The media focused instead on the messages that the pope was delivering, often in striking, earthy language. He encouraged young people to “shake things up” and “make a mess.” He said that good bishops, like good shepherds, should have “the smell of their sheep.” He lamented that some Catholics had become “obsessed” with public issues such as abortion, when they should be spending their energies on the more important task of drawing people closer to Christ. He spoke—with a frequency that some people found alarming—about the devil. He likened the Church to a field hospital, caring for the wounded. In marked contrast to the careful, scholarly Benedict XVI, Francis spoke impulsively; he often seemed to be provoking his audiences deliberately.
With the pope constantly in the headlines, Catholics and non-Catholics alike found themselves talking more frequently about the Catholic Church. Italian priests reported longer lines of people coming to confession, including many who had been away from the sacrament for years. American clerics said they noticed the same trend. The excitement surrounding the pontiff seemed to encourage people to practice their faith in simple, direct ways. Journalists dubbed this the “Francis effect,” and the pope’s most enthusiastic supporters predicted a bull market for conversions to the Catholic Faith.
“Who Am I to Judge?”
But the “Francis effect” came at a cost. If the pope’s brash statements were sometimes inspiring, they were also sometimes confusing, and if he aimed to provoke, he occasionally offended. As time passed, the pope’s support for controversial causes and his penchant for ad-lib statements began to raise eyebrows, then to prompt concerns.
At first, Francis seemed to defy easy classification as a “liberal” or “conservative,” but as the months passed, a pattern emerged of support for causes usually associated with the political Left—environmentalism, disarmament, unrestricted immigration, income redistribution. His warning about being “obsessed” with abortion and contraception made many loyal Catholics uneasy; it hardly seemed necessary to complain about an “obsession” with issues that are rarely even mentioned in a typical parish. Still, even a stalwart pro-life Catholic could swallow hard and accept the pope’s admonition, reading it as a call for a new rhetorical strategy or for recognizing that evangelization is more important than political activism.
After all, on other hot-button political issues, Francis seemed to have taken a conservative position—at least initially. During his tenure as archbishop of Buenos Aires he had denounced a proposal for acceptance of same-sex marriage as the work of the devil. More recently, he had admitted that he was concerned about the possible influence of a “gay lobby” within the Vatican.
But if orthodox Catholics had concluded that Francis would stand firm against homosexual influence within the Church, their confidence was shattered by his remarks to reporters on a trip to Brazil in July 2013. Asked about homosexual priests, he replied, “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?”
The context of that statement is important. Sandro Magister, an influential Vatican reporter for the Italian journal L’Espresso, had reported that Msgr. Battista Ricca, whom Francis had recently appointed prelate of the Vatican bank, had a history of scandalous homosexual affairs. Magister went on to charge that the Vatican’s “gay lobby” had whitewashed Msgr. Ricca’s record to smooth the way for his appointment. Francis insisted that he had looked into the charges and satisfied himself that “there was nothing there.”
Having answered the reporter’s question, the pope might have stopped there, but he continued, apparently wanting to say something about homosexuality. Although there had been many reports about a “gay lobby” at the Vatican, there was no clearly identifiable group—he had “never seen it on a Vatican ID card,” he joked. It is important, he said, to distinguish between priests who might have a homosexual orientation and those who might be active in a “lobby” within the Church. “The problem isn’t the orientation,” he concluded; “the problem is having a lobby.”
Yes, but the pope’s remarks did not address the existing Vatican policy, set forth in 2005 in an instruction from the Congregation for Catholic Education, that men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained to the priesthood. Nor did they ease concerns about the influence of homosexual priests in Rome and elsewhere. More important still, the key words in his reply to the question—the “sound bite” that would be carried around the world and repeated for years—were “Who am I to judge?” As reported by journalists generally favorable to the homosexual cause, the pope’s statement seemed to suggest that the Church should move away from its clear and constant teaching that homosexual acts are gravely immoral. And who is the world’s foremost defender of the Church’s constant teaching? The bishop of Rome. Insofar as he was raising questions about the authority of Church teaching, Francis was undercutting his own authority as pontiff. The political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that an active conscience sometimes requires a person to judge the actions of others. As she wrote in her personal notes, “If you say to yourself in such matters: who am I to judge?—you are already lost.”
The pope’s statement caused an immediate uproar, as gay activists rushed to claim the pontiff as their ally and editorial writers welcomed what they saw as a more enlightened Catholic position. Orthodox Catholics strove valiantly to limit the damage, pointing out that the pope was speaking extemporaneously, that he was not making an authoritative statement, and that in any case he had not contradicted any aspect of Church teaching. Yet the pope had made the fateful statement—“Who am I to judge?”—and the Catholic world would be forced to live with its legacy.
