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Pope Francis
In all the writing and (for lack of a better word) pontificating about the new pope, one area of discussion that has some of the most misinformation and misunderstanding has to do liberation theology and the new pope’s relation to it in the 1970s as the supervisor of Jesuit priests at the time.
Discussions of “liberation theology” often conflate several issues. One is LTs emphasis on God’s “preferential option for the poor,” which proclaims that God has a special concern for those on the margins and those who are oppressed. Out of this comes the obvious question, “How, then, do we act to show this concern?” One major strand of LT was to develop “base communities” — worshipping communities of, by, and for the poor — where lay people, not priests, set the agenda and led the organizational work. Thus, LT levels a critique not only against banks, the wealthy, and governments, but also potentially against the hierarchy of the church. Critics of LT took offense at this base community theology and labeled it “Christian Marxism”, which took on special resonance in 1978 at the election of the Polish-born communism-fighter Pope John Paul II.
In all I have seen and read about Bergoglio’s record in Argentina, he appears to have embraced in very strong ways LTs emphasis on the poor, but seriously questioned if not completely rejected the base community idea. As the leader of the Jesuit community in Argentina, he has been accused of collaboration with the junta (an accusation he has strongly rejected). Leaving aside for the moment who may be right on that, what is clear is that he demanded obedience from the priests under his supervision, and would discipline those who defied him. Thus — and this is my sense of things, not a proven fact — I suspect that what his critics label collaboration with the regime (an outside power) is a misreading of his attempts to enforce obedience within the church. Yes, the regime would be pleased at having meddling priests reined in, but that’s different from saying that they asked him to do it and he agreed in an effort to curry favor and power. What matters first to Francis is faithfulness, not power.
I say this not to excuse or defend Bergoglio and his actions. I don’t know enough about the circumstances to do that, and I’ve known enough pastors and priests who work in gang-ridden areas to know that trying to be a pastor and leader in such circumstances is not easy and often involves making difficult choices. Indeed, one of the Jesuit priests that Bergoglio was accused of turning over to the junta reconciled with Bergoglio several years ago.
Some of the best profiles of Bergoglio, now Francis, have come from folks like John Allen of NCR in a pre-conclave series on the papabile; José Mariá Poirier, editor of the Argentinian Catholic magazine Criterio, writing in the UK’s Catholic Herald in 2005; Frida Ghites of the Miami Herald (formerly of CNN); and Kevin Clarke of the Jesuit magazine America. A few snippets, strung together, show a consistent picture of a leader who with a compassion for the poor, who criticizes the church at times and demands obedience at others.
From John Allen:
From 1973 to 1979 he served as the Jesuit provincial in Argentina, then in 1980 became the rector of the seminary from which he had graduated.
These were the years of the military junta in Argentina, when many priests, including leading Jesuits, were gravitating towards the progressive liberation theology movement. As the Jesuit provincial, Bergoglio insisted on a more traditional reading of Ignatian spirituality, mandating that Jesuits continue to staff parishes and act as chaplains rather than moving into “base communities” and political activism. . . .
Bergoglio has supported the social justice ethos of Latin American Catholicism, including a robust defense of the poor.
“We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least,” Bergoglio said during a gathering of Latin American bishops in 2007. “The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.”
From Kevin Clarke:
His past is more complicated than the pastoral face he has so far offered the world and Pope Francis may soon be asked to answer for positions and decisions during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Those positions have already created divisions among members of his order in South America.
He has been accused of not speaking out sufficiently against the murders and “disappearances” during that awful period when as many as 30,000 perished. He has denied the allegations and defenders say he negotiated behind the scenes to help victims. Respected Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff said Thursday he did not believe that Pope Francis, acting in his capacity then as Jesuit provincial, could be implicated in connection to the acts of the Argentine junta, and that he in fact assisted some of the junta’s intended victims.
Leonardo Boff is not merely a respected theologian, but is one of the primary theologians behind the development of liberation theology, and who was silenced for a year by Benedict for some of of his more recent work. Thus, Boff is not exactly someone who looks fondly on those in power nor excuses those who are opposed to liberation theology, and so his words here about Francis carry particular weight.
