Why the Church will not be the same after Francis

2023-03-14T05:07:24.144Z

Never has a Roman pope been so emphatic in remembering that the original Church was that of the poor cornered in the ditch of history

On the tenth anniversary of Francis' pontificate, the Church is no longer, and probably will never again be, what it was throughout the centuries.

Hence the fear and haste of the cardinals so that the first pontiff of Latin America, the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio, leave as quickly as possible.

The insistence of a lobby of conservative cardinals, especially Europeans, for Francis, at 86, to resign and withdraw from the command of the Church reveals this openly.

To better understand how revolutionary this pontificate, no longer European but from the periphery of the Church, is being, it is necessary to know from within what the old church, the same as always, is suffering with Francis.

It is not just the fact that it has begun to break down taboos embedded in the skin of the traditional Church, such as those related to sex and the importance given to women in Christianity.

What instills not fear, but dread in the most traditional cardinals is that the current pontiff made the greatest and most feared reform in the 2,000-year history of the Church: having renounced not only the title of "pope" to to see ourselves again as, at the beginning of the Church, the simple “bishop” of Rome that Peter and his first successors were.

Furthermore, Francis has not only renounced the name of Pope, which implied secular power in the Church, but has up to now been consistent with his decision to return to the origins of the Church, and not only does he not call himself pope but rather He decided on a daily basis to live as a simple bishop of Rome, after having stripped himself of all papal signs and renounced living cloistered in the luxurious pontifical palaces to be content with a simple hotel room.

Francis' great revolution has not been to emphasize that the Church should not only have a preference for the poor and helpless of the world.

That doesn't bother even the most conservative cardinals.

What does frighten Francisco is that he preaches with his example that said Church should not only be of the poorest, but that she herself should set an example of poverty and detachment from all kinds of privileges to live austerely.

The cardinals and bishops who continue to live in luxury and full of privileges, emulating the rich, are so concerned that the mere fact that Francis has recently forced the cardinals of the Curia who live in Rome to pay the rent for the palaces they are using, has been seen as revolutionary and even populist.

It is not, because it entails a strong internal revolution to which the traditional Church resists.

The conservative and privileged Church wants the turbulence caused by Francisco's ten-year pontificate to pass.

He is in a hurry for this parenthesis of the Franciscan papacy to end “to return to business as usual”, in the expression of a European cardinal.

This has led to a hidden campaign of the most traditional cardinals to encourage even journalists to always ask him if he plans to resign for health reasons.

They can't wait for him to leave the scene.

Francisco, who in addition to his sense of humor has great simplicity, has known how to react wisely.

He has insisted that he has already put it in writing that, the day his mental capacity prevents him from fulfilling his functions, he can be removed from power.

And now, since the Church that dreams of seeing him leave power wants him to leave as soon as possible?

Francisco, sarcastically, has just answered that it is true that he suffers from severe pain in one knee, something that sometimes forces him to use a wheelchair, but that he "rules the Church with his head and brain, not with his knee." ”.

And, with the same humor that he never leaves him, he added: "The truth is that sometimes I am a little embarrassed to show up in a wheelchair."

It may seem childish for a Pope to say that he is somewhat ashamed to appear in a wheelchair.

It is a profoundly human feeling and one that strips him of the borders of divinity.

I remember when the intellectual Eugenio Montini, Pope Paul VI, had to undergo surgery.

So that no one could see a pope in a hospital - which could take away his aura of power - they set up an entire operating room inside the Vatican.

Throughout the history of the Church, a pope wanted to appear as another human being, not divine, who only governs the universal Church for a certain time.

Francis is also sometimes accused by the most progressive part of the Church of not having yet had the courage to break with some atavistic taboos of the old Church such as those of sex and the full participation of women in the government of the Church.

The truth is that he is already leaving the doors open, which is not a small thing, so that his successor, if she is someone with his opening, concludes the revolution he started, which is undoubtedly the largest that the Church has ever seen. acquaintance.

What also scares Francis to those who can't wait for him to finish or resign is that for the first time a supreme head of the Church has been openly against all political dictators, unlike in the past, when Rome he showered them with privileges.

Do you remember the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, to whom the Vatican had granted privileges that today would cause fear even for the most moderate?

Never has a Roman pope been so emphatic in remembering that the original Church was the one for the poor and left cornered in the ditch of history and not the one that goes hand in hand with the powerful and tyrants.

That is why Francis has insisted all these years of his pontificate that the Church must be on the side of the victims of soulless capitalism.

Francis has insisted from the beginning that the market, today's new god, which concentrates the world's wealth in the hands of a handful of people, is not capable by itself, with its neoliberal dogma, of ending poverty and even with the misery that afflicts millions of people.

Will he be a communist pope as certain faithful conservatives see him, and even bishops and cardinals?

No my God.

It is only a pope who, by ceasing to be one and calling himself as such and after having renounced all the privileges that the position granted him, has resurrected the force of primitive Christianity, where those who professed faith in the crucified Jewish prophet Jesus were seen as dangerous because they heralded a new kingdom of peace and dialogue among all who are different.

Pure utopia?

No, rather fear of the old Roman church that the new and fragile Samson could still shake the dusty structures of a certain Church that no longer communes with the new world that is being born and that, whether we like it or not, is ours.

Pope Francis knows it and even laughs.

And he keeps calling on the phone, pure heresy until yesterday, to talk to common people, to congratulate or comfort them or simply not to forget that he, too, is still a human and not a god imprisoned in golden bars.