Thomas Worcester, S.J., History

Pope Francis: Latin American and Jesuit

     For over fifteen years I have taught a course at Holy Cross called The Papacy in the Modern World. By 'modern' I mean since ca. 1500, and I usually begin the course with Pope Julius II, often referred to as the warrior pope, for he led his own troops into battle and in other ways as well made pursuit of war a primary occupation. His other main concern was patronage of the best artists of the day, Michelangelo and Raphael among them. Thus it seems a long way indeed from Julius to recent popes such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who regularly denounced war as immoral, including wars pursued by the US in Iraq. Who says the papacy does not change?

     In August 1978 I had the privilege of being in St.Peter's Square when white smoke came from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel: John Paul I had been elected, Albino Luciani, patriarch of Venice, and after his untimely death and the subsequent election of a Polish pope, he was referred to as the last Italian pope. Whether he can still be called such depends upon how one views Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., elected pope in March 2103. The son of Italian immigrant parents in Argentina, Bergoglio chose for his name as pope the most popular saint in Italy: Francis, the medieval friar who continues to incarnate and model humility, simplicity, and especially love of the poor.

     From the southern cone of South America, Pope Francis is the first pope born anywhere in the Americas, and the first pope from anywhere in the southern hemisphere. He is certainly helping to make the papacy and the Catholic Church more truly global than it has been up to now. The press has delighted again and again in disseminating images of Francis warmly embracing all kinds of people, including and indeed especially people usually ignored or at best pitied from afar, such as those with major physical limitations. His warmth is humanity at its best, and it surely reflects his national and cultural backgrounds. This is no cold, distant, regal hierarch, obsessed with protocol or his own exalted, dignified status. He tells priests to get out into the streets and to get their hands dirty ministering to the people, something he did for years in Argentina, including when as archbishop of Buenos Aires he lived in a small apartment, and took public transportation to work. Just before Christmas last year, he spent three hours visiting patients in a children's hospital in Rome. He did this without journalists and their cameras present. It was not for show or for the evening news. It was more important than that.

     Several months ago Pope Francis published Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), a type of document called an apostolic exhortation, in papal parlance. But in it Francis writes not in the plodding and often tedious language of many papal decrees or other writings, but with passion and with a vivid sense of his own joy. From the very first page he proclaims the good news of a God who loves the poor, the outcast, the outsider, the marginalized, and the sinner. He quotes again and again from a text produced by the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean at a meeting held in 2007 at Aparecida, in Brazil. These bishops, Bergoglio among them, called for the Church to let go of an institution focused on its own preservation and to take up instead a pastoral ministry that prioritizes inclusion of the excluded.

In his apostolic exhortation, Pope Francis has urged all who claim to be disciples of Jesus to imitate      he Jesus who knelt to wash the feet of others. This is not only symbolism, but an example to be followed, by choosing a preferential option for service, and especially service of the disadvantaged, the people exploited by a world economic system that features the powerful "feeding upon the powerless." Pope Francis is as clear as he is courageous in denouncing a so-called free market that claims to help everyone but in fact does not do so and leaves the excluded still waiting. For Francis, "trickle-down theories" leave people no longer capable of "feeling compassion" for the poor. Not only persons, but whatever is fragile, such as the environment, become "defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the onlv rule." Behind such interests "lurks a rejection of ethics and a rejection of God."

     Pope Francis has been a Jesuit, a member of the Society of Jesus, since 1958, when he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Argentina at the age of 21. There are many ways in which, in his first year as bishop of Rome, he has shown that he is not a Jesuit in name only. Rather, the ideals of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Basque Spaniard who founded the Society of Jesus, are his ideals as well. Like Ignatius, Pope Francis understands that he is a sinner, a sinner loved and gifted by God, a loved sinner called to live his life out of gratitude for the God who created him and who sustains him. He understands that he is called to put aside ambition, honors, wealth, and pride, and to strive to be a companion of the Jesus who walked with the outcasts of his day, who challenged the smug, self-satisfied rich, and who led as much by example as by any teaching. And he is deeply formed and informed by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, with their emphasis on on-going discernment, and life-long conversion. Pope Francis knows well how the Society of Jesus, in recent decades, has given much emphasis in its work, and its articulation of its mission, to promotion of justice for the poor and the oppressed. For Pope Francis, as for the Society of Jesus, this is not one concern among many, but rather a commitment at the heart of who Jesuits seek to be as companions of Jesus. For Pope Francis, as for St. Ignatius, as for St. Francis of Assisi, and as for Jesus himself, the poor are not a nuisance to scorn or brush aside, but an image of Christ himself.

     The College of the Holy Cross has many reasons for paying close attention to Pope Francis, first Latin American and first Jesuit pope. In various ways, he may be a model for us all as we seek to live out the mission of the College