Massimo Borghesi's dazzling ‘intellectual biography' of Jorge Mario Bergoglio shows that this criticism - born of a mixture of snobbery and ignorance, as he wrote in a recent article in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano - is, whatever your view of Francis, simply wrong.

In his fascinating and deeply textured exploration of the pope's thinking since the 1960s, Borghesi, who is professor of moral philosophy at Perugia University and the author of many studies of the dialectics of Romano Guardini, demonstrates that Francis's straightforwardness is, as he puts it, "simplicity as a destination that presupposes the complexity of a profound and original thinking."

That's not news to me.

In wading through his complex early writings for my biography of Francis, I was aware that I was in the presence of an astonishingly far-reaching intellect, one shaped by a pattern of thinking with deep theological roots.

Yet until now that's been hard to show because no one has given that thinking the systematic treatment it deserved.

The sophistication of Francis's thinking has been obscured in part because giant Latin American Catholic intellectuals such as the Argentine philosopher Amelia Podetti and the Uruguayan thinker Alberto Methol Ferré - both very influential on Bergoglio - are off European and American Catholic academic maps.

It's also because, as Francis's longtime friend Guzmán Carriquiry, secretary of the Vatican's Latin-American commission, points out in the preface to Borghesi's book, Francis has never wanted to pass himself off as an academic, in part because of his own horror of intellectual abstraction, and in part because of his desire as a pastor to communicate in the language of simplicity.

So anyone trying to summarize the pope's thought has to dig deep and range widely, as well as have a grasp of the complexity of dialectics. Borghesi is one of the few with the capacity and the commitment to undertake that task. Continue reading

• Austen Ivereigh is a British writer, journalist and commentator, and co-founder of Catholic Voices, a communications project now in 20 countries.

The first story came on Thursday, when Francis spoke at a conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church under St. Pope John Paul II, and called for a firmly abolitionist stance on the death penalty in official Catholic teaching.

"It must be strongly stated that condemning a person to the death penalty is an inhumane measure," the pope said.

"It is, of itself, contrary to the Gospel, because it is freely decided to suppress a human life that is always sacred," he added. "In the final analysis, God alone is the true judge and guarantor."

Recognizing that such a position marks a step forward in official Catholic teaching, Francis added that "doctrine cannot be conserved without allowing it to progress.

"The Word of God cannot be conserved in mothballs as if it were an old blanket to be preserved from parasites. No.

"The Word of God is a dynamic reality, always alive, that progresses and grows because it tends towards a fulfillment that men cannot stop."

The other story came on Sunday, when Francis announced his intention to convene a special Synod of Bishops in October 2019 made up of prelates from the Pan-Amazonian region, meaning Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Perú, Venezuela, and Surinam.

The main purpose, he said, is to discuss evangelization in the region, with special attention to the oft-forgotten indigenous persons of the Amazon.

It was seen as a vintage Francis touch, inverting the usual priorities by giving more attention to the peripheries than to the self-proclaimed "center" - note, for instance, he's certainly not calling a special synod for Western Europe or North America.

The gathering is also expected to have a strong social justice imprint, in which issues such as environmental protection, a just distribution of land, workers' rights and income inequalities will all figure prominently.

In both cases, the early take was that this is just Francis being Francis - pushing the envelope, and moving the Catholic Church steadily to the left.

To be sure, there's a legitimate debate to be had (and lots of people are having it already) on both fronts. Continue reading

• John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, specializing in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Political leaders on the right who slashed safety nets for the poor, denied climate change and made life harder for pregnant women rarely felt any real heat from bishops, never mind a pope, as long as they were viewed as sufficiently anti-abortion.

Pope Francis is making those once comfortable politicians look over their shoulders.

Since his election almost five years ago, the pope has rejected a narrow, single-issue framing of what it means to be "pro-life" in ways that offer a refreshing, long overdue challenge to a binary U.S. political narrative.

Earlier this week, in one of his now-classic freewheeling in-flight press conferences, Francis was back at it.

When asked about President Trump's decision to roll back an Obama-era program that protected some 800,000 young immigrants brought to the United States when they were children—the president gave Congress only six months to find a solution—Francis didn't equivocate.

"The President of the United States presents himself as pro-life and if he is a good pro-lifer, he understands that family is the cradle of life and its unity must be protected," the pope said.

Removing children from families "isn't something that bears fruit for either the youngsters or their families".

During the same press conference this week, Francis also chided politicians who deny the impact human activity has on climate change, an issue he has frequently defined in stark life-and-death terms.

"Whoever denies it has to go to the scientists and ask them," he said. "They speak very clearly; scientists are precise. Then they decide and history will judge those decisions."

