t know if it’s something for us: it’s too complicated to break out of the mold. “It’s always been done this way [more or less], it still works.” We live off our income, with scattered successes, wanting to be optimistic. We are not trained to play “away from home,” in both the concrete and figurative sense.
Pope Francis spoke of a ‘Church that goes forth,’ and, paradoxically, we are happy to see that churches, in certain circumstances, are filling up again
Pope Francis has finished his career and lives with God. We have loved him and we are grateful to him. It is precisely the distance between his pastoral vision and our Christianity, based on income and traditions, a mark of authenticity as the voice of the Spirit, that makes us leave the bubble of our customs, sometimes lifeless, very often sterile.
Now we are left with the lexicon, the impulses, and the example of some steps guided by some intuitions. We can follow some footprints and take some steps forward. This will mean subjecting, stage by stage, to verification the baggage we carry with us, the treasures and burdens of the Catholic civilisation from which we come, precious gems and burdens that are now unsustainable.
We must continue to verify that the gospel message’s liberating freshness is at the centre of everything and that it is liberating for everyone, not only for ourselves but also for those who are already inside.
We must continue to verify, without ever feeling satisfied or discouraged, because time is greater than space, and the processes that have been initiated are more important than the spaces that have been conquered.
Pope Francis, the bishop of Rome who came from the ends of the earth [in the geographical and theological sense – Matthew 25:31-46], has initiated more than one process: he believed in them and tried them, as a shepherd
Continue to verify because new paths must be opened, maps must be written, and then, perhaps, rewritten.
Pope Francis, the bishop of Rome who came from the ends of the earth [in the geographical and theological sense – Matthew 25:31-46], has initiated more than one process: he believed in them and tried them, as a shepherd. We, in a variety of dimensions and contexts, can take seriously the lexicon of gestures and words, which is the only way to keep the processes alive.
In this pedagogy of gestures and words, one’s gaze is drawn almost by inertia to the past. One remembers Lampedusa in 2013, where 130 people lost their lives off the coast of Libya. Lampedusa was his first trip. His sensitivity, expressed in gestures of solidarity, sealed his magisterium.
Because it is from Lampedusa that he launches his invective against the globalisation of indifference, which, together with the economy that kills, is one of the recurring themes of his pontificate.
“Adam, where are you?” and to Cain, ‘Where is your brother?’ ”Where is your brother’s blood crying out to me?” “Even today,” said the pope, this question arises with force. ‘Who will answer for the blood of his brother?”
Pope Francis bluntly attacks clericalism and clerical culture, which have led the People of God to aphasia, disengagement, and non-participation
Everyone is locked in the bubble of anonymity, nameless and faceless men, “unable to feel compassion or cry.” From Lampedusa, Pope Francis teaches us to look at the world from the side of the victims, the least, the most fragile, those who have no voice. He does so in the name of the gospel, taking as his archetype the Samaritan, to whom he dedicates an entire chapter in Fratelli Tutti.
“Who is my neighbour?” The reason for his commitment and his constant denunciations can be found in Evangelii Gaudium, the manifesto of his pontificate, in which he denounces the culture of “use and throw away,” which considers man as a consumer good, therefore disposable when he is no longer helpful, an economy that produces poverty and “human waste while consuming the planet.”
Also in Laudato Si’, Pope Francis devotes ample space to human action when it deviates to contradicting reality to the point of destroying it, and when technological, political, and economic power moves away from ethical, cultural, and spiritual references.
This only exacerbates social inequalities, with the devastating consequences we all know: emigration, social conflicts, even wars. This vision affects the entire world and its justice.
In Fratelli Tutti, the Pope lifts the veil on the shadows of a closed world, with the construction of walls, not only of brick, and increasingly aggressive nationalisms that impose a single cultural model based on profit that divides, marginalises, and produces new slaves worldwide. The pope urges us to think and create a world open to the whole world.
From Lampedusa, Pope Francis teaches us to look at the world from the side of the victims, the least, the most fragile, those who have no voice.
Pope Francis has poured this universal impulse into the Church, proposing a profound and radical change. The fundamental question is: how can we transmit the gospel today and live the faith in a West—and not only in the West—that has been so de-Christianised?
This is the task entrusted to the Synod. It is a path to be travelled together, a difficult and tiring path because it requires a change of mentality in a process of continuous conversion to discern the signs of the times and build another Church upon them.
Not a different Church. Jesus did not propose a different faith, but another way of living the faith, not tied to a tradition that nails the Word to the past, but founded on his person and the message he embodies.
He is the pope of open doors, who demands the dignity of every human being as such, even before their religious identity: “There is a human right, a right to humanity that is above every other right.”
And this is where Pope Francis becomes an icon of Jesus and his Year of Grace, of the Good News of the Kingdom.
Pope Francis bluntly attacks clericalism and clerical culture, which have led the People of God to aphasia, disengagement, and non-participation.
In the Church, institutional structures, almost always locked up, with closed doors, have often neutralised the breath of the Spirit.
And against this model of the Church, the pope uses very harsh expressions, such as when, addressing the Roman Curia to wish them a Merry Christmas, he invites them to a serious examination of conscience to recognise their sins, from the vainglory of feeling superior, to spiritual Alzheimer’s, to the hoarding of money and power, to worldly gain, to the deification of leaders and existential schizophrenia.
Then, in Evangelii Gaudium, he denounces a worldly Church that seeks to dominate all spaces under spiritual and pastoral curtains, transforming the Church into a piece of archaeology or a museum, the privilege of a few.
“In short, a tremendous corruption with an appearance of goodness.” Hypocrisy turned into a system.
These are certainly harsh words. But who does not remember those spoken by Jesus against the scribes and Pharisees: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, blind guides, whitewashed tombs…!” [Matthew 23:13-], or the violence with which he expels the merchants from the Temple, an episode recorded by the four evangelists, or when, in the Temple, addressing the religious authorities, he provocatively states: “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” [Matthew 21:31-].
On the one hand, however, there is the denunciation of the sin that dwells in man and, on the other, the mercy that the pope defines as “the lintel that sustains the life of the Church” and to which he dedicated the Jubilee of 2016.
Mercy: it is not an abstract word, but “a face to be recognised, loved, and served in following Jesus, whose person is nothing other than love.”
This does not mean watering down the gospel, but grasping its essence: love is strong, bold, scandalous, even to the point of the cross; it is what we will be judged on [Matthew 25:31-46].
“It is necessary,“ the pope said, “to foster a culture of mercy that is revolution and not theory.”
And not to lock it up in an intimate cell, but to rediscover its social value “to restore dignity to millions of people who are our brothers and sisters, called with us to build a reliable city,” and to give life to an “alternative community” based on the commandment of love through which we are all brothers and sisters.
It is the mercy of the Father that Jesus embodies in his life.
Everything else is relative, that is, secondary.
Father Joseba Kamiruaga Mieza, CMF
