On March 13, 2013 the Pope Francisco He became the first Jesuit to assume the leadership of the Catholic Church. The genesis of his naming and the calculated choice of his papal name were not uncontextual. The brand new captain of the thousand-year-old religious institution had to face a series of challenges both external and internal that conditioned his image and influenced the fall of the faithful in a hostile world marked by poverty and war.
Ten years ago, Jorge Mario Bergoglio He became the first supreme pontiff from America and the Southern Hemisphere, and the second non-European since the year 741, after the death of the Syrian Gregory III. At the beginning of the 21st century, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires faced the biggest challenge of his life: being chosen from among the cardinals gathered in the Vatican Basilica to administer the government of the Holy See at a transcendental moment for the institution that brings together more than 1,200 million faithful in the world.
Pope Francis: “You can have a very good dialogue with the economy, you cannot have a dialogue with finances”
The challenges of Pope Francis
Francis, who chose his papal name after the revolutionary saint of the poor, sniffed the time. This was evidenced after a decade in power in which he made his own mark compared to his predecessors. Especially in relation to the purge of the Church that he carried out to cleanse his image after the scandals by the cases of sexual abuse or fraudulent management of the vatican finance perpetrated by members of the Roman curia.
Among other challenges, the “progressive” Pope had to face pressure from conservatives for their positions on social and environmental issuesin relation to his vision of a more inclusive, austere Church committed to the “vulnerable”, a position that was reflected in his numerous interviews and in his encyclicals The Joy of the Gospel, Laudato Sí y Brothers All. His actions earned him accusations of “Marxist” by some powerful Vaticans or even by “peronist” on this side of the Atlantic for his brief references to Argentine politics.
1. “Zero tolerance” of pedophilia
The countless sexual scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church were one of the most difficult challenges Francis had to face when taking over as head of state of an institution criticized for covering up and protecting attackers. After a series of failed attempts, including the failure of an international commission of experts in 2014, in 2018 Francis apologized to the victims for having “undercover” the Chilean bishop accused of pedophilia.
Since then, Bergoglio has adopted a position of “zero tolerance” for pedophilia. In 2019, Bergoglio accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Ricardo Ezzari, investigated by the courts of that country for accusations of covering up sexual abuse of children and adults by priests. He also expelled the American cardinal Theodore McCarrickafter being found guilty of that offence.
In addition, the Supreme Pontiff also created a consultation commission for the protection of minors dependent on the government of the Holy See and officiated an unprecedented summit in the Vatican on the matter. From it came a series of revolutionary measures that include the suppression of the pontifical secret on crimes of clergy sexual abuse, the obligation for religious to report any case to their hierarchy, and listening platforms in dioceses around the world.
2. Reforms and transparency
Since he took office, the Supreme Pontiff dedicated a large part of his papacy to making profound changes in the central government of the Holy See in order to bring the Church closer to the people. Among the measures, it stands out that they have given more space to women and the laity, framed in the constitutional reform of 2022 that reorganized the dicasteries and caused a stir within the Roman curia, especially after the degradation of the powerful institution of the The Work of God.
After taking office a year after the mega-corruption scandal in the Vatican known as A cotton swabFrancisco took care of clarifying the shady management of Vatican finances. In 2014 he created a secretariat for the Economy; it applied a framework of investments and anti-corruption measures and ordered the readjustment of the Vatican Bank, with the closure of 5,000 accounts. In this process, the scandal also broke out around Angelo I drinkone of the most powerful cardinals in the Vatican who resigned after being tried for corruptly buying a property on behalf of the Holy See.
Francisco’s clinical history: the human frailty of the Pope and a letter of resignation already signed
3. Progressivism and diplomacy
Although he maintained a “shepherd’s gaze” and generally avoided referring to issues of an international political nature, Francis never evaded his concern for political processes around the world with special attention to “the periphery”, being the “marginalized” countries. “the focus of his more than 40 international trips.
Since he took office, in most of his hearings Bergoglio denounced poverty levels around the world and the climate crisis. For example, in his encyclical “Laudato Si” (delivered in 2015) claimed a “green revolution” and criticized the “irresponsible use of the goods that God has placed” on Earth.
On the other hand, in his struggle to change the status quo he also emphasized the war in Ukraine, “his greatest concern”, as he declared on several occasions, which kicked the multilateral order already intimidated by the coronavirus pandemic. To this he added his constant call for attention to the migratory crisis in the Mediterranean that accumulates hundreds of deaths on the European coasts and for which he asked for “a reception without distinction.”
In addition, in this sense, the Pope was open to interreligious dialogue, as he demonstrated in the historic visit to Iraq in 2021 or his meeting with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in 2016, in what was the first rapprochement between the Christian churches of the West. and the East since the split in 1054. He also reached an unprecedented agreement with China regarding the appointment of bishops and officiated the also historic rapprochement between Cuba and the United States in 2014.
Pope Francis criticized the sector of the Curia that “instrumentalized” the death of Benedict XVI
3. Conservative pressure
Francis’s reforms did not go down well with conservatives in the Curia. Much less did his criticism of the “obsession” of the Catholic Church with the criminalization of abortion or equal marriage, or its condemnation of “wild capitalism” and the “dictatorship of the economy.” These positions slipped into the encyclical The gospel of joy (“The joy of the gospel”) and earned him an accusation of having “marxist tendencies“.
Among its greatest detractors are the conservatives in the United States, represented by Timothy Broglio, president of the Episcopal Conference, a declared opponent to the renewal process proposed by Bergoglio.
At 86, Francisco claims to have his resignation letter “prepared” in case he gets sick, the only reason why I would step aside. 10 years after his assumption as bishop of Rome, the Buenos Aires pope, a fan of San Lorenzo, dribbled more than one detractor and advanced in the challenges that he had set himself to correct the -still- largest Christian church in the world .
cd / ds
You may also like