Monday, March 25, 2013

Dear Pope Francis...

...In addition to resolving the child abuse, corruption and banking scandals, will you shed infallibility and extend an olive branch to Christians in the east to unite the Church once more? asks AN Wilson
THE joy spread, first around the square, and then around the world. The feeling was relief that we have a new man.

“You know, the work of the conclave is to give a bishop to Rome,” said the new Pope Francis, as he stood on the balcony in front of the faithful. “It seems as if my brother cardinals went to find him from the end of the Earth. But here we are.”

With those few words, the Pope gently alluded to what everyone had been dreading — more of the same. Poor old Benedict XVI. Though he wasn’t God’s Rottweiler, as his enemies had depicted him, Benedict was a Vatican insider, the consummate wheeler-dealer. He knew the Curia, the Papal Court, through and through. He knew its devious ways. He must have known of its criminality. Perhaps, the longer he remained pope, he knew too much.

When a pope goes — through death or resignation — the Curia resigns and has to be re-appointed. One theory is that Benedict realised a clean sweep was necessary, so he resigned, forcing the resignation of the Curia ‘mafiosi’ who had presided over so many scandals, including the cover-up of child abuse, sleazy sex, money-laundering, corruption, and murder.

A couple spring to mind: the assassination of a Swiss Guard who acted as a gay prostitute to priests and Vatican bureaucrats — killed just before Benedict XVI took office; and the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London, after €1bn of Vatican money had gone missing.

Many of us will never believe that the patriarch of Venice, who lasted just three weeks after being elected as Pope John Paul I, died a natural death.

The Curia, made up of men up to their throats in these shady dealings, has held the Roman Church in its iron grip since the 19th century — since the papacy lost its temporal power, at the time of Garibaldi.

Now, there is hope for change. If I wrote the new pope an open letter, what would I beg him to do, in addition to reforming the Curia, cleaning up the banking scandal, and resolving the child-abuse scandal by a full acknowledgment of the problem?

I’d ask two things of Pope Francis, while knowing he has a lot on his desk: one would be to look at the land that gave birth to the Saviour, and at the Middle East. All over the Eastern Mediterranean, and in North Africa, the descendants of the earliest Christians — Easter Orthodox, Copts, and others — are being persecuted. In the lands that gave birth to Christianity, Christianity is dying.

Please, Bishop Francis, tread in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi, who went to the Crusaders to preach peace, who went to the Muslims and spoke to them of Christ.

Above all, go to the Eastern Christians and see if it is possible to heal the wounds of Christendom and unite the Church once more.

That which unites Christians — faith in Christ — must be more important than that which divides, and if only the bishop of Rome and the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople belonged to the same Church, the persecuted Christians of the east would feel empowered, enriched.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Catholics were in communion with their fellow Christians in Israel-Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, and Egypt?

To persuade the Orthodox to unite with the Roman Catholics, the Pope would have to abandon the absurd pretensions of the First Vatican Council, at the conclusion of which Pope Pius IX declared himself infallible.

As well as ridiculous, this was blasphemous, and it would do so much for the standing of the papacy, and of Christianity, if the Pope renounced it.

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, there has been a war between those who wanted the Church to embrace ‘collegiality’ — the authority of the Church shared through the bishops in all parts of the world — and those who believed in a papal monarchy, and the absolute, centralised power of the Curia.

It is clear from Francis’s opening words that he favours collegiality. He will not be laying down the law from above, so much as sharing in Christ’s authority with his brother bishops.

By introducing himself to the Romans as their bishop, rather than as the supreme pontiff, Francis has humbly made the first step along the road toward sanity.

But the Pope faces an uphill struggle. Even as John Paul II wowed the world and Benedict XVI minced about Rome in baroque vestments, the membership of the Church haemorrhaged, especially in the developed world.