American political debates over what constitutes a "life issue" are usually stuck in a rigid, partisan paradigm that offers little more than predictable talking points on both the right and left.

Pope Francis' insistence that "everything is connected," as he described it in his encyclical Laudato si', explodes those insufficient and suffocating categories. Continue reading

Sources

• La Croix International, article by John Gehring, Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, an advocacy group in Washington.
• Image: America Magazine

Indeed, the scientific consensus is very solid. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), "97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities." (see: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/).

The Earth's hottest year on record was 2014. That was until 2015, which then became the hottest year.

And that was until 2016, which is now the Earth's hottest year.

As reported in The New York Times (see: http://nyti.ms/2jx2c3X), of the 17 hottest years on record, 16 have now occurred since 2000.

For decades scientists have warned that humanity is on a disastrous global warming course - increasing floods, droughts, storms, wildfires - by failing to drastically reduce fossil-fuel use - coal, oil and gas - and move quickly to clean sustainable wind, solar and geothermal energy.

Yet climate change deniers - with little sustainable scientific evidence - insist that global warming is not happening.

And the president of the United States is their chief spokesperson. Trump posted on Twitter that climate change is a hoax devised by China to secure an unfair trade advantage.

He has irresponsibly proposed cutting necessary funding to the Environmental Protection Agency by approximately 30 percent, and has promised to pull the U.S. out of the crucial international Paris Agreement on climate change (see: http://cnn.it/2pFBuJ2).

Leading us in the opposite direction of Trump, Pope Francis in his environmental encyclical Laudato Si ("On Care for Our Common Home") insists "public pressure has to be exerted in order to bring about decisive political action.

Society … must put pressure on governments to develop more rigorous regulations, procedures and controls. Unless citizens control political power - national, regional and municipal - it will not be possible to control damage to the environment."

The recent People's Climate March in Washington, D.C. was good, but far from enough.

The citizen pressure the Holy Father is urging must be strong and ongoing. Because most politicians don't see the light until they feel the heat!

Consider signing up to receive information and action alerts from the Catholic Climate Covenant (see: catholicclimatecovenant.org), and the Union of Concerned Scientists (see: www.ucsusa.org).

And parishes would do well to order/download the Eco-Parish Guide for Catholic Parishes (see: http://catholicclimatemovement.global/eco-parish/).

Skeptical Science is a scholarly website recommended to me by a highly respected climate scientist. I hope you find it as informative as I do (see: https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php).

Each month I purchase 100 percent clean renewable energy for my home. And you and your parish can too (see: http://bit.ly/2p9KxyS).

Like St. Francis, Pope Francis sees all of God's creation as interrelated and worthy of protection. And so should we!

In "On Care for Our Common Home" - a must read - (see: http://bit.ly/1Gi1BTu) the Holy Father warns: "When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities - to offer just a few examples - it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected."

And thus Francis invites us to live with an attitude of the heart, fully present to each person, and accepting "each moment as a gift from God to be lived to the full."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

The talk - a surprise for all in the audience - recapitulated the key themes of the Argentinian pope's view of the human person: We are all related and interconnected; scientific and technological progress must not be disconnected from social justice and care for the neighbor; and that the world needs tenderness.

I am a scholar of modern Catholicism and its relations with the world of today. From my perspective, there are two essential elements of this talk that are important to understand: the message of the pope and his use of the media.

Emphasizing Catholic social teaching
The message of the pope delivered in nontheological language for a larger audience comes at a time of extreme individualization of our lives. What the pope focused on is the Catholic social teaching of the "common good."

The principle of common good, as described by the Vatican, indicates "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily."

This principle proposes a society "that wishes and intends to remain at the service of the human being at every level," to have its primary goal in the "good of all people and of the whole person."

For the human person cannot find fulfillment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists "with" others and "for" others."

In fact, there is nothing new about what the pope is teaching, except that he is talking among others to Catholics who have lost the sense of the common good and its importance.

The recent debates among Catholic politicians about the repeal of health care reform is an example of this.

The plan to repeal "Obamacare" included the undermining of the Affordable Care Act's essential benefits, requirements and protections for people with preexisting conditions: a proposal of the Republican Party under the leadership of House Speaker Paul Ryan, a politician who has never hidden his Catholic faith. Continue reading

• Massimo Faggiolini is Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University.

They blame it all on Pope Francis and especially on the challenging program he has launched for ecclesial renewal and reform. In doing so, they are de facto opposing the pope—especially his more merciful and pastoral application of the gospel and church teaching.

"There has never been such open opposition to a pope as there has been to Bergoglio," says Andrea Riccardi, the Italian historian who founded the Sant'Egidio Community shortly after the Second Vatican Council.