A little more digging also shows another connection between Boff and Bergoglio. Part of what got Boff in trouble was a 2001 interview in which he accused then-Cardinal Ratzinger of terrorismo religioso — religious terrorism — for Ratzinger’s excessively exclusive claims about the Roman Catholic church, which resulted in pitting brothers and sisters in faith against one another. Interestingly, just last year Bergoglio used similar language in condemning excessively conservative priests in his diocese who were withholding baptism of the babies born to single mothers:
The Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, did not hesitate to reprimand the reason that is repeatedly given to justify “denied” baptisms: “I say this with sadness and if it sounds like a complaint or an offensive comment please forgive me: in our ecclesiastical region there are presbyteries that will not baptise children whose mothers are not married because they have been conceived outside holy wedlock.”
This unique call for an end to the use of sacramental blackmail to subdue the hopes of those who want their children to be baptised, was pronounced Sunday by Fr. Bergoglio in his homily, during the closing mass for the Convention of the ecclesiastical region of Buenos Aires. The convention examined the issue of urban pastoral care.
In this “hijacking” of the sacrament that marks the beginning of Christian life, the Jesuit cardinal sees the expression of a rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism which also uses the sacraments as tools to affirm its own supremacy.
This kind of language ought to make the careerists in the Vatican very nervous, as well as a number of American bishops who want to use the sacraments as a club to beat up politicians with whom they disagree.
But back to Argentina, where Poirier’s perspectives on Bergoglio’s days as the Jesuit provincial are also instructive:
What is certain is that he is not loved by most of his Jesuit companions. They remember him as their provincial during the violence of the 1970s, when the army came to power amid a breakdown in the political system after the death of General Peron. A part of the Church in Argentina was involved in the theology of liberation and opposed the military government. Bergoglio was not. “After a war,” he was heard to say, “you have to act firmly.”
He exercised his authority as provincial with an iron fist, calmly demanding strict obedience and clamping down on critical voices. Many Jesuits complained that he considered himself the sole interpreter of St Ignatius of Loyola, and to this day speak of him warily.
The secular clergy of his diocese [i.e., clergy not connected with a religious order like the Jesuits], however, love their archbishop. As auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, he managed always to be with his priests, keeping them company through crises and difficulties and showing his great capacity for listening sympathetically (I have heard many stories of Bergoglio spending hours with elderly sick priests.) He also continued to show his option for the poor by encouraging priests to step out into the deep in intellectual and artistic areas: Bergoglio has never hidden a passion for literature.
Ironically, it is the same Bergoglio who, as Jesuit provincial, demanded absolute obedience and political neutrality, as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires wants his priests to be “out on the frontiers”, as he puts it. Cardinal Bergoglio regularly travels to the furthest ends of his three million-strong diocese to visit the poor. He wants them in the neediest barrios, in the hospitals accompanying Aids sufferers, in the popular kitchens for children.
Ghites notes another of Bergoglio’s defenders: Argentinian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel:
Peace Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, assured today that elected pope Jorge Bergoglio “had no links with the dictatorship” that ruled Argentina between the years 1976-1983 as he’s been accused for many years.
Speaking to BBC News, Perez Esquivel said that “there were bishops who were accomplices of the dictatorship, but it was not the case of Bergoglio.”
“Bergoglio was questioned because it is said he did not do enough to get out of jail two priests, as he was the Superior of the Jesuits. But I know personally that many bishops called on the military junta for the release of prisoners and priests and these requests were not granted”, said Perez Esquivel.
So where does this leave us? With lots of questions and only hints about what the future will hold.
Each of these profiles notes Francis’ staunch conservatism about sexual issues like contraception, abortion, and marriage equality, which should surprise no one. Any other serious candidate for the papacy would be the same. What is different, however, is the connection Francis has with the poor and the disdain for trappings of power. Many have commented on Francis declining to wear the same kind of elaborate liturgical attire as Benedict and John Paul II, as well as his paying his own hotel bill and riding the bus with the cardinals after the conclave. What isn’t often mentioned is that this is not a new approach to ecclesiastical leadership for Francis. In Argentina, he acted exactly the same way, declining to live in the archbishop’s palatial quarters and choosing a simple apartment instead, and using mass transit rather than fancy chauffeured vehicles.
Of all the big questions, the two that strike me as biggest for reasons beyond the church are these: (1) What will Francis do with regard to bishops who tried to protect priests they knew to have raped children, and (2) what will Francis do to reform the Vatican offices in the Curia? These are obviously related questions, and there are a lot of bishops nervously awaiting the answers.
Francis’ breaks with the practices of his more recent predecessors are getting a lot of attention within the church, but one is gliding under the radar in most places. By the laws of the church, the appointments of most of the senior leaders of the various departments of the Curia come to an end when a pope dies or resigns. When a new pope is elected, he generally re-appoints the former heads on his first day, then takes his time with replacing them once he gets squared away in his new position.
