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As it’s come to be understood in the 21st century, the papacy is really an impossible job. A pope is expected to be the CEO of a global religious organization, a political heavyweight, an intellectual giant, and a media rock star, not to mention a living saint. Any one of those things is a life’s work; rolled together, they’re a prescription for perpetual frustration.
Yet at his six-month mark, which falls today, Pope Francis is drawing better reviews on those five scores than anyone might reasonably have anticipated back on March 13, either in terms of the magnitude of the task or the background of 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
When he stepped onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, this was immediately a pope of firsts: the first pontiff from the developing world, the first from Latin America, the first non-European in almost 1,300 years, the first Jesuit and, of course, the first to take the name Francis. The new pope charmed the world that night by humbly asking the crowd to bless him before he blessed them and by referring to himself as “bishop of Rome” rather than more exalted titles.
Since that memorable debut, Francis over and over again has demonstrated a capacity to surprise.
He plunges willy-nilly into crowds, to the delight of the masses and the horror of his security team. He speaks his mind with sometimes startling frankness, such as his famous “Who am I to judge?” line with regard to gays. He makes phone calls to people out of the blue, including ordinary folks who’ve written him to share some personal struggle, and involves himself daringly in the issues of the day, such as his recent full-court press against military strikes in Syria.
This week, Francis was back in the headlines twice. On Tuesday, he visited a facility in Rome run by the Jesuit Refugee Service, where he proposed that unused convents and monasteries could be converted into housing for immigrants and refugees. On Wednesday, the Italian daily La Repubblica splashed a letter from the pope across its front page, written to a renowned leftist and atheist journalist, assuring him that God’s mercy reaches nonbelievers, too.
Make no mistake: Francis is a phenomenon, a force of nature who’s raised expectations, upset predictions, created a new sense of possibility, set tongues wagging and, in some quarters, sent anxieties soaring, all in the short span of half a year. Continue reading
Sources
- John L. Allen Jr. in National Catholic Reporter
- Image: Today’s Catholic News
John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent.
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