Francis at 100 days: ‘the world’s parish priest’

(Editor’s note: This is a summary of an article written by John L. Allen, Jr., a known reporter from the Vatican.)

Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance when experience conflicts with one’s model or the world. Since people cannot live in perpetual confusion, either the facts have to be recast to fit the model, or the model has to give way in light of the facts.

“In effect, that’s precisely the crossroads at which the Catholic world stands after the first 100 days of the Pope Francis era.”

While preparing for his trip in July to Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day, there has been no major pronouncements and actions in the Vatican since the reign of Francis except for his “mid-April appointment of a group of eight cardinals from around the world to serve as his kitchen cabinet. Its first meeting, however, isn’t until October, and it’s still unclear what it might do.”

However, “at the grassroots, there’s a palpable sense something seismic is underway.” His crowd is enormous; vendors across Rome testify increase in sales; an increase in Mass attendance and requests for confessions around the world; approval ratings are shown for him, all of these are attributed to a “Francis effect.”

To resolve the conflict may be seen in assessing Francis to play the role more of a pastor than a primate or politician. The basic question of Catholics is not about his policy positions but whether he inspires.

A close friend of Francis who served as his auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires for six years, Bishop Jorge Eduardo Lozano of Gualeguaychu, Argentina, says: “He’s sending a message to other cardinals, bishops and priests that this is what we need to do – to reach out to people, not being content to wait for them to come to us.” The defining features of Francis’ leadership style are: simplicity, humility, remaining largely apolitical, and being remarkably accessible to ordinary folks.

Simplicity. Before his papacy, Francis took the subway than have a driver, lived in a modest apartment than in an archbishop’s mansion, and when pope walks across the Vatican grounds than riding on a limo. He dreams of a “poor church of the poor” and during the May 16 audience warned that “while the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling.”

His gestures rather than elaborate pronouncements show his simplicity as when he “visited the Casa del Marmo youth prison and washed the feet of the 12 inmates, including two young women and two Muslims.” Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman justified the action on the grounds of simplicity saying: “This community understands simple and essential things; they were not liturgy scholars…. Washing feet was important to present the Lord’s spirit of service and love.”

Humility. Unexpected of a Jesuit virtue for most Catholics who regard a Jesuit as brilliant and zealous in thinking and in mission but not humble, this first Jesuit pope “seems to be accenting humility as a defining quality of ecclesiastical leadership.”

On March 13, before saying anything, Francis asked for the crowd’s blessing.

“It’s Jorge,” is his usual greeting when he makes his phone calls as when he cancelled his newspaper subscription at Buenos Aires. He has not appointed a priest-secretary to function as gatekeepers and interpreters. In receiving visitors at the Vatican, he steps down to sit with them than wait at his papal throne.

Preferring to be referred not as pope but as bishop of Rome will help many see papacy less being imperial and would pave the way to progress towards Christian unity. As the Capuchin veteran professor of Rome’s Gregorian University says: “In feudal era, we developed this notion of bishops as princes, [but] with Francis, I think other Christians can see Episcopal ministry more clearly as a service to communion, and will become more open to it.”

Staying out of politics. Having said plenty of things with political relevance like his comments on economy, on protecting the environment, labeling war as “suicide of humanity” and addressing a May 12 March for Life in Rome saying that “legal protection of human life must be guaranteed from the very first moment of its existence” indicate that the Church remains to be concerned of politics.

However, many observe that thinking of politics is not what preoccupies Francis. He said nothing about the April 10 vote in Uruguay to legalize gay marriage; in his May 23 12-minute address to the Italian bishops’ conference, he mentioned no business at all with the Italian parliament but said: “dialogue with the political institutions [of Italy] is up to you.”

Archbishop Luigi Negri comments on Francis speech saying: “I don’t believe it’s necessary to abstain from speaking out when certain values are at stake, [but] we may have to change the way we do it…. We have to form laity to defend nonnegotiable values…it would be better for us bishops to keep out of it. The autonomy of the laity has to be respected.”

Accesibility. Few days after his election, a joke in Rome came that only his security personnel were not charmed by the new pope because they were so busy protecting him from the crowd.

After his March 17 Sunday Mass at St. Anne Church at the Vatican, he stood by the side of the Church greeting people, smiling at them and blessing children like any priest in the parish. Italian press dubbed him as “the world’s parish priest”.

He makes personal phone calls to friends to get the temperature of the church in the neighborhood. In his homilies, he uses “freewheeling and unscripted languages, even if it drives his spin doctors to distraction and causes heart palpitations among theological purists, who typically prefer a pound of verbiage to an ounce of imprecision.”

Being well aware of realities on the ground, he gives impromptu messages. “So far however, he appears determined not to let the risk of misinterpretation deter him from functioning as a pastor.”

Catching on. A new culture of leadership catches on with this new pope. A veteran Italian cardinal who is now over 80 says: “Under this new pope, simple is the new chic.”