We’re now into day three, and Francis has NOT reappointed the curial officials — at least in the usual manner. Instead, today the Vatican press office said this:
Holy Father Francis has expressed the desire that the Heads and members of the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, as well as their Secretaries, and also the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, continue “donec aliter provideatur”, that is, provisionally, in their respective positions.
The Holy Father wishes to reserve time for reflection, prayer, and dialogue before any final appointment or confirmation is made.
Shorter Francis: “Keep working, but don’t assume you’re staying.” Another reason for those in the Curia and in the hierarchy of the church who practice rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism — of which there are more than a few — to be nervous.
At this point, everyone is reading tea leaves, including me. With that said, and given the possible other candidates who were mentioned as Benedict’s successor, I’m mildly optimistic about Francis. A pope who isn’t automatically bound by how things were done before, and who sticks up for the poor, single mothers, and those on the margins, has a lot to teach some of the rest of the hierarchy of the Catholic church. At a time when 65% of Italian households are in economic trouble according to the Bank of Italy, having a pope tell the world “How I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor” is a very good place to start.
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photo h/t to zennie62 and used under Creative Commons
31 Comments
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As a non-Catholic, I am hopeful that maybe Pope Francis might be like some of our esteemed Supreme Court justices from times past who seemed to shed some of their prejudices as they sat on the court.
We can but hope that the Pope will restrain some of the more egregious claptrap from the USCCB as well as actually do something about the predators. I hope the pedophile enablers are very nervous today.
Color him white.
As a non-Christian, I hope the pope will embrace the growing relationship between the effects of climate change and poverty. Maybe he can give mass in the basement of St. Marks in Venice during extreme tides and a 40-knot wind out of the SE.
I still feel very uncomfortable about his probable participation in questioning during at least one intense interrogation of a priest during the worst part of La Guerra Sucia.
Color him old authoritarian white.
Vigorous leadership, flexibility and change are not the first thoughts which comes to mind.
Francis “demanded … political neutrality” under the dangerous junta, but had no trouble raising right-wing political issues under the safe, liberal and democratic Kirchners.
I respect Boff and his opinion, but as I understand it, LT / Option for the Poor was also based upon Freire’s work which in very short form says that those to be uplifted from poverty need to be in charge of goal-setting, admin etc.; and that the outside experts need to be facilitators only. So by demanding that the priests be put back in charge, he was gutting the program.
I would like to believe that this is good news. But I am very suspicious because every time I hear it said of some conservative that ‘he protected people from the Nazis/fascists/junta’ etc. the next wave of research shows that this was window dressing over collaboration. Still, I would like to be wrong.
The gruesome story at that Global Research link has actually been removed from the 2011 Guardian article where most of us first saw it, for the simple reason that the most notorious accusation cited is not in Verbitsky’s book:
I also note that the Global Research piece has Verbitsky’s byline, but if you read the piece it’s plain that it was written by someone else.
After reading and commenting on a number of FDL blogs on this subject during the last several days, I come away with the sense that Francis I is going to be a reactionary like the last two popes on issues that matter to me which, as an atheist-rebelling-from-Protestantism (not all atheisms are the same), center on the role of the CC in international politics rather than relations with its own members: Will it not lobby against condoms in countries ravaged by AIDS? Will it oppose Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians? … (You get the idea)
Even a charitable view of Bergoglio’s relations with the 1978-1978 junta moves me to pessimism on such issues, although I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Edit: 1978-1983 junta
After reading article after article about the Pope Francis’ role in the Argentine Dirty War, I don’t think there’s the slightest doubt that he was a collaborator with the military regime, albeit on a relatively minor level. At the very least (and the facts revealed up to now go well beyond “the very least”), his silence during that time showed complicity with the junta. This is not at all inconsistent with claims by the pope and others that he worked to assist individuals threatened by the military regime.
PW, I’ve come to the conclusion lately that globalresearch.ca in general needs to be taken with a goodly dose of salt.
Thanks Peterr, very informative. I also will watch what he does about,the cancer of child abuse the church has thus far been unable to fix. Beyond that I am hoping he champions the plight of,the poor. Worldwide they have needed a spokesman for a very long time. We have a growing problem right here with austerity and poverty hand in hand. And underemployment drives more to the edge of poverty and sickness of spirit every day.
A most fine post, Peter.
