The mercy he has shown to refugees and the poor has also led to fervent criticism of global capitalism. In a year when the World Bank estimated that 767 million people were living on less than $1.90 a day, Francis issued his first apostolic exhortation, entitled Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), in November 2013, and did not shy away from identifying the failings of capitalist societies to fight poverty and injustices. In a style not dissimilar to John Paul II’s targeting of communism, Francis launched a blistering attack on economies of “exclusion and inequality” in which “everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.” But he did not just speak in Orwellian tones of “big powers bad, small people good.” No, he had done his homework and identified specific examples of economic models he believed to be crippling the global population:
Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.… This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation.… Debt and the accumulation of interest also make it difficult for countries to realize the potential of their own economies and keep citizens from enjoying their real purchasing power.
The pope went on to blast corruption, tax evasion, and “the new idolatry of money” as the cause of the increasingly vast gulf between rich and poor. He declared that the people should say “no to a financial system which rules rather than serves” and called on political leaders to implement a “vigorous change of approach” to bring about financial reforms.
As with his campaigning for refugees, this was not flash-in-the-pan populist rhetoric. These issues have remained at the top of his agenda and have acted as a foundation for the implementation of reforms of the Vatican Bank, exposed for its own deep-rooted corruption in the Vatileaks scandal. Despite some inevitable backlash, his stance on capitalism and deep concerns over the impacts of climate change have won him considerable support with ideologically liberal people outside the church, as well as those reformers inside. The media widely report him as the most universally popular pope ever—John Paul II was indeed a much-loved figure, but his popularity was more closely confined to the Catholic faithful—and some believe him to be more popular outside the church than with his own clergy.
A POPE IN NAME ONLY?
Ever since his first speech from the balcony to the joyous crowds in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis has gone to great lengths to reform the papacy, not just through outward reform but through a redefinition of the pope’s own status and role. For instance, on the five occasions Francis referred to himself during his Urbi et Orbi apostolic blessing on March 2013, he referred to himself simply as “Bishop of Rome.” Pope Benedict XVI, on the other hand, tried out a wide range of grander monikers in his early speeches: Successor to the Apostle Peter, Pontiff, Bishop of Rome, Pastor of the Universal Church, among others. He eventually confirmed his preference to utilize a maximum of eight, while dropping some in March 2006, when he published his Annuario Pontificio (Pontifical Yearbook), the annual statistical guide to the Catholic Church and a who’s who of its hierarchy, released each March.
The supremacy of the pope has been a highly contentious part of Christian and Catholic history right through to the present day, when it is viewed as an essentially unaccountable position of authority. In the modern era, the concept of papal infallibility was cemented with the decrees of Popes Pius IX in 1870 and Paul VI in 1964, along with the apostolic letter Laetamur Magnopere on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, issued by John Paul II in 1997. Francis is keenly aware of the matter of infallibility, but the paradox remains that were he to attempt to implement any kind of doctrinal reform, he would, in effect, be declaring that all popes who had ruled before him were wrong. Also, he is presented with another challenge: the ambiguous status of the former pope, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
If a pope resigns, does he remain infallible? As the eminent Vatican journalist Sandro Magister notes, “The pope is invested with his power of primacy … directly from Christ through acceptance of the legitimate election made by the organ of the college of cardinals.” But what happens after he steps down? Are the divine powers removed? The answer to this theological conundrum caused a lively debate among academics, with some, such as Enrico Maria Radaelli, even declaring it a “murderous blow to dogma” in his thirteen-page article on Benedict’s resignation:
… Resigning means losing the universal name of Peter and going back to the private being of Simon, and this cannot be, because the name of Peter, of Cephas, of Rock, is given on a divine plane to a man who, in receiving it, no longer makes only himself, but “makes Church.” Without counting the fact that since the self-removed pope cannot in reality resign, the incoming pope, despite himself, will be nothing but an antipope. And reigning will be he, the antipope, not the true pope.
When Francis published his own Annuario Pontifico two months later than expected, in May 2013, there was much speculation as to the cause of this delay. Many concluded that there had been some serious debate about how exactly to handle the situation of having two living popes. Many were surprised to discover that the new pope had completely reformed his own status and stripped himself of the eight titles that Benedict XVI had published in his own final edition less than a year earlier. On the same page of the new Annuario Pontifico, the new pope is referred to simply, in two lines of text on the entire page, as “Francis/bishop of Rome.” Biographical information on the following page does include the other titles, but this was a highly symbolic move and many believe a strong statement that he intended to assert his difference from his predecessor, who was referred to as “supreme pontiff emeritus.” What is also intriguing, as Magister pointed out, is that in public Francis has always referred to Benedict as “bishop emeritus,” so “it can therefore be presumed that the title of ‘supreme pontiff emeritus’ … was personally desired by Joseph Ratzinger and the current pope simply decided not to oppose it.”
