Pope Francis preferred to work away patiently at building consensus and accommodating a variety of perspectives.
Alex Tuscano
During Bergoglios time as the provincial of the Jesuit society, the entire Latin America or
South America was going through profound struggles. While the people had voted for
socialist governments, the United States of America considered these governments as
threats to their economy. There were constant attacks on countries like Venezuela,
Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Chile, and Argentina. In both Chile and Argentina, the United
States of America, through the CIA, brought down democratically elected Democratic
Socialist governments and imposed military dictatorships.
In most of these countries, there was widespread resistance from the people. Christians
tried to find a new message in the Gospel, relevant to their struggle for justice. This did not
go well with the conservative and pro-military official church. During this period, several
radical theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez came up with Liberation Theology. This gave
light and strength to the people in their struggle against the imperialists who were
depriving the poor of their livelihood and right to life. Bishop Romero openly took a stand
against the military dictatorship. He was shot dead while offering Mass.
Fr. Bergoglio was the provincial of the Jesuits during this period of military dictatorship in
Argentina. Between 1976 and 1983, between 15,000 and 30,000 Argentinians
disappeared or were killed. The entire official Church and its religious orders were
divided on how to react to events. The official Church, the conservatives, secretly
supported the abuses of human rights. The progressive elements were opposed to the
dictatorship. There were also radicals who came out and openly challenged the Military
Junta. These included priests and religious.
There were rumors around the time of papal elections, both in 2005 and 2013, that back in
1976 Francis had failed to help two priests in their hour of need. Contrary to these rumors,
as provincial, he had confronted Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera, two of the three leaders
of the military junta, and got the priests released after five months in captivity, blindfolded
and handcuffed.
He had helped to smuggle out of Argentina those whom the military junta sought to arrest.
In one case, he had given a young Uruguayan man his own identity card to aid his escape.
One of his biographers, the journalist Paul Vallely, suggested that, in reflecting during this
period of exile on his own record under the junta, Francis experienced a road to Damascus
moment, and thereafter became a more radical, fearless, and outspoken priest.
In 1992, the Jesuits asked Bergoglio not to live in the Jesuit residence due to tensions with
the leaders and scholars over Catholic orthodoxy and liberation theology. There was a
bishop by the name of Podesta. He was suspended as he opposed the Argentine
revolutionary military dictatorship. He later married, and his wife was attacked for her
marriage to Podesta. Archbishop Bergoglio defended Podestas wife.
On June 3, 1998, as Archbishop, he established parishes to increase Catholic presence
among slum dwellers. He was even called the slum Bishop. Archbishop Bergoglio realized
that he had not played the role that was required by the situation in Argentina—resistance
to repression under the dictatorship of the military Junta and support for the peoples
struggle for justice and democracy. During the period of the Dirty War, the rule of the
military dictatorship, the Church should have stood with the people in their struggle.
But
the Church was divided. Considering the role the Catholic Church played during the Dirty
War, he appealed to the Catholic Church saying the Argentine Catholic Church needs to put
on garments of public penance for the sins committed during the years of the dictatorship
in the 1970s. The Pope experienced the pain of those memories,a thorn in his flesh,
which would seem to have lasted a lifetime. He said on more than one occasion,the truth
is that Im a sinner and that as provincial he had had to learn frommy errors along the
way.
The majority of cardinals who gathered in the Sistine Chapel to vote were looking for
something more than (relative) youth. Top of their agenda as they assembled was openness
to fresh thinking. They surprised everyone by opting for Catholicisms first Jesuit Pope, the
first Latin American successor to Saint Peter, and first leader from outside Europe in over a
millennium.
Immediately, Bergoglio signaled unambiguously that he intended to be a different kind of
pope, one for the 21st century. He boldly chose to be known as Francis, becoming the first
pontiff to take on the name of the radical saint from Assisi who had turned his back on
privilege and status in this world, and lived with and for the poor. No more pomp and
ceremony, the new pope seemed to be saying, sleeves rolled up and joining the fight for
social and economic justice,I dont want to be an ice cream seller.
Smiling winningly, Francis described himself as an outsider, someone from the end of the
world, who wanted to walk together and work together with the crowds who greeted
him, rather than tell them what to do.