I think one prediction that can be made with confidence is that the 76-year old pontiff is more likely to have a reign nearer the length of his predecessor’s than to that of his predecessor’s predecessor. That, in itself, provides a slight change, as I understand it: hasn’t the Conclave in past choices gone short, then long, then short, etc?
I also wonder how the punishing travel and Roman air quality will debilitate a man with one lung. Finally, I subscribe to the idea that an older, foreign pope was perhaps chosen for his incapability to get his hands around the corruption rife in the Vatican bureaucracy in a short time. Lots of facade around poverty and the poor, not much change at HQ: that’s my expectation.
Oh, and the requisite woman-denigrating and homo-hating and pedophile-protector-protecting, of course. No one can expect otherwise from this decadent and declining institution.
Peterr, thanks for being careful with your facts in your look at this new pope. He’s not quite a plaster saint, and he’s not Che Guevara in a cassock as many of the hyper-traditionalists claim, and he’s likely not guilty of some of the worst things attributed to him during the years of the junta.
Those are valid concerns. But can you change the way scorpions behave? The CC has never supported contraception, abortion and it knows who not to offend on the world stage. Still, there are areas he can work to make people’s lives better. He may have to drag the flock along on a different path.
He’s likely intended to be yet another caretaker pope — and possibly also someone set up to fail by the hyper-traditionalists who see him as a threat to the established order: “See, we tried someone from outside of Europe — and he didn’t work! Now can we go back to another Opus Dei member?”
Your middle paragraph is exactly why I said Francis rejected base communities. He accepts the critique that LT offers, but not its proposed solution.
Part of what makes deciphering who did what when during this period in Argentina’s church history is that you have three, not two, power centers. It’s not just the junta and the church, it’s the junta, the archbishop/diocesan church, and the religious orders like the Jesuits (led then by Bergoglio). Bishops and the local leaders of religious orders are separate within the RC hierarchy, and often have an uneasy coexistence. When the writers of these pieces talk about demanding political neutrality, Bergoglio was saying that he wanted the Jesuits to stay out of diocesan politics as much as secular politics. “Stay in your assigned places, and don’t go joining up with what the dicesan priests are doing.” The provincial of a religious order is not exactly answerable to the local bishop, but can only go so far in opposing him. Thus, Bergoglio was struggling with two battles (junta vs Jesuits, Jesuits vs bishop), not just one (junta vs church).
In Poirier’s piece that describes the different opinions of Bergoglio held by his Jesuit colleagues and the diocesan priests of his archdiocese, you are getting a glimpse of the sometimes fractious internal politics at work here. When Bergoglio was named a bishop, and later archbishop, he shifted from the Jesuit structure into the diocesan structure — a move that Jesuits often frown upon.
What gives me hope, despite sharing some of your concerns, is that Bergoglio’s life as archbishop has reflected concern for the poor for many years. His riding the bus with the cardinals after his election, for instance, was not something crafted as a nice photo-op for the new pope, but by all accounts reflects his desire to connect with the ordinary people in his charge.
When Francis stepped out on the loggia as the new pope, he offered the traditional blessing to the city and the world. Before doing so, however, he did something very, very different: he asked the crowd to stop and take a moment right then to bless him with their prayers. RC conservative websites were appalled by this — people don’t bless the pope; the pope blesses the people! They were even more appalled to discover that this wasn’t the first time Francis had done this; indeed, this too was part of his leadership style as an archbishop.
Whatever may have happened in the 70s, Bergoglio’s more recent history is one that has an honest concern for the poor and the marginalized. When a cardinal archbishop castigates some of his priests as ecclesiastical hypocrites who hijack the sacraments, that’s an unheard of rebuke of clergy filled with their own self-importance by their bishop. When I first saw that story, I couldn’t help but think of the files, emails, and memos from Cardinal Law in Boston and Cardinal Mahony in LA on how they placed the protection of their own reputations above the concern for children who were raped and abused by priests. The Catholic church would be in a much better place today, had John Paul II or Benedict XVI slammed these bishops as hard as Bergoglio slammed his priests.
Where things will go for Francis and his brother bishops in the future is still an open question. But all in all, I’d rather have a pope who is concerned with the poor than a pope who isn’t, and a pope who rebukes ecclesiastical terrorists than one who (by Boff’s account) is one.
Long-short-long-short is not always the rule. It’s more one of those things that journalists like the quote to each other that might have a kernel of truth, but is not something solid.