Francis might have decided not to oppose the outgoing pope’s request, but he has still chosen not to use that title. This suggests that despite the Vatican’s wish to project an image to the public of a warm and respectful relationship between the two popes, the coexistence has not been as harmonious as the church would have us believe. Such a conclusion is hardly surprising, however, considering the decision by the self-proclaimed supreme pontiff emeritus to remain living in the Vatican and to continue wearing his white papal cassock, albeit without the white mozzetta.
And it is not just titles, vestments, and lodgings that have sparked rumors of a rift. On two occasions, Benedict has written letters of support for cardinals with whom Francis has had very public confrontations.
The first saw the pope emeritus write a loving tribute for the funeral of Cardinal Joachim Meisner in July 2017, despite Meisner’s coauthoring of a letter criticizing the sitting pope for his April 2016 apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), which allowed for divorced and remarried persons to receive communion. Francis did not respond to the letter, nor to the subsequent request for an audience, but two of the cardinal authors have since died, and the response remains outstanding.
Always known for his gaffe-prone approach to politics, Benedict again managed to blithely stir up controversy by writing a glowing foreword for the German edition of Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller’s book Catholic Dogmatics for the Study and Practice of Theology, six months after the cardinal was not renewed in his role as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope Francis in July 2017, a role to which he had been appointed by Benedict, and was replaced by
his Spanish Jesuit deputy, Archbishop Luis Ladaria. The conservative Müller had been strongly opposed to Francis’s proposals to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion and has been a vocal critic of the pope since his removal from office.
But the embarrassing incidents did not end there. Having been asked by Monsignor Dario Viganò, the pope’s director of Vatican communications, to write another foreword, this time for an eleven-volume collection of books called The Theology of Pope Francis, Benedict responded on February 7, 2018, with a letter marked “private and confidential,” in which he declined. Upon receiving this reply, Viganò decided to slip an edited version of the pope emeritus’s statement to the press on March 12 but made no mention of the original request to write the foreword, perhaps to head off further speculation that might arise from the publication of the book without an introduction from Benedict. Or perhaps it was an attempt to level the playing field, theologically speaking, and to bolster Francis’s talents, in comparison to those of his predecessor, by including a glowing compliment from such an eminent theologian as Benedict:
Thank you for your kind letter of 12 January and the attached gift of eleven small volumes edited by Roberto Repole.
I applaud this initiative that wants to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice in which Pope Francis is just a practical man without particular theological or philosophical formation, while I have been only a theorist of theology with little understanding of the concrete life of a Christian today.
The small volumes show, rightly, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help to see the inner continuity between the two pontificates, despite all the differences of style and temperament.
When the media responded with requests for a copy of the full letter so they could publish it in its entirety, the Vatican said it was unable to send a scan of the original letter but did have a photograph, which it could send out as proof that the words had definitely come from Benedict.
Unfortunately, the press immediately cried foul when the artfully staged picture of the letter arrived, for it showed not only a second paragraph that had been intentionally blurred to make it unreadable, but also a glimpse of Benedict’s signature halfway down a second page, the text of which had been entirely obscured by the eleven-volume pile of books, conveniently placed on top to prevent the press from reading it. It was a bizarre decision and one that incensed the media. The Associated Press stated, “The manipulation changed the meaning of the image in a way that violated photojournalist industry standards.… Those quotes suggested that Benedict had read the volume, agreed with it and given it his full endorsement and assessment.”
Backed into a corner, the Vatican was compelled, two days later, to admit to the redaction and reveal the text of the blurred paragraph, which was described as “the letter in its entirety.” What had seemed a positive message of support had become something else entirely. In fact, Benedict had politely declined to write anything whatsoever for the book, explaining:
I don’t feel like writing a short and dense theological passage on them because throughout my life it has always been clear that I would write and express myself only on books I had read really well. Unfortunately, if only for physical reasons, I am unable to read the eleven volumes in the near future, especially as other commitments await me that I have already made.
But wait, there’s more. Not only was Benedict too busy to read and endorse the books on Francis’s theology, but it also transpired that Sandro Magister had discovered a further redacted page of the letter, and this contained highly critical comments about one of the writers who had been chosen to author a volume, whom Benedict considered to be a critic of papal authority. It was all humiliating for the Vatican. First it had cherry-picked passages and misled the press, and then it had lied by claiming the previous release was the “letter in its entirety.” All this made it doubly embarrassing when the Vatican finally released the complete letter … again:
Only as an aside, I would like to note my surprise at the fact that among the authors is also Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate had distinguished himself by leading anti-papal initiatives. He played a major part in the release of the Kölner Erklärung [Cologne Declaration,] which, in relation to the encyclical Veritatis Splendor [Truth Shines,] virulently attacked the magisterial authority of the Pope, especially on questions of moral theology. Also the Europaische Theologengesellschaft [European Theological Society], which he founded, was initially conceived by him as an organization in opposition to the papal magisterium. Later the ecclesial sentiment of many theologians prevented this orientation, allowing that organization to become a normal instrument of encounter among theologians.
