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At the very start of his pontificate nearly ten years ago, Pope Francis distinguished himself from his most recent predecessors by adopting an informal and colloquial way of communicating.
He showed early on that he had no intention of merely reciting prepared speeches or sticking to the stodgy old Vatican script pertaining to protocols and ceremonies.
In fact, over this past decade, we’ve all gotten used to a chatty pope who seasons almost every address he delivers (that is, when he actually reads them) with some aside or impromptu remark, often using the salty language of the working class.
At times he also throws out a word or phrase of his own invention, something the pundits call (after the Jesuit pope’s family name) “Bergoglisms”.
This often drives officials in the Roman Curia absolutely crazy, while it greatly delights almost everyone else. Well, not everyone. And not all the time.
Francis pokes the bear
Several days ago Francis raised the ire of officials in Russia by a comment he made about the Ukrainian war in one of his latest interviews. (Yes, this is also the pope who does interviews — lots of interviews.)
This time it was with America, the US Jesuit-run magazine based in Midtown Manhattan.
“How would you explain your position on this war to Ukrainians, or Americans and others who support Ukraine?” the pope was asked.
“When I speak about Ukraine, I speak about the cruelty because I have much information about the cruelty of the troops that come in,” he said.
In hindsight, it’s clear that he should have stopped there. But he did not.
“Generally, the cruellest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryats and so on,” said the 85-year-old pope.
Sergei Lavrov, the Kremlin’s foreign minister, wasted no time in voicing displeasure with the pope’s remarks.
“Pope Francis calls for talks but also recently made an incomprehensible statement, completely un-Christian, singling out two Russian nationalities into some category from which atrocities can be expected during hostilities,” he said.
“Of course, this doesn’t help the cause and the authority of the Holy See,” he added.
Whoa!
A card from the pope’s own hand
It’s not clear what the pope was thinking.
But some analysts believe he may have been trying to help reopen the Vatican’s line of communications with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has largely been jammed up by the two Churches’ difference of opinion over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Most people from Chechnya are Muslims, while a strong Buddhist ethos exists in the mainly non-denominational Buryatia (a Siberian republic near Mongolia) where just over a quarter of the population is Orthodox.
Or perhaps Francis continues to believe — contrary to all historical evidence — that the Holy See can play some kind of role in facilitating talks between Ukraine and Russia.
By singling out two ethnic minorities, he may have thought his comments would show proof of his esteem for the Russian people.
But un-Christian? The Vicar of Jesus Christ?
Lavrov, who has the build of a rugby player but is the savviest of diplomats, must have pounced on the chance to use that card because it came straight out of the pope’s hand.
Recall that it was Francis who said, in reference to Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential campaign, that “a person who only thinks of building walls… is not Christian”.
More Russian indignation
Lavrov was not the only Russian infuriated by the pope’s comments about the Chechen and Buryat perpetrators.
“I expressed indignation at such insinuations and noted that nothing can shake the cohesion and unity of the multinational Russian people,” said Alexander Avdeev, the Kremlin’s ambassador to the Holy See.
Russian anger — whether it was sincere or just choreographed as well as a ballet at the Bolshoi Theater — apparently did not stop there.
Many sections of the Vatican’s main web portal (.va) were mysteriously inaccessible for nearly two days last week and there’s suspicion that it may have been caused by a Russki cyber-attack.
There are Vatican officials and others who will say that this latest “un-holy row” with Russia (as one media outlet called it) would never have happened if Francis had not given yet another interview.
The Argentinian pope, who seemingly had little time for journalists when he was the cardinal-archbishop of Buenos Aires, now grants interviews almost as willingly as he hands out rosaries at papal audiences.
And he almost always arranges these sit-downs on his own, usually without even informing the Vatican’s communications department.
Mary McAleese incensed by pope’s “misogynistic drivel”
But the segment on Russia was not the only part of America’s interview with Pope Francis that caused a stir.
Mary McAleese, who served as president of Ireland from 1997-2011, was especially incensed by the manner in which the pope justified the Catholic Church’s exclusion of women from the priesthood.