Professor Riccardi recently noted that this opposition exists at "various levels of the hierarchy, amongst the laity and on blogs."

He says it is rooted in a net refusal of the pope's message.

"I think of a certain type of traditionalism and I ask myself: how can it be such by rebuffing the pope?" says Riccardi.

Exactly.

Traditionalists are generally defined by their unflinching loyalty to the Roman Pontiff. But when the one seated on the Chair of Peter is not to their liking, these papists in the extreme find themselves in deep conflict.

However, they are right about one thing: there is a lot of confusion and division in the church. It's just that it's not the fault of Pope Francis.

For example, there is nothing more confusing—for English-speaking Catholics, at least—than the awkward prayers used each day at Mass. This is not Francis's doing. It's the responsibility of his two most recent predecessors.

They were the ones who ordered the transliteration of the Latin texts found in the Roman Missal and then promulgated a version of that missal (more properly called the Sacramentary) that, in so many respects, is not even proper English at all. Continue reading

• Robert Mickens is English-language editor of La Croix International.

If you were going to put all those things on a list, however, pride of place almost certainly would have to go to his endless capacity for soundbites.

Time and again over the last four years, Francis has uttered an arresting phrase - in a press conference, in a media interview, in a Q&A session, during his morning homily - which has been launched out of a media canon, firing both imagination and controversy.

Here's my personal "Top Five" list of those quotable quotes to date.

"Who am I to judge?" - en route back to Rome from Brazil in July 2013, spoken in the context of gay persons.
"God is not a Catholic" - attributed to Francis by Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari in a September 2013 conversation.
"If [a close friend] says a swear word against my mother, he's going to get a punch in the nose" - on a plane from Sri Lanka to the Philippines in January 2015, in response to a question about the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.
"Catholics don't need to breed like rabbits" - returning to Rome in January 2015, in the context of a question about birth control.
"Most marriages today are null" - spoken at a pastoral congress on the family in Diocese of Rome in June 2016, later amended by the Vatican to read "some."

Naturally, there's plenty of other material, but those examples suffice to make the point.

We got another entry on Wednesday in a new interview with a German newspaper, in which Francis denies seeing American Cardinal Raymond Burke as an "adversary," signals a cautious opening to discussion about married priests, voices alarm about the rise of political populism in Europe, and takes a gentle swipe at what he calls "fundamentalist Catholics."

Whenever these bombshells explode, pundits and commentators go into overdrive trying to explain (and sometimes spin) what the pope actually meant.

Less noticed, however, is the grassroots pastoral challenge they create, as parish priests and other Church personnel scramble to answer people's questions about what was said and what it might mean. Continue reading

• John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, specializing in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Christians are asked to return to God "with all their hearts" (Joel 2:12), to refuse to settle for mediocrity and to grow in friendship with the Lord.

Jesus is the faithful friend who never abandons us. Even when we sin, he patiently awaits our return; by that patient expectation, he shows us his readiness to forgive (cf. Homily, 8 January 2016).

Lent is a favourable season for deepening our spiritual life through the means of sanctification offered us by the Church: fasting, prayer and almsgiving.

At the basis of everything is the word of God, which during this season we are invited to hear and ponder more deeply. I would now like to consider the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Lk 16:19-31).

Let us find inspiration in this meaningful story, for it provides a key to understanding what we need to do in order to attain true happiness and eternal life. It exhorts us to sincere conversion.

1. The other person is a gift

The parable begins by presenting its two main characters. The poor man is described in greater detail: he is wretched and lacks the strength even to stand.

Lying before the door of the rich man, he fed on the crumbs falling from his table. His body is full of sores and dogs come to lick his wounds (cf. vv. 20-21). The picture is one of great misery; it portrays a man disgraced and pitiful.

The scene is even more dramatic if we consider that the poor man is called Lazarus: a name full of promise, which literally means God helps. This character is not anonymous. His features are clearly delineated and he appears as an individual with his own story.

While practically invisible to the rich man, we see and know him as someone familiar. He becomes a face, and as such, a gift, a priceless treasure, a human being whom God loves and cares for, despite his concrete condition as an outcast (cf. Homily, 8 January 2016). Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Image: How to really pronounce gif

From snarky observations about the walls around Vatican city to wry observations about all the under-utilized ecclesiastical facilities in Rome, a standard trope for skeptics of papal rhetoric is to charge that Francis doesn't walk his own talk.

In truth, however, this "pope of the poor" is doing quite a bit, from helping fund hospitals in the Central African Republic to having the Vatican sponsor migrant families arriving from the Middle East.

