Francis Shook Up The Church And The World

---

From the moment Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose the name Francis upon his election as pope in 2013, you knew he was going to be different.
Never had a pope adopted this name – which is surprising given how St Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) lived the Gospel values in his life and community.
Shunning the ostentatious papal paraphernalia and lodgings, Bergoglio’s spartan lifestyle and personal simplicity endeared him to many.
But it was the new Pope’s radical approach that caught the attention of those seeking deeper change in society. As a longtime activist, I was taken up by five key areas where he made a striking difference.
1. Trenchant criticism of unbridled capitalism
At the second World Meeting of Popular Movement in Bolivia in 2015, Francis lashed out against unbridled capitalism and damage to the ecosystems, which was brutally punishing so many people.
Behind this suffering and destruction, he said, was a stench from the “dung of the devil” – the unfettered pursuit of money.
“Do we realise that that system has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature? … let us not be afraid to say it: we want change, real change, structural change.”
This system is by now intolerable, he said: “Farm workers find it intolerable, labourers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable, peoples find it intolerable … The earth itself – our sister, Mother Earth, as Saint Francis would say – also finds it intolerable.” The Pope called for a different kind of globalisation – a change in our lives, in our neighbourhoods, in our everyday reality – that could affect the entire world. Global interdependence calls for global answers to local problems, he said.
“The globalisation of hope, a hope which springs up from peoples and takes root among the poor, must replace the globalisation of exclusion and indifference!”
This strident criticism of unbridled capitalism prompted many to broaden their understanding of Christian theology.
2. He welcomed the voices of liberation theology
So, it was not surprising when Francis rehabilitated liberation theologians who had been cast in the wilderness for decades for their “heresy”.
This theology, which contemplates the plight of the poor, had been viewed with suspicion during the Cold War years for threatening “the sacramental and hierarchical structure” of the Church.
But in 2015, the founder of liberation theology, Gustavo Guttierrez, was invited as a key speaker at a Vatican event.
In 2015 as well, 35 years after his assassination, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was finally beatified. He had paid with his life for his outspoken defence of the poor. Romero was canonised three years later. If not for Francis, who knows how long the slain archbishop’s case would have languished.
In doing so, the Church gave real meaning to the call to liberate people from poverty and to challenge the idolatry of money in the mindless pursuit of profit.
For too long, the focus of the Church was on a narrow salvation from personal sin rather than on poverty. But poverty and inequality are often the result of unjust structures – a serious social sin.
So, there ought to be no contradiction between the personal and the social in the message of redemption. After all, Jesus Himself said He had come to proclaim “the Good News to the poor” and “liberty to captives”.
Only six months before Francis passed away, the Bishop of Rome bid farewell to Gutierrez, in a glowing tribute.
Another liberation theologian, the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, who was once censured and silenced by the Church, was also given a new lease of life.
Boff had seen that the Church needed to be decentralised so that the Gospels could be rooted and blossom in a variety of local cultures.
3. He made more people aware of the ecological crisis
Boff’s concerns are reflected in a couple of key Vatican documents, notably Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’.
In 1997, Boff published a book Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, which linked liberation theology to the ecological challenges of our era. His work increasingly focused on the global ecological crisis.
Some even speculated that Francis’ landmark Laudato Si’ had some input from Boff. In Laudato Si’, the Bishop of Rome highlighted pollution and climate change, the water crisis, loss of biodiversity and a decline in the quality of life.
The Bishop of Rome also pointed to a breakdown of society and scandalous global inequality, along with weak responses to all these problems. In sounding the alarm on climate change, Francis played an instrumental role in waking up many to the urgency of the climate and ecological crises.
4. Marginalised communities
Soon after he took over as pope, Francis reached out to migrants and indigenous people from around the world. In this world of plenty, he constantly pointed to the exclusion of so many people from the ‘banquet’.
In 2019, indigenous people from South America were hosted at the Vatican. This move drew flak from more conservative Catholics, pushing them closer to the Christian right, which has allied itself under US President Donald Trump.
Francis was unfazed. He persisted in reacting with compassion to other marginalised and forgotten groups as well, like the LGBT community, the sick and prisoners.
His concern for the victims of violence, persecution, war and carnage led him to express concern for warring groups in Sudan, victims of war in Ukraine and those suffering from the carnage unleashed by Israel on Gaza.
This concern for “the other” rattled many Christians, who held a more traditionalist view within the confines of the old familiar Church. Many of them drifted to the conservative right where they found new allies among Christian Zionists, especially those in the US.
May these Christians read the Bible in a new light and discover that Francis’ compassion for the migrants, the dispossessed, even Creation itself, is deeply rooted in the words of Jesus and the rest of Scriptures.
5. A new way of seeing the Church
In many ways, Francis propelled forward Vatican II, which was convened by the great John XIII in the 1960s, to its logical conclusion.
His vision of a decentralised and synodal Church recognised the universal character while celebrating the diversity of its people and cultures. This is the Church of the poor, the “field hospital” and the Church on the periphery.
This is the Church that those working on the margins of society can identify with.
Francis also saw the Church in constant dialogue with people of other faiths. And many of them recognised his sincerity in reaching out to them. It is perhaps no surprise that many Christians from other denominations and people of other faiths, or none, reacted with deep sorrow at Francis’ demise.
In our darkest moments as activists, as Christians on the ground, we were comforted by the thought of Francis shaking up world leaders in the corridors of power.
Unfortunately, Francis left us in the stillness of Easter Monday, before he could see his vision – the vision of the Kingdom – fully realised.
But just as Jesus’ followers received the power of his Spirit after his Resurrection, we too must allow the Spirit to use us to usher in a new kingdom, where the last shall be first.
The best way we can honour Francis’ life and legacy is to work towards real structural changes and compassion in our lives, our local communities, our country and our world. Come, Lord Jesus, may your kingdom come!
First published in the Malaysian Catholic Herald

---