Though one fifth of the world’s population is Roman Catholic, many are lapsed. One in 10 Americans is an erstwhile Catholic, and in many parts of the US, after the child-abuse scandal, the Church has been reduced to nothing — which holds true in Ireland, too. The Curia is fixed in its criminality, allowing child-abusing bishops and priests to go unpunished. The church, supposedly on the side of the poor, has been involved in worse financial scandals than Wall Street.

Not that Francis has a clean slate. He is dogged by stories that he didn’t speak out against the ‘dirty war’ of the thugs and torturers during Argentina’s dark days of dictatorship.

But he has a golden opportunity. He comes from a new world, and he could help the Church become what so many of its members believe it to be: the outward sign on Earth of Christ’s continuing presence here. Elected by fellow outsiders, not only is Francis the first pope from the Americas, he is also the first Jesuit — and the popes haven’t taken kindly to the Jesuits.

Clement XIV was elected in 1769 on an anti-Jesuit ticket and suppressed the Jesuits in 1773. Many Jesuits bravely held on, keeping to their rule, until the order was reconstituted in 1814.

John Paul II, that doughty anti-Marxist warrior from Poland, sniffed that the Jesuits, particularly in Argentina, had more than a whiff of communism about them and detested their “liberation theology” — a theology that espouses Christ’s Gospel can only be lived out in a world where social justice is paramount. John Paul II marginalised the Jesuits, favouring the dire Opus Dei — the group that sustained the power of Spain’s dictator General Franco — which is as allied to the right in politics as the modern Jesuits (in many countries) are allied to the left.

Pope Francis is highly traditional in his interpretation of the Church’s teaching on gay marriage, women priests, and abortion. But he is also radical enough to believe that these matters, much as they occupy the minds of headline writers in newspapers, are not the essence of the Christian Gospel. Christ lived among the poor, he was himself poor, and he told his disciples that insofar as they had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the prisoners, they had done it to him, the incarnate god. This is the Christ worshipped and served by the new pope.

It is the Christ worshipped by his predecessors, also, but there were undoubted signs, in Francis’s first words from the balcony, and by his appearance, that tell us that we are right to be optimistic for change.

Benedict — with his comfortable apartment, his grand piano, and his vestments — loved the trappings of office and brought all sorts of bejewelled hardware out of storage to drape about his person. (Much of it hadn’t been seen since the reign of Pius XII and might usefully be sold to pay compensation to the victims of child abuse, and to pay for food for the starving.)

Francis, by contrast, is the archbishop of Buenos Aires, who gave up his palace and his chauffeur-driven limo in favour of a bus pass, and a one-bedroom apartment where he cooked his own meals.

As the wooden cross around his neck testifies, this pope isn’t interested in bejewelled vestments and crucifixes, and that sends a good signal to the poor, both in the Americas and in Africa.

Most Catholics are not interested in Roman politics, know nothing of Curial tricks, and have no interest in molesting children. They believe, as do their Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant brothers and sisters, that God came to Earth as a poor man, to bring us closer to himself.


It was said in the Middle Ages that this message had been forgotten — especially the message about embracing poverty and understanding, not only how we can help the poor, but also how they could teach us. The message of the pauper Christ was forgotten, until someone came to remind us of it. That person was called Francis.

Which brings us to the name chosen by the new pope: Francis. What signal does that send? Whether he chose the name as the simple follower of Francis of Assisi or as the Jesuit admirer of St Francis Xavier, the new pope must know that he only has a partial chance of success. St Francis Xavier was a heroic missionary who expanded the Church; Francis of Assisi followed Christ by abandoning property and giving all to the poor. Whichever Francis he is following, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doomed to failure. He is a clever man, and he knows this, as we cheer him on his way.

*AN Wilson is a newspaper columnist and author of novels (Winnie and Wolf, Stray), literary biographies (Tolstoy: A Biography, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, Dante In Love), popular history (The Victorians, After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World, The Elizabethans), and religious history (Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, God’s Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization, Jesus: A Life).