“It was reassuring and gratifying to observe the utter impenetrability of the reasons you offered, their ludicrous lack of logic or clarity, in short the fact that you offered just more unlikely misogynistic drivel,” she reportedly told Francis in an email sent to the Vatican.
The 71-year-old McAleese, who has a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, has strongly criticized the pope on women’s (and other) issues before.
But in fairness to her, Francis was somewhat rambling in his comments this time, and his logic was not crystal clear.
Basically, he was trying to say — as far as I can understand — that there is a “Petrine principle”, which concerns the Church’s ministry, and a “Marian principle”, which concerns its femininity, and that is “where the Church sees a mirror of herself because she is a woman and a spouse”.
It could have been a problem of translation since the pope spoke in Spanish.
But that seems unlikely given that there was an Argentinian fluent in English who served as translator.
And in any case, Francis made other “interesting” remarks during this interview, as well. For instance, he said: “Jesus never created a bishops’ conference. He created bishops.”
There are probably at least a few scripture scholars and one or two theologians who would ask him to explain that a bit more.
A wider problem
To be fair to the pope, he said some really good and encouraging things in this recent interview.
But he also repeated much of the stuff that he’s already said on numerous other occasions, like comparing abortion to hiring a hitman.
Repetition is not necessarily a bad thing.
In fact, it can be an effective pedagogical tool.
And it’s also true that not everyone tracks the pope like the journalists who are assigned to cover him. So it’s probably wise for him to repeat some of the things he feels are important to every single audience or group of people he encounters.
But recently, Francis seems a bit “off his game”, as it were.
He’s begun making impromptu comments that are not always that clear or articulate.
For instance, he gave a rambling, off-the-cuff talk on November 12 to members of the Dicastery for Communication that was hard to make sense of.
And in an aside while addressing the International Theological Commission (ITC) on November 24, he offered what he called an historical example of “indietrismo” in the Church — a Bergoglism that means always looking to the past and believing nothing should change because “we have always done it this way”.
The pope actually gave what seemed to be a counter-example.
He pointed out an unnamed group that separated from Rome after the First Vatican Council (presumably the Old Catholics) because they were “trying to be faithful to tradition” but then ended up ordaining women.
That’s hardly a group that says, “We’ve always done it this way.”
Something’s off-centre
To be absolutely clear, none of this is to suggest that the pope’s mental faculties are slipping.
There are days when his voice is especially strong, and he expresses himself as articulately as ever.
He has amazing stamina and is extremely “on the ball” for a man who will be 86 years old in just a few days (December 17).
On the other hand, he is going to be 86. And he keeps up a schedule that even a man (or woman) half his age would find very challenging to follow.
There is also the factor of his physical health.
We have never been given exact information on what exactly ails him or what sort of medication he may be taking.
The Vatican has never issued any clinical data on this.
All we have is the pope’s own non-clinical description of his health issues, such as dealing with a sciatic nerve problem and a knee ailment.
Francis is extremely private about health matters, and that must be respected.
But something seems to have changed in his demeanour since July 2021, when he had major intestinal surgery.
He sometimes appears to be less focused than before.
And it is obvious that he is dealing with physical pain, which can alter a person’s mood.
It can also affect one’s prayer life.
The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago said that after he had a serious cancer operation, he “wanted to pray, but the physical discomfort was overwhelming”.
He told some friends who came to visit him in the hospital: “Pray when you’re well, because if you wait until you’re sick you might not be able to do it” (The Gift of Peace, Loyola Press 1997).
Francis has always impressed me as a man of deep, contemplative prayer; someone who is centred and focused.
It’s said that his longstanding practice is to spend a few hours, early in the morning, alone in prayer.
But I wonder if whatever it is that ails him has interrupted this practice and forced him to change his normal prayer rhythm and routine. Because he seems to have changed.
All the more reason to willingly take up the request the pope makes every time he speaks, whether he’s reading a text or making impromptu remarks.
And that request is this: “Please pray for me.”
- Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
- First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
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