As for popes with a short tenure having a limited ability to make change, the obvious counter-example is Pope John XXIII, who summoned the second Vatican council and opened the doors to a lot of change — ecumenical relationships, liturgical changes (like vernacular liturgy), and more. Catholics are still fighting over exactly what the results of that council were and what they mean for life today, but no one of any political stripe within the RC church would argue that Vatican II was a moment of great change, set in motion by a pope whose election was greeted with the word “caretaker.”
Nice post. I can agree with that. We will see.
Thank you, Peterr. very illuminating.
Book Salon up with Stanley Aronowitz’s Taking It Big: C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals hosted by Javier Trevino
Thank you Peterr for this writing. You have given me some direction as well to read further.
He may be a force for the poor, working classes – but he will certainly not support say, abortion, homosexual marriage.
In parishes here in the Chicago area, the priests are quite open as to certain matters — birth control for instance. They are more concerned with matters of social justice, education, and economics for the parish families. Amongst my friends, acquaintances, no one would confess to or forego Communion because they practice birth control.
But a voice for the poor, workers, climate and against the barons will be a welcome voice.
I unfortunately will not see a woman cleric but perhaps my grandchildren will. You certainly will not hear that from Rome for many years – and that will be a battle royale.
I did not realize John XXIII was called caretaker. Surprise!
Let’s get some historical facts straight. This guy is a Jesuit. This order was instituted to roll back the Protestant Reformation by any means possible—including burning them alive for heresy. They swear their allegiance to the Pope. They have long been considered the storm troopers of the church. But mostly, they have decided that the most effective way to run things is to educate the future leaders and get their ear when they gain power. They are MASTER schemers. A Jesuit who cannot discuss politics effectively isn’t much of a Jesuit. This reputation has kept a Jesuit from becoming a Pope until now.
Now let us assume that Bergoglio wanted to stand up to the Junta but was prevented from doing so by fear or expedience. This is certainly understandable for MOST of us who would rather not be tortured by pros who learned their skills of SOA. OK. So why hasn’t he cooperated with the mothers who are still trying to find out what happened to the children. They are the ones accusing Bergoglio of being complicit with the junta. After all, Bergoglio has no trouble finding his voice when it comes to criticizing Ms. Fernandaz-Kirchener.
The military regime wouldn’t have touched the protesting clerics unless top Church leaders gave their tacit authorization. It was far too powerful a force in Latin American society. Bergoglio, as head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, either was one of those top leaders or had ready access to them. So his silence during the years of the junta is not necessarily excusable. But you are absolutely correct, it is his silence afterwards–his refusal to cooperate with the mothers or with investigating officials of the post-junta governments–that is most disturbing.
Very much recommended. Thank you, Peterr!
As a Catholic since birth, I’d like to think that any new Pope marks a turnaround. But I doubt it.
I agree that the most hysterical collaboration stories are probably false. I also disagree with those who condemn the new Pope for not doing more more to aid the victims of the Dirty War. He probably couldn’t have–Catholic dictators seldom give the representations of their churchmen any more weight than non-Catholic ones when power is at stake.
But, nonetheless, I see no need for nuances–it seems pretty clear cut to me: the new Pope’s conduct during that time was reprehensible, and he rejects any responsibility or guilt. Bergoglio may have been concerned for the poor and he may have intervened on behalf of prisoners. But, at such a time, the poor and the victims should not have been the chief pastoral concern of a Catholic priest: he needed to minister to the junta and its soldiers, by speaking truth to power.
Catholics do not believe that the suffering and injustices of this world are final and irreversible–for the victims. What we humans fail to put right, God will put right eventually. So the poor inherit the kingdom of Heaven, and the nuns who were tortured and thrown alive from planes in Argentina entered Heaven wearing the crown of martyrdom.
The consequences of injustice and cruelty are, however, irreversible for the perpetrators, barring true repentance. When professed, devout Catholic officers started their Dirty War, they took an irreversible step towards eternal damnation. They not only committed abominable crimes–rape, kidnapping, torture, murder–but justified their actions to themselves. They convinced themselves that they were doing the right thing. There was no chance that they would repent of their actions and refrain from crimes in the future.
Given the basic Catholic understanding of the nature of crime and the need for penitence, there seems little doubt that Bergoglio was derelict in his duty. Any priest, but especially a priest who was as close to conservative and military circles as the Pope seems to have been, had a duty to do what he could to stop the Dirty War and call its perpetrators to public account. There is a powerful precedent.
