Attention to the last, exploited by many, and the excesses of his communication. The struggle – braking – to pedophilia and the choice for the south of the world rather than for the “Scristianized” West. All the lights and shadows in the twelve years of Pontificate by Jorge Mario Bergoglio. And above all, the legacy of a Church that affects less and less on reality, left to the successor.
“The shepherds smell of the sheep.” This is what will first of all remain of Pope Francis, his most immediate and spontaneous legacy: the priest who speaks to the faithful and does not limit himself to catechize them. But it will be difficult for the successor, in this truth operation, avoid the two opposite drifts.
On the one hand, the return to the chair of the cassock at the service of power; On the other, the misunderstanding that the smell of the sheep is also that of the militant priest, of the Guevarist’s Edepto, theorist of the theology of liberation as would like to the ultrà of assault Jesus, incurable nostalgic of the film Mission.
To fully appreciate the teachings of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, it will be necessary to be a little balance as he was. Always in the balance between the strongly alternative aesthetic (silver crucifix and not golden, peasant shoes, apartment in Santa Marta, protocols sent to waste) and written, words, metaphors within the tradition of doctrine in the sign of contradiction. He who theorized the Christianity of the peoples but asked the Vice President of Inter, the Argentine Xavier Zanetti, to organize a game with players of all confessions.
He who drew the encyclical Laudato to join the ecological transition and push her beyond the love for the creation of Franciscan memory, but was scandalized when a pilgrim showed him in front of him with a little dog inside the wheelchair for babies. Then the Pontiff commented: «I reproached it. I don’t like those who prefer dogs and cats to their children, these people from old people will be sun ».
A blow to the circle and one in the barrel. Pope Francis was in favor of the blessing to gay couples in the name of that being “all children of the same father” and underlined: “The union is not blessed but simply the people who have requested together”. But he did not forget to stigmatize a “certain Friargine”, referring to the power lobbies also present in the Curies and in the Vatican. And if he was in front of the black or white crossroads he came out with South American fatalism: “Who am I to judge?”.
Identical approach in politics. He was aware of the adhesion to western values, sublimated in democracy and overcoming inequalities, but had no problems whipping “the barking of NATO at the gates of Moscow” in weighing the responsibilities of the war in Ukraine.
It will be the next pontiff who decides whether to walk in the footsteps of Francesco or move away. And it will not be easy because the son of the employee of the railways of the Barrio Flores of “Baires” was all and its opposite. In addition to the shepherds with the smell of the sheep, the cornerstones of the Bimillenary Church are destined to remain: the centrality of the traditional family, the dignity of work, social justice, the imperative request for planetary peace. In practice, the strong continuity with those who preceded it, especially Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II.
The latter repeatedly opposed to him for pure political calculation from the progressive left in the smell of atheism, which has spent 12 years to scan the words of Francesco, to extrapolate them from the context, to find dem and happily “fluorescent” consonances.
His many anathemas will remain. Against “the philosophy of waste” in accusing the prophets of the liquid society of wanting to “transform mortal sins against human life” such as euthanasia, the uterus for rent and ultimately also abortion, in new essential dogmas. Against the “Sicines of Life”, as the ultra-abortionist doctors defined in Asia in Asia.
Against the pedophilia of the clergy, which saw him protagonist in continuity (also here) with Pope Ratzinger of an purifying battle. With theoretically formidable results, such as “motu proprio” such as a loving mother, a decalogue of zero tolerance, in which it calls on the defendants’ bench not only the priests who perform acts of sexual violence but also the dioceses and ominous bishops, therefore conniving. We wrote “theoretically” on purpose. Because few, in the meanders in ecclesiastical administration, are applied that cry of pain concretely.
Theory and practice, the difference is all here. The Vatican dome, consisting of 108 cardinals appointed by him (out of 135), devices in the conclave and even after these stops that would question the very existence of Christianity, is unable. In the game between conservatives and progressives, Francesco was the victim of the “mainstream” narrative, of that information flow that pushed him to the left even when he didn’t want to. Yet to defend himself, he has repeatedly mentioned the metaphor of the “cramp”.
