What makes Pope Francis different?

What makes Pope Francis different?  It’s not his refusal to wear ermine-lined red capes; nor his choice to ride in a Ford Focus rather than a bullet-proof limousine. His decision to live at the Vatican guest house (Santa Marta) rather than the Apostolic Palace is impressive, but not necessarily the defining measure against which his difference from previous Popes is to be understood.  Nor should the laity be distracted by his preference for simplified liturgical ceremonies and a conscious choice to wash the feet of lay people (as opposed to priests) on Holy Thursday - oh, and by the way, we should include his decision to wear ordinary business shirts (as opposed to French cuffs and their required cuff links) under his white papal cassock. These are symbolic differences - clearly intended to broadcast a message to the faithful that downplays the Pope as supreme ruler of the Catholic Church and promotes an image of the Holy Father as a man of the people who stands with and beside them.  One of my favorite symbolic images which reinforces this vision of his papacy occurred just about a year ago this month when, while presiding at a Lenten Vespers service in which the Pope and sixty other priests were about to enter confessionals to minister to the faithful gathered in Saint Peter’s Basilica, he stepped out of the recessional line and knelt before a priest already in a confessional and made his own act of contrition.  I can’t think of a more dramatic example of how Francis understands his papacy than at that particular moment in which he is photographed kneeling before a priest, making his confession.

            Even as dramatic as that particular image was, it only reflects the symbolic differences which this Pope has sought to articulate with respect to how he wants his papacy to be understood. So, what makes Pope Francis different? It’s not the symbolic choices he has made in favor of simplicity and shared communion with the faithful - a direct result of his deliberate decision to adopt the name of Francis, the Apostle to the Poor.  I believe it is his unrelenting focus on the Gospel imperative to minister to the needs of the poor and marginalized.  And, the evidence in favor of this contention continues to pile up.

            Even before his formal installation, Pope Francis made clear his preference for the poor and marginalized when, in a press gaggle with Italian journalists, he had this to say about his vision for global Catholics:

"How I would like a church that is poor and for the poor."

As reported in the press, the remark seemed off-handed, idealistic and, frankly, naïve; and yet, two years later, the Holy Father’s words and actions have reinforced this notion that the Gospel message demands that the faithful and their clerical mentors must stay focused on the needs of the least among us. His first encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), mentioned “the poor” 91 times - only the words “love” (154) and “joy” (109) eclipsed his references to the least among us. That emphasis on the needs of the poor explains the significance of what I consider to be one of the most powerful assertions in the entire encyclical,

“An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.”

            While Francis is not only the first Jesuit Pope, his assertion that, in ministering to the poor and marginalized, we should have a “deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.” would also qualify him as the first Lasallian Pope.

For over three hundred years, the disciples of Saint John Baptist de La Salle have been faithfully implementing Pope Francis’ imperative to “change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.” De La Salle’s vision for his Institute and for the Brothers and Lay Partners