When, in 390 AD, St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, heard that Rome’s military dictator, the Emperor Theodosius, had ordered the massacre of thousands of people in Thessalonica, Ambrose put his role as the Emperor’s pastor first. He refused to look the other way and spoke out, even though he took considerable personal risk by doing so. “What, then, could I do?” Ambrose writes:
“Should I not hear? … Should I keep silence? But then my conscience would be bound, my utterance taken away, which would be the most wretched condition of all. And where would be that text? If the priest speak not to him that erreth, he who errs shall die in his sin, and the priest shall be liable to the penalty because he warned not the erring.” [http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/source/ambrose-let51.asp]
Ambrose excommunicated Theodosius and forced the Emperor to confess and do a politically humiliating public penance.
Ambrose did what he did not for the dead of Thessalonica–they were beyond any aid he could give them–but for the Emperor, army, and nation that killed them. As a priest, he had a duty to fulfill that no one else could. And Ambrose knew that, if he did not carry out that priestly duty, then he, Ambrose, would be condemned along with Theodosius. The shepherd is accountable, the Gospels say, if the sheep are lost.
Ambrose’s stance became the defining moment for the priestly vocation in the Western Church and for the Church’s moral relationship with civil authority. The new Pope’s failure to grasp the lesson of the Thessalonica as it applied to the Dirty War and the petty justifications given for his conduct suggest that Francis is not the humble, moral, spiritual Pope that is being proclaimed. Instead, he looks much like the long line of bureaucrats, functionaries, and casuists that preceded him, each intent on justifying the ever more unjustifiable in the name of protecting that most worldly of worldly institutions, the Roman Church.
Unfortunately, Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary did not force any public confession from the Communists in his time.
He came to mind when I was reading your comment.
A nuanced post on a situation that can be seen only through a glass darkly. Thank you. Shortly after Ratzinger announced his resignation I checked David Yallop’s In God’s Name out of the library. It had been on my reading list for years and it seemed like an appropriate time to get around to it. The book is a biographical essay on the life and very likely unnatural death of one Albino Luciani, otherwise known as Pope John Paul I. The initial PR on Bergoglio bears considerable resemblance to the author’s description of Luciani, in terms of his personal piety and inclination to eschew the more ostentatious trappings of the office, but not with regard to his openness to rethinking some of the more controversial social positions of the church, specifically birth control. Luciani was signalling that he viewed Humanae Vitae as a disaster for the authority of the church. But what may well have been his death warrant was his determination to chase the corrupt money changers from the temple. Late in the afternoon of the day before he was found dead at dawn Luciani had made it known to his holdover Secretary of State that that is exactly what he would announce the next morning, among numerous other things, one of which was to be the name of the new Secretary of State. As we know Luciani did not wake up the next morning and Cardinal Villot, that same SoS, saw to it that no one would find out whether or not the death was of natural causes with an efficiency that would have been the envy of the Warren Commission. Luciani’s successor must have received the message since he reappointed the deeply corrupt American bishop then overseeing the Vatican’s finances and later even promoted him to archbishop. Ratzinger didn’t do much on this front either. In all of the press bloviations about the church’s problems and the new pope I’ve seen very little regarding the financial scandals that have been endemic since the papacy of Paul VI. We’ll see if any such changes are on Francis I’s agenda, and if so if he lives long enough to make it happen.
How sad.
The new Pope may love the poor and want The Church to reach out to them, focus on them, embrace them. That may be just an acknowledgement of good marketing research. His past experiences, reading and the history of The Church may tell him this is where product placement and emerging markets are best developed; or as capitalists would say, exploited. I read the comments and don’t believe for a minute we are getting anything here but old wine in new bottles. The Church will do what it has done for 1700 years. ( Squash the mystical or ” all know “, enhance the fanciful part of spiritual enlightenment or ” only some know “. ) It will humbly exert itself, whenever possible, to help the wealthy and enable an authoritarian, hegomonic structure. For this is what it has stood for, where it gets its’ ” juice ” and where it sees itself into eternity. And, beyond. ” Geez, Louise, I’m down my knees. A peach, a pear or a coconut, please. But, you know she’s cold. “
Uh, aren’t most of the Opus Dei cardinals in the Americas? “Technically” there aren’t any, since Opus Dei isn’t an order (like the Jesuits or Franciscans) and when a priest is elevated to Bishop, he’s supposedly not answerable to Opus Dei’s chain-of-command, but to the Vatican’s.
I’ve been so looking forward to reading your thoughts on the election of Bergoglio / Francis, Peterr. I always learn so much from your posts. Much appreciated!