Why did Francis allow himself to address such a controversial topic without preparing his answer carefully? Why were the most famous words of his pontificate uttered in an informal question-and-answer session on an airplane ride?
The Pope’s Favorite Interviewer
“Interviews are not my forte,” Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio once remarked to reporters in Buenos Aires. For that reason he seldom sat down to speak with journalists on the record. When two reporters sought a lengthy formal interview, he declined their request and encouraged them instead to publish excerpts from his sermons and essays. But now, as Roman pontiff, when his word carries far more weight, he grants interviews frequently—often with damaging results.
In October 2013, for example, the pope sat down with the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, an avowed atheist. Their exchange, published in, La Repubblica, a left-leaning newspaper Scalfari co-founded, contained a series of bombshells. The pope dismissed proselytism as “solemn nonsense,” called the Vatican court “the leprosy of the papacy,” and proclaimed, “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old.” Commenting on the pope’s ideas, Scalfari wrote: “If the Church becomes more like him and becomes what he wants it to be, it will be an epochal change.”
After the interview was published—catching the Vatican’s public relations staff entirely by surprise, since they had not been informed about it—some shocking details emerged. Scalfari, who was ninety years old at the time, had not recorded the pope’s answers to his questions or even taken notes but had relied on his memory to reconstruct the pope’s words. The accuracy of the quotations attributed to the pontiff in La Repubblica was therefore questionable. No competent public relations adviser would have allowed his client to be caught in such a dangerous situation. But Francis had not asked for advice before granting the interview.
Incredibly, the pope then submitted to another interview with Scalfari in July 2014, and again the elderly journalist relied on his memory for the quotations. Making no claim to a photographic memory, Scalfari explained that he preferred to put the thoughts of his subject (in this case Pope Francis) into his own, presumably more elegant, words. That approach might be justified if Scalfari understood perfectly what his subject was saying, but no one understands another man perfectly. Scalfari’s reconstructed quotations,
then, reflected what Scalfari understood the pope to be saying, which might have been quite different from what the pope intended.
Sure enough, the interview again contained some dynamite. Francis was quoted as saying that there were priests, and “even bishops and cardinals,” guilty of pedophilia. “And others, more numerous, know but keep silent,” he added. The Vatican press office found it necessary to issue a warning that the quotations attributed to the pope were not reliable. Father Federico Lombardi, the papal spokesman, compounded the problem by remarking that the pope’s exchange with Scalfari had been “very cordial and most interesting” and that the “overall theme of the article captures the spirit of the conversation.” So helpless readers were left to guess for themselves which passages, if any, were inaccurate.
In March 2015, the talkative pope again spoke with Scalfari for La Repubblica. This time Francis—at least as interpreted by his favorite interviewer—appeared to cast doubt on the existence of hell:
What happens to that lost soul? Will it be punished? And how? The response of Francis is distinct and clear: there is no punishment, but the annihilation of that soul. All the others will participate in the beatitude of living in the presence of the Father. The souls that are annihilated will not take part in that banquet; with the death of the body their journey is finished.
The First Encyclical
Almost lost in the blizzard of interviews, homilies, and off-the-cuff statements, were the pope’s first few formal teaching documents. His first encyclical, Lumen Fidei (“The Light of Faith”), published in June 2013, relatively soon after his installation, was begun by Benedict XVI as the third of a trio of encyclicals on the theological virtues of charity, hope, and faith. Francis grafted his own ideas onto the draft that Benedict had left him, the result being an odd hybrid document.
In its completed form, Lumen Fidei is definitely the work of Francis, not Benedict. An encyclical is a teaching document, carrying the authority of the Roman pontiff. Benedict had relinquished that authority. Francis was free to do whatever he wanted with the manuscript that Benedict left him—discard it, amend it, or complete it—and it became his encyclical. Still, astute readers can detect traces of Benedict’s prose style and even identify which sections of the document were prepared by which pontiff.
At the press conference introducing the new encyclical, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, commented on the question of authorship: “It must be said without hesitation that while Lumen fidei resumes some of the intuition and themes typical of the ministry of Benedict XVI, it is fully Pope Francis’s text.” Francis himself, clearly intent on underlining that his teachings are in full accord with those of Benedict, observes in his introduction that the text is “in continuity with all that the Church’s magisterium has pronounced on this theological virtue.”
The encyclical does cover some of the arguments that were central to the teaching of Benedict XVI during his pontificate, such as the importance of joining faith and reason and the danger of eliminating God from public discussion. The document also has the scholarly tone of the pope emeritus, including allusions to Nietzsche, Dante, Dostoevsky, Wittgenstein, and T. S. Eliot, along with citations from Church Fathers and a plethora of Scriptural references. At the same time, the encyclical covers themes that Francis has emphasized, including the impossibility of achieving justification through one’s own merits and the need to put faith into action through help for the poor.