Much more is done on a daily basis by Catholic charities around the world, from Catholic Relief Services, the international charity of the United States bishops' conference, to local Caritas offices at the forefront of the refugee welcoming process in countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain.

Without diminishing the efforts of these organizations that make the Catholic Church arguably the world's largest non-governmental provider of humanitarian aid to migrants and refugees, this summary treats only what the Vatican is doing under Pope Francis.

Ukraine

Though the conflict in the country has faded into a media black zone, Ukraine is still at war with Russia over the annexation of the eastern peninsula of Crimea, and pro-Russian separatists have since taken control of eastern portions of Ukraine. An estimated 1.9 million people are currently internally displaced.

Francis made some missteps on this issue, particularly back in 2015 when he referred to the conflict as "fratricidal" — deeply offending many Ukrainians, who see it instead as the result of foreign aggression.

Yet last year the pope called for a special collection in every Catholic church in Europe to help the Ukrainians, collecting close to $13 million, half of which was distributed last December. Continue reading

Source & Image

• Article by Inés San Martín, Vatican correspondent, Crux

Unable to ignore the crowd, and before "off-the-cuff" remarks were simply what popes did, he improvised the most famous speech of his pontificate.

"My dear children, I hear your voices. Mine is just one, but it sums up the world's. Here, the entire world is represented. I should say that even the moon has come out here tonight, to witness this amazing moment," he said.

"Returning home, you will find your children. Give them a caress and tell them ‘This is the caress of the pope,'" said "the good pope," as he was known, to the torch-lit cheers. "You will find some tears to dry, say a good word: the pope is with us, especially in times of sadness and bitterness."

Francis, who has been an outspoken supporter of his predecessor - so much so that he declared him a saint by dispensing with the miracle requirement - recently borrowed almost exactly these words for a message that had a much sadder tone.

"Your pictures are now on my desk, because in your truly special eyes I see the light of kindness and innocence," Francis wrote in a letter to a 9-year old, Paolina Libraro.

"Thank you for sending them to me! Read this letter together with your mother, and the kiss she will now give you will be the kiss of the pope."

The pope's letter, dated September 22, was accompanied with a VIP ticket to the Wednesday audience of October 26, where Francis presumably would have given Libraro a kiss himself. Yet she missed the appointment: she was already too weak, fighting a three-year long battle against cancer.

Libraro died Friday, November 22, the day the Catholic Church marks the feast of St. Cecilia, patroness of musicians, exactly six months after receiving her first Communion.

"When she died, she joined the choir of the saints, led by St. Cecilia," her cousin, Giuseppe Delprete, told Crux.

"Young Paulina was lucid, and courageous, until the very end," Delprete said. "She never cried, she was a lively, outgoing young girl who died fighting." Continue reading

Sources

• Crux article by Inés San Martín, an Argentinean journalist who covers the Vatican in Rome for Crux.
• Image: Aleteia

In a 40-minute question and answer session, the Pope speaks to web and news directors Paolo Ruffini and Lucio Brunelli, about his reflections on the fruits of the Extraordinary Holy Year, which he describes as "a blessing from the Lord", on the changes the Church needs to undergo, on the idolatry of money and attention towards the poor.

A brief preview of the interview was aired after the special reports on the ceremony for the closing of the Holy Door.

The "blessing" of the Jubilee
"I can only report the news that's been coming from all around the world. The fact that the Jubilee was not just celebrated in Rome but in very diocese in the world, in the cathedrals and churches the bishop had indicated, universalised the Jubilee a bit. And it did a great deal of good.

Because the whole Church experienced this Jubilee, there was a Jubilee atmosphere. The diocese have reported people approaching the Church again and encountering Jesus: it was a blessing from the Lord (...) It is an ecclesial line where mercy is, I wouldn't say discovered because it has always been there, but strongly proclaimed: it is like a need.

A need that is good in a world afflicted by the illness of a throwaway culture, the illness of a closed heart, of selfishness. Because it opened up people's hearts and many people were able to encounter Jesus."

"Mercy Fridays", exploited girls
"I visited girls who had been rescued from prostitution. I remember one African girl, she was beautiful, very young and had been exploited - she was pregnant - beaten and tortured: 'You must go and work', she was told... And as she recounted her story - there were 15 girls there each of whom shared their stories with me - she said to me: "Father, I gave birth in the winter, in the street. Alone. On my own. My baby girl died."

They had forced her to work up until that day because if she didn't make her exploiters a lot of money she was beaten and even tortured.

Another girl had had her ear cut off... And I thought not only about the exploiters but also those who pay the girls: don't these people know that their moment of sexual satisfaction means their money is going towards helping the exploiters?" Continue reading

Sources

• Vatican Insider
• Image: Confrontations