We report live: «Between the breeding father and the rebellious son there were several ideological differences. An elderly priest was called to oppose them, who said: “You forgot about the cramp. That cramp that came to your father’s back, then your grandfather, when he got up every morning at four to milk the cows”. ” Because beyond the narrative there is always reality. And the effort of living, the harmony of the family, work as a social raising. A world destined to remain at the center of the divine project, stronger than tensions and drifts.
The importance given to women “who make the world” will remain in the name of the Virgin Marybecause “the Church is a woman”. Just before walking towards the last trip, Pope Francis appointed Sister Simona Brambilla prefect of a dicastery – that for the institutes of consecrated life and the apostolic life companies – of the Roman Curia. It is the first time in history.
Among the cornerstones of Vatican politics will have a following two epochal moments that no one can disconnect: the meeting in Cuba (2016) with the patriarch Kirill for a beam with the largest part of orthodoxy (gesture frozen by the war in Ukraine) and the signature of Abu Dhabi (2019) of the declaration on universal brotherhood, with the great imam of Al-Azhar, to build peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace and the peace coexistence between peoples. From here, the next Holy Father can only start again.
He will remain, of that pontiff with a thousand facets, the sense of some keywords learned from him. As a “balcony” that he used at the beginning to criticize those priests who instead of immersing themselves in the problems remain on the terrace to give blessings. Then he replaced it with clericalism. As “resilience”, an abused term (now even complicit in football to celebrate a 0-0 outside the home) to define the strength of the rush that bends but does not break in front of the storm. As “parresia”, the opposite of hypocrisy, the right to tell the truth, the frankness destined to unhinge certain mellifluence of circumlocations loved in the curial environments. As a “chatter”, used to warn against gossip that, as a breeze, wanders for the sacred rooms. The chatter “is the opposite of the Gospel, because it is always a condemnation of the other,” he said to the Carmelite nuns. And as “globalization of indifference”, the globality shaped by markets and technological, which united the world by leveling it in the name of profit and efficiency. And in doing so they inhumanized it.
The sensitivity to migrant people and their suffering will remain, that sense of mercy that no pope has ever underestimated. But very hardly the drifts induced by the infatuation of a casual magical circle will hardly remain afloat, inclined to pride with borderline characters such as Luca Casarini, founder of Mediterranea Saving Humans, with the oboles of the faithful.
The churches are emptied despite the pauperism pushed of Francesco, the “poor church for the poor” worked only in part in a centuries -old and lost world, in which Catholics are looking for shepherds who return to talk about God, to face the mysteries of spirituality. And they move away from the fashions of the moment.
For this reason it is conceivable (but it is only hope) that with the new representative of God on earth they also return to the background also the ecolary, the apocalyptic obsession of the “god permafrost” which has nothing to do with “the custody of creation”, the scientism that screeches with faith, the transgender narratives, the adoration of the Puorchessia technology. And that disappears the creepy effect of the doors spranged during the pandemic.
It is possible that the next Pope also evaluates the collateral damage of hypercommunication. Strengthened by the motto “we have to meet people”, Bergoglio has let themselves overwhelm by any media temptation. He spent himself by any means, starting from the refusal of the Red Pantofola – which, however, testifies to the blood of the martyrs – and arriving at the Campesino poncho of his last few days. It was the first pontiff who landed on Instagram (one million followers in 12 hours); the first to sign an editorial in the New York Times; the first to give carpet interviews, real or interpreted (Eugenio Scalfari); the first to exchange Fabio Fazio for a complement theologian; The first to send a video message to the Sanremo Festival, the first to call the citizens at home but also to resume with a slap on the hand a chinese faithful too impetuous Chinese, in St. Peter’s Square in 2019. Very human contradiction. And again, a direct, inflated moon speech, without the magic of that pronounced by St. John XXIII on the evening of 11 October 1962, at the opening of the Vatican Council II. The difference between what is immortal and what is not.
The aim was noble: bringing young people, distracting, agnostics closer to dialogue with God. In the meat grinder of social media “ready, I am Pope Francis”, however, soon became a nursery joke.
A cacophony, an inflation that certainly became a manna for the audience and for the image of Pontiff next door; Less for the sacredness of the role and for the depth of the message to what he has repeatedly called “Sunday Christians”. To the new Pope, the not easy task of bringing them back such also on the other days.
