Bergoglio died at 88, the pontiff of the dramatic diarchy with the great Ratzinger. His “openings” split the faithful and seduced the progressives. Ready to ignore him on peace and abortion and to enhance him on gays, environment, migrants.
The image of Pope Francis who will remain forever is that of Easter day. First the blessing in San Pietro, with a roca and fatigued voice, then that lap in Papa-Mobile, among the faithful: his people. A surprise apparition, after two months of convalescence, among people in prayer: its people.
For this reason they say that the return to the father’s house (the euphemisms used are curious not to mention death) has faced it with serenity. Indeed, with a certain dose of irony, like when he joked while he was hospitalized in Gemelli, even if in his condition there was little to joke. I don’t know if really, as the chronicles told us, even in the hospital bed he had kept the good mood and if they correspond to the truth the phrases with which he exorcised the “enemies”. Certainly, I can say that I have no memory of popes that at the most difficult moment have been accompanied, as well as by prayer also by lashing judgments, if not by bad guys. I know I am writing something that everyone will not like, because in the time of farewell it is better to forget the negative things of the past. But I do not think I reveal a secret if I tell that while the Rosary was recited in San Pietro and a crowd waited for the reading of the Gemelli doctors’ bulletins, elsewhere, there were those who awaited the end of what, wrongly or reason, a contrasted and divisive papacy was judged, who walked the Church from the Catholic tradition.
I am not a theologian and I don’t push myself to talk about faith and doctrine. But as an observer, also of religious and Vatican things, I just notice that Bergogliowhen he was elected Pope, he thought he had to report the Church among the people, believing that for various mistakes but also for a process of secularization of the society he had moved away. At the beginning of his pontificate, in fact, the Holy Father wanted to embrace the people, leaving the Vatican palaces and also giving up the sfarzo of Santa Romana Chiesa. I remember that time when, shortly after his election, he drank from a bottle offered by a faithful. It was a spontaneous gesture, which certainly threw the agents employed in his safety. But after all it was an image that brought him closer to people even more. According to some, his was a populism of way. That is, they believed that from Jesuit he had studied that attitude at the table. Perhaps this conviction also contributed the ease with which he granted himself to the interviews, first with Eugenio Scalfarithen with Fabio Fazioconnecting to the last even to the Sanremo Festival, helping to desacralize the image of the Bishop of Rome.
I don’t know where the truth is, that is, if he did everything part of a strategy, as critics say. It probably thought in this way of recovering a lost relationship, reversing a trend that sees the increasingly empty churches and Catholics and less and less practicing. Perhaps his model was pope John XXIIIIone of the most loved popes together with John Paul II. Or perhaps, the fascinations of the archbishop were inspired by Helder Camaraamong the founders of liberation theology that pushed many Latin American priests to marry left movements and even embrace weapons.
The fact is that the criticisms did not arrive because of its ambition to welcome the weak and the poor. Rather for certain positions on immigration, on the environment and the squeezes of the left of the left and the LGBT movement, with that phrase on homosexuality (“who I am to judge”). The encyclical Laudato yestwo years after the election, surprised everyone. It is true that on the throne of Peter he had decided to take the name of San Francisbut nobody expected to transform the Franciscan message into a sort of green manifesto, which could have been applauded even by the most radical environmentalists. The defense of nature, and therefore of man, is certainly shareable, but perhaps, among the problems of faith that of global overheating was not the most important.
TO Bergoglio The responsibility for having closed the churches during Covid was charged, contributing even more to the loss of the Catholic flock, but they also took the fault of not having been decided in cutting the intertwining between the Roman Curia and finance, letting the money of the Obolo di San Pietro will end up squandering in questionable financial transactions, of which the case Becciu It only seems the tip of the iceberg. Just as the slowness was reproached in removing high prelates that had turned around the other side in the face of the scandals of sexual harassment.
But perhaps, the toughest criticism is the one that concerns pro -migrant politics. Francis It is the pontiff of the homily on the shipwrecks, the one who went to Lampedusa, the pope who spent himself in favor of the refugees fleeing the wars and above all by misery. And this was not infrequently attracted the pesticides of a part of the faithful. However, I want to break a spear in his favor: what do you want a pope to do if not the pope? But what do you want to say seeing that sweaty and exhausted humanity on the boats? Perhaps he could have avoided bless the cause of Luca Casarini And his companions, transforming an experienced antagonist of clashes with the police in a kind of saint of migrants, chaplain of refugees and bishops of the boats, because, financing him, instead of bringing the faithful closer to them. But who am I to say that he made a mistake? At most, I can recognize that he tried, not to transform an antagonist into a kisses, but to return to the Church an image of poverty and a certain dignity. However, unfortunately for him and for the faithful, he did not succeed. Just as it was not able to stop the conflict in Ukraine. Indeed, his words in favor of a ceasefire, against those who bark in the Moscow courtyard, have been exchanged for support to Vladimir Putinwhile they were only common sense exhortations, of those who had already guessed that the war could not be won. Not with weapons at least.
Now many of his critics pray for things to change, because the Pope’s papacy Francis is archived forever, but I doubt that this happens. Bergoglio He has not only tried to bring the Church in the midst of the faithful: he also approached the South of the world, Latin America and Africa, and also the Catholics of the East. And so he changed the Church as we had ever seen, moving the balance away from Rome. In addition, pope Francis Appointed, in his image and likeness, a hundred cardinals, who, when they will have to choose his successor, is likely that they proceed in the wake tracked by Bergoglio.
It is perhaps for this reason that, when it was hospitalized at Gemelli, while someone prayed so that the good God would take him back quickly, the Holy Father, as the chronicles report, was in a good mood? Maybe yes. He probably reflected on who he would take his place, convinced that anyone who will be chosen will struggle to bring the church where he was before. Like it or not, even if Bergoglio He did not change Catholic doctrine, he managed to change his politics. From conservative to progressive. And before changing broken it will take many years.
