Pope Francis was the sixth pope to have reigned in my lifetime. During the years of his pontificate, I have lived happily in the parish of the Holy Ghost and Saint Stephen in west London. The congregation is varied: London Irish, Caribbeans, Filipinos, Chinese, East Europeans, old and young, rich and poor. Our parish priest, a former Anglican and lawyer, is orthodox but no Lefebvrist. There is a dignified liturgy and sound teaching from the pulpit. Two of my grandsons serve at the altar. There is no Tridentine Mass, but there are no altar girls either.
Given the above, I have never understood why it is said that the Church is in need of reform. Certainly, Cardinal Becciu’s financial shenanigans over a property deal took place only a mile or two away in Chelsea, but no English Catholics were involved. Evidence suggests that my fellow parishioners feel the same way: At the meeting called to discuss Pope Francis’s Synodal Pathway, I was one of only three parishioners who turned up.
Of the six popes, the one I felt a special affinity for was Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI. Benedict was wise, learned, and lucid, and, as Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II, he saved the Church from the chaos that followed Vatican II. Francis, by contrast, was true to his slogan “make a mess.” He made controversial off-the-cuff remarks that seemed to contradict Church teaching and so confused the faithful. He appeared to be preoccupied with the Church’s mission as an agent for the amelioration of our condition in this world rather than the means for salvation in the next. He denounced capitalism, but he was a Peronist, not a Marxist—and under Peronist rule, Argentina was reduced from one of the richest to one of the poorest countries in the world. His experiences in Argentina led to his dislike of smug middle-class Catholics, and he castigated priests and bishops who ruled rather than served their parishioners, wore elaborate vestments, and avoided “the smell of the poor.”
Ever compassionate, Francis recognized that many of us make a shambles of our lives at one time or another and felt that those who do should not for that reason be excluded from the Church; hence, the notorious footnote in the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia stating that in certain cases, after discernment by a priest, divorced and remarried Catholics should be allowed to take Communion. Here in England, this was already common practice, but as the pronouncement of a pope it appeared to reverse not just the rulings of his predecessors but the teaching of Christ in the Gospels.
It was the same with his welcoming approach to homosexuals. The Penny Catechism of my childhood lists “the sin of Sodom” as one of the four “crying out to Heaven for vengeance.” The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church describes same-sex “activities” as “acts of grave depravity. . . . Under no circumstances can they be approved.” Yet Pope Francis, when talking of homosexuals who sincerely sought God, said, “Who am I to judge?” He welcomed such groups as pilgrims and permitted priests to bless same-sex couples. Here again many of the faithful were confused. Was repentance no longer required for the sinner to return to a state of grace? Had not both Jesus (Matthew 18:15–17) and Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 5:11) said that unrepentant sinners should be expelled from the Christian community?
Yet it is possible that Pope Francis was less tolerant than his off-the-cuff statements made him seem. History may judge that this Jesuit pope showed a certain guile by “talking the talk” to keep liberal Catholics in the fold but did not “walk the walk” by explicitly changing the Church’s teaching. It was expected that the Amazonian synod would lead to the acceptance of married priests, but there was no mention of them in Pope Francis’s post-synodal summation. When it came to the role of women in the Church, he appointed one or two to administrative posts in the Vatican but procrastinated when it came to making a decision on the question of the ordination of women as deacons. And when the German Church veered towards schism with its Synodal Pathway, he embraced it on behalf of the universal Church—an embrace that after two years of discussions effectively smothered the Germans’ more radical proposals.
In the eighteenth century il papa bello, Pope Pius VII, delighted the Romans with his extravagant embellishment of their city and his shameless enrichment of his nephew, Duke Braschi Onesti: It was what was expected of a pope. By contrast, Francis appealed to the egalitarian ethos of our age, and under his direction more of the accoutrements of temporal majesty that had been attached to the papacy over the centuries were discarded. We still have the Swiss Guard and the cardinals’ red robes, but Francis chose to live in the Vatican guest house, the Casa Santa Marta, and to be driven in a Ford Focus, not a Mercedes. He appealed to the mass of Catholics who care little for the wrangling between conservatives and liberals but responded to his simplicity and compassion, and his concern for our well-being in this world rather than judgement in the next appealed to a generation that balks at the teaching that we are immortal.
This essay is part of a symposium on Pope Francis’s life and legacy. Read the rest here.
