Pope Francis Versus the Vatican
BY DAMON LINKER
t is natural to judge a man by the car he drives, or is driven in, especially when the man happens to be the Pope. On the evening of March 13, 2013, a short time after the College of Cardinals elected him the two hundred sixty-fifth successor to St. Peter and leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, Jorge Mario Bergoglio surprised Church authorities and the international press corps by eschewing the papal limousine provided for his use and instead riding back to his hotel by bus. Since then, he has swapped out the armored Mercedes SUV that ferried his predecessor to events in favor of a far less fancy make and model. Pope Francis’s Pope-mobile is sometimes a Ford Focus.
The gestures have continued. The Pope who took his papal name from Saint Francis of Assisi, an apostle to the downtrodden, has urged admirers from his native Argentina to donate money to the poor instead of spending it on a trip to pay their tributes in Rome. He has chosen to reside in the Vatican’s modest guesthouse rather than the comparatively lavish Apostolic Palace and makes it clear that he prefers to carry his own bags. On Holy Thursday, Pope Francis washed the feet of two women in juvenile detention, one of whom was a Muslim, breaking from the tradition that restricts the ritual to men and mostly to priests in the Vatican entourage.
Such expressions of modesty and humility have come as a shock to many observers. From October 1978, when Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II, until this past February, when his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, renounced the throne, the world became accustomed to a very different style of Vatican leadership. The last two Popes appeared to rejoice in elevating themselves above the laity with theatrical displays of pontifical pomp. Both permitted clericalism to flourish, sometimes (as in the case of child sexual abuse by priests and its cover-up by higher-ranking officials) with horrifying consequences. Both appeared to delight in upbraiding the Western world for its (mostly sexual) sins.
Progressive Catholics—demoralized and marginalized in their Church for much of the past 34 years—have responded enthusiastically to Francis’s change in tone. And their excitement only intensified after a freewheeling press conference during his plane ride back from the World Youth Day festivities in Rio de Janeiro at the end of July. Responding to a question about gay priests, Francis spoke about homosexuality in language far less condemnatory (“Who am I to judge?”) than John Paul or Benedict would have chosen.
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