Time and again, we find a church seemingly incapable of learning that small lies lead to bigger ones, which then oblige cover-ups and, in most cases, result in exposure and disgrace. Whether through arrogance or stupidity, the publication of a clearly doctored photograph was an insult to the intelligence of both the media and 1.28 billion Catholics, a gross violation of Benedict’s trust, and a blatant example of willful deceit. And lest we forget, this was not the first time Bergoglio had been caught redacting documents to fit a particular narrative—a fact that made his homily on Palm Sunday, just eight days later, all the more puzzling. Rather than taking this opportunity to publicly make amends or offer an apology, Francis instead issued a thinly veiled attack on those he deemed responsible for propagating a torrent of negative gossip regarding his pontificate and his relationship with Benedict. Magister described it as a “thunderous” denouncement of “fake news.” What the pope said was this:
It is a cry that emerges in moving from the facts to an account of the facts; it comes from this “story.” It is the voice of those who twist reality and invent stories for their own benefit, without concern for the good name of others. This is a false account. The cry of those who have no problem in seeking ways to gain power and to silence dissonant voices. The cry that comes from “spinning” facts and painting them such that they disfigure the face of Jesus and turn him into a “criminal.” It is the voice of those who want to defend their own position, especially by discrediting the defenseless.
The speech was a continuation of the message issued by Pope Francis on January 24, 2018, regarding “fake news and journalism for peace” in advance of World Communications Day in May 2018. In the letter, Francis likened what he described as the “snake-tactics” of those spreading disinformation and fake news to those used by Satan in the Garden of Eden, who he declared had, “at the dawn of humanity, created the first fake news (cf. Gen 3:1–15), which began the tragic history of human sin.” In the era of Donald Trump’s war with the media, the topic was timely and a bold one for a pope to speak out on; the issue was also one that Francis was clearly concerned about. However, the fact that the “lettergate” scandal was bookended by these two searing indictments of malicious journalism and fake news left many confused by what appeared to be blatant hypocrisy.
It had been just over five years since Francis was elected pope, and some began to wonder whether this was evidence of cracks beginning to appear. He had thus far weathered the multitude of storms that had blown his way, but it would be little surprise if his strength was starting to yield under the immense pressures, both positive and negative, that had surrounded him since the very beginning of his papacy.
“WHO AM I TO JUDGE?”
Those five words have become synonymous with the papacy of Pope Francis. In one of his famously relaxed and informal papal plane press conferences, where he is said be completely open to all questions and where he displays a wry, razor-sharp wit, when asked where he gets the energy to handle his exhausting schedule, he quipped, “He meant to ask, ‘What drug is he on?’” Francis was responding to allegations of a so-called “gay lobby” within the church and to accusations that Monsignor Battista Ricca—whom the pope had personally appointed to be his man inside the Vatican Bank—
had, among other things, been in an openly homosexual relationship with a Swiss Army captain while living at the Holy See’s nunciature in Uruguay.
So much is written about the gay lobby. I still haven’t found anyone with an identity card in the Vatican with “gay” on it. They say there are some there. I believe that when you are dealing with such a person, you must distinguish between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of someone forming a lobby, because not all lobbies are good. This one is not good. If someone is gay and searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge?
The compassion expressed by Francis was considered by many to be a true watershed moment in the church’s teaching on the subject of homosexuality. There was further praise when, in April 2018, Pope Francis met with Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of sexual abuse by a Chilean priest, and said of his homosexuality, “You know, Juan Carlos, that does not matter. God made you like this. God loves you like this. The Pope loves you like this and you should love yourself and not worry about what people say.”
When compared to the teachings of his predecessor, this was most certainly groundbreaking. Pope Benedict had stated in 2010 that homosexuality was “contrary to the essence of what God originally wanted.” This was, in fact, a somewhat softened stance from his time at the CDF, when he labeled it “an intrinsic moral evil.” Benedict himself further contradicted Francis in a 2016 interview with Peter Seewald for the book Last Testament: In his Own Words, when he confirmed the existence of a “gay lobby” and boasted about how he and others had successfully dismantled the group. But to those familiar with Catholic teachings, Francis’s words were not revelatory reforms of doctrine; they simply adhered to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church approved and promulgated by Pope John Paul II. This colossal document refers to homosexuality as “acts of great depravity … contrary to natural law … [and] under no circumstances can they be approved”—but it also states that homosexual people should still be “accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
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