This personal modesty never wavered in all his years
in Rome. He picked up his own phone, he stood in a queue for his food, shunned limos and
preferred to walk if possible. On the day after his election, he slipped away on foot to
collect his suitcase and settle the bill at the modest pensione where he had been booked in
before the conclave began. If it had to be four wheels, he took a bus, or frequently squeezed
his bulky frame into the papal Fiat 500 saloon.
His biographer Austen Ivereigh wrote, Bergoglio was a once-in-a-generation combination
of two qualities seldom found together.
He had the political genius of a charismatic leader
and the prophetic holiness of a desert saint.He insisted that Catholicism would henceforth
be a poor church for the poor,and returned time and again in his pronouncements to the
need to close the economic gap between developed and developing nations.
In an interview with his friend Abraham Skorka, an Argentinian rabbi, he said, the attitude
we must have towards the poor is, in its essence, that of true commitment.
This
commitment must be person to person, in the flesh. It is not enough to mediate this
through institutions... They do not excuse us from our obligation of establishing personal
contact with the needy. The new cardinal was no theologian—his approach was more
homespun—but his commitment to poor people was every bit as strong as that of the
liberation theologians. He would simply say he did what the Jesus of the gospels told him to
do.
For Francis, climate change, migration, and global poverty were interconnected. He did not
believe in the trickle-down theory of economy. Capitalism promotes consumerism, and in a
greed for profit, destroys the environment and causes climate change. In his first pastoral
visit outside Rome following his election, in July 2013, he traveled to the tiny Italian island
of Lampedusa off the coast of North Africa to meet the migrants and refugees who were
arriving there in ever-greater numbers.
With European governments keen only to find
ways of sending them back, Francis spoke out against such global indifference to their
plight, and called for a reawakening of conscience in wealthy nations. Pope Francis was
opposed to the death penalty. He strongly believed that love and compassion should run in
our veins. Only forgiveness and reconciliation will give hope and make the world
sustainable.
It was a crusade that saw him take a leading role in tackling the challenges faced by a
warming planet, castigating and repeatedly reminding the politicians who refused to grasp
the threat posed to the future of humanity by climate change.
When Brazils far-right
president, Jair Bolsonaro, had made it plain that he was happy to see the rainforest go up in
flames, Franciss response was to use the papacys global reach to give voice to the fears of
the 33 million people living in the Amazon basin who felt themselves to be powerless in
shaping their own and the planets future. At the gathering, the crimes and injustice meted
out by politicians and multinationals were called out as destructive of livelihoods as well as
of Earths greatest store of carbon.
His May 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si (Praise Be to You), an impassioned cry of pain at what
was happening to the Earth and especially to its poorest, most vulnerable inhabitants
because climate change was going unchecked, was read widely outside the usual Catholic
circles. It is held by many experts to have galvanized those who gathered in Paris at the end
of that year to set a target of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees.
Francis preferred to work away patiently at building consensus and accommodating a
variety of perspectives. To that end, he breathed new life into the system of regular
gatherings—or synods—of bishops in Rome to debate pressing matters. Francis was at
pains to listen and act, going so far in 2023 as to call a curiously named synod on synodality
in his anxiety to make the process work better as a conduit between the center and the
outposts of his global church. It was part of turning the usual church structures upside
down—he, the outsider in Vatican terms, promoting other outsiders to high office.
He made good on his promise to promote more women to leading roles in the Vatican, but
still they remain shut out of priesthood.The church is female—it is not male,he wrote in
his 2025 autobiography, entitled Hope.We clerics are males but we are not the church.
The church is female because she is the bride.
Franciss vision of his role as pope was that of the servant leader, both inside the church
and out, starting always with those at the very bottom and offering them practical help,
while also challenging on a bigger stage the reasons why they were in such need in a
wealthy world. Early in his pontificate, he told his priests to get out of their churches and
onto the streets, as he himself had in Buenos Aires, rather than restrict their ministry to
those who filled the pews. Pope Francis struggled to make the Church a church of Love,
Compassion, and Service to the poor.
alextuscano@gmail.com
