It is not enough to speak only of poverty and social issues. A humanity disoriented as ours first asks what the reasons to live are. Francesco starts from the worldly commitment and then arrives at faith in God. Perhaps the Church should teach the reverse road
What was the characteristic trait, the figure of the pontificate of Pope Francis? In these days he has risked drowning in a molasses of definitions as trivial as they are wrong. It was said that he was a pope who changed communication, the way of communicating, when it is known to everyone that this characterized the papacy from John Paul I onwards; It was said that it was the pope of goodness, forgetting that there had been another pope who was called the good Pope, it was John XXIIII; It was said that it was the Pope of the interreligious dialogue, forgetting, also here, that the two previous popes were the first to gather in Assisi the representatives of the various religions; It was said that it was a Pope who fought for peace against the war and here too his predecessors did the same in a constant and strong way. Certainly this Pope was also denoted by these characteristics, but they have not determined the fundamental characteristic trait.
The theological figure of this Pope was basically a pastoral, that is, more aimed at the means necessary to develop and implement the teachings of Christ And of the Church rather than aimed at talking about the meaning of Christian mysteries starting from God. It was a pontificate marked with accentuation, I would say by an emphasis, social, economic and environmental aspects.
But it would still be superficial to stop here because below, and as a foundation of this figure, there is his statement made shortly after his election: “How much I would like a poor church for the poor”. Dad BergoglioJesuit, developed his formation and pastoral care, first as a priest and then as a bishop to Cardinal, in Latin America, in Argentina. That land gave birth to a theologian named Gustavo Gutiérrezthe true founder of the “theology of liberation”, a theology that has placed the values of social and political emancipation present in the Christian message in the foreground. TO Bergoglio A proximity to this theology has been attributed and a certain assonance is out of doubt, but it would be wrong to seek total assimilation. Bergoglioif anything, comes from another theological vein which is the one that, starting from the Second Vatican Council, developed to bring the theme of the “Gospel of Liberation” back to the center. In 1968, the Assembly of Latin American bishops (Celam), which took place in Medellin in Colombia, coined the expression “preferential option for the poor”, obviously referring to the Church. This is the area within which the pontificate of Francis. Certainly the pontificate of the Pope who took the name of the saint of Assisi moved within the line of that pact signed by some bishops, especially Latin American, on November 16, 1965, a few days after the end of the Vatican Council II, the “Catacombe pact”, where a challenge was launched to the “brothers in the episcopate” to carry on a “life of poverty”, a “Servant” church ” A Dominican French theologian was expressed that is called Yves Marie-Joseph Congar in his book For a servant and poor church Written in 1963 Lucio Gera And that tells us that the people are not only receptive and passive but is also active in the formulation of the pastoral and the doctrine of the Church.
In short, the themes of poverty and the people are evidently connected and end up putting preaching on the Christian mysteries in which we speak of God almost exclusively by linking it to the centrality in the revelation of poverty present both in the ancient and in the New Testament.
We are not talking about issues that fall within the papal prerogative of thephalability but that can be widely discussed, and the fundamental question that arises is as follows: in a world that lacks the lack, the void of the meaning of life, which struggles to find a horizon of meaning to existence because it is confused by the world of the Internet, afraid of the pandemic, discouraged by wars and its effects, can be a predominantly social message. Spasate, disoriented, frightened, a sense of life? A search for a sociologist of religion, Franco Garellinoted that many young people have joined the social message of Pope Francis But few of them have transformed this adhesion into an adhesion to faith. This is very significant and must make us reflect whether the accentuation of social issues can be a vehicle for a response of meaning to life in religious terms or if, in this way, the Church is not reduced to one of the various institutions that promote human progress without a reference to the sacred. The commitment to the poor cannot be the sense of life but, if anything, the faith in God can be the sense that gives the strength to fight against poverty. In our humble opinion, a piece of the future of the Church is played on this problem.