Lumen Fidei opens with the observation that the gift of faith has always been associated with light, which enables believers to see things clearly. In modern thought, however, “faith came to be associated with darkness,” and philosophers sought for truth divorced from faith. That quest proved illusory, the pope writes: “Slowly but surely, however, it would become evident that the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future; ultimately the future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown.” The encyclical insists on the need to regain a proper understanding of the natural partnership between faith and reason. “Today more than ever, we need to be reminded of this bond between faith and truth, given the crisis of truth in our age.”
“Anyone who sets off on the path of doing good to others,” writes Francis, “is already drawing near to God, is already sustained by his help, for it is characteristic of the divine light to brighten our eyes whenever we walk towards the fullness of love.” Nevertheless, he writes, “It is impossible to believe on our own.” In the New Covenant, Jesus offers the Church as the guarantor of faith. Moreover, the Faith is transmitted and strengthened through the sacramental life of the Church, especially in baptism. Sharing in the Faith, all members of the Church, at all times, “possess a unity which enriches us because it is given to us and makes us one.”
A Blueprint for the Papacy?
The next major document by Francis was also a hybrid, but in a different sense. Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”), made public in November 2013, is an apostolic exhortation—a papal document responding to a meeting of the Synod of Bishops. The synod had met in October 2012, during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, to consider the “new evangelization.” But Benedict had not drafted a response, and Francis, inheriting the recommendations that the bishops had reached, said he wanted to place them in a broader framework.
The result was, unfortunately, a very long document. No doubt the pontiff began with a summary of the themes that arose in the synod discussions and did his best to incorporate them all, but he occasionally strayed from his main focus or circled back to subjects that he had already discussed. The sheer length of the text (222 pages, in the version released by the Vatican) would discourage many readers.
Nevertheless, readers who took the time to read this apostolic exhortation—or even the opening passages, which provide a good sense of the pope’s overall message—were rewarded. Francis writes with great energy, and the text is liberally sprinkled with highly quotable passages. (It is safe to say, I think, that this is the first papal document in which the official English translation contains the word “sourpusses.”)
In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis offers not only a guide to the “new evangelization” but also an outline of his plans for Church reform. In other words, the document is a blueprint for his pontificate.
Evangelization, the pope insists, is the very essence of the Church’s mission. The drive to share the Good News of the Gospel is fueled—as the exhortation’s opening words suggest—by the joy that believers find in their faith. Today, the Church must convey that joy to a troubled world. Francis calls for a new sense of urgency and paring down bureaucratic structures and attitudes. In a sentence that encapsulates his approach to reform, he writes: “Pastoral ministry in a missionary key seeks to abandon the complacent attitude that says: ‘We have always done it this way.’”
Father Roger Landry, a pastor and gifted preacher from Massachusetts, captured the message nicely: “Pope Francis says that the fundamental reform the Church needs is from one of self-preservation of Church structures to a permanent state of mission.”
“There are ecclesial structures which can hamper efforts at evangelization,” Francis writes, “yet even good structures are only helpful when there is a life constantly driving, sustaining and assessing them.” He expresses his determination to streamline the organization of the Church to stimulate, rather than retard, apostolic activity.
Outlining his plans for reform, the pope recognizes the need to decentralize. The Vatican, he insists, is there to help diocesan bishops, not to control them, and he proposes a greater role for episcopal conferences so they can stimulate efforts at the national level rather than always looking to Rome. “Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and missionary outreach,” the pope writes.
The papacy itself should be reformed, Francis continues, for the sake of Christian unity. Citing the desire of John Paul II to fin
d a way of exercising the Petrine ministry that would preserve papal primacy while allowing full scope for the authority of diocesan bishops, he laments, “We have made little progress in this regard.”
The bulk of Evangelii Gaudium is devoted to the challenge of evangelization. Francis provides a rich variety of useful suggestions for pastors and for lay people who wish to share their faith. In the most detailed, practical section, he focuses at length—“somewhat meticulously,” as he puts it—on how priests should prepare their homilies.
At the same time, the pope is scornful of efforts to “circle the wagons” and preserve the institutional prestige of the Church. He is critical of any Catholic who “would rather be the general of a defeated army than a mere private in a unit which continues to fight.”
In this long document, Francis discourses at some length about economic affairs, challenging the faithful to recognize that the pursuit of wealth is not the purpose of life. He is particularly critical of the global economic system, which he says is founded on the idolatrous worship of material success. That message drew angry responses from defenders of free-market economic systems, who complained that the pope had ignored the successes of capitalism and implicitly endorsed socialism.
Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska—from whom one would expect sympathy for the free-market theorists—dismissed those criticisms as “a sophomoric caricature” of the papal document, which follows a well-worn path of Catholic social teaching. As he wrote in the conservative journal National Review,
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