Pope Francis chose his papal name to honor Saint Francis of Assisi. He told reporters shortly after his election that he was inspired by the saint and that he dreamed of serving “a poor Church, for the poor.” He had a gift for embracing the poor when he encountered them, and he actively sought them out. But in one important way, he failed in the mission he set out for himself.
A Church for the poor must be a Church of transparent law and clear doctrine. During his reign, Pope Francis clearly chafed at demands for regularity in either domain. He preferred spontaneity to the stability offered by institutions.
The law is the last refuge of the poor. In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton writes, “Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The rules of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.”
I’ve seen the benefit of clear rules firsthand, when a friend at a secular employer was first harassed and then retaliated against for reporting the misconduct. The head of the company was reluctant to set rules, since he saw the enterprise as a “family,” not a boring old company. If his had been the last word, she would have had no recourse.
Instead, she had the law, which enumerated her protections and above all specified that an N.D.A. could not bind her to silence about criminal behavior. The boss’s attempts to pressure her crumbled when he finally had to call in a lawyer of his own and was told in no uncertain terms that he would lose. In the boss’s view of the company, asking for trust and a willingness to compromise left him freer to lead than he would be if he had to abide by an employee handbook. I’m grateful his wings were clipped.
As wonderful as intimate presence can be, the rich and powerful will always have greater recourse to pleading their case in person. In Knoxville, Tennessee, when a fifth of the priests in the diocese pleaded with the papal nuncio for “merciful relief” from their bishop, they could not trust the protection of the law. Bishop Richard Stika had aggressively quashed investigations into an abusive seminarian, invited the accused to live with him, and accepted him as a diocesan seminarian. The priests of the diocese were able to report Stika under the provisions of Vos estis lux mundi, canonical procedures established by Pope Francis in 2019 for reporting abuse by a bishop. But Vos estis did not specify when or whether accused bishops should step aside, whether investigations would be publicly disclosed, or what penalties might be imposed. It left the people with the courage to blow the whistle uncertain about whether anything had happened or would happen. Ultimately, Stika, like many before him, was allowed to resign for “health reasons” without a reckoning (on Earth, at least).
Abuse cases draw the most attention, but Pope Francis’s overhauls of canon law also introduced ambiguity around marriage and annulment. His Mitis iudex allows one spouse’s testimony about nullity to be accepted as true without a requirement to weigh corroborating evidence or the witness of the other spouse. It enumerates criteria for using a briefer tribunal process that trails off with an “etc.” For both canon lawyers and couples, it creates confusion about how their cases are to be heard.
In Fiducia supplicans, Pope Francis attempted to strike a balance of ambiguity that ultimately could not hold. The declaration attempted to define a malleable blessing for same-sex couples that supporters of gay marriage could embrace and opponents could not technically object to. It foundered on the rock of African opposition and demands for clarity.
A global Church may struggle to legislate for all times and places. But deliberately leaving ambiguities and avoiding transparency shortchanges the faithful the world over. The Lord hears the cry of the poor. For the Church to hear them, it needs to offer them a clear forum to make their cases.
This essay is part of a symposium on Pope Francis’s life and legacy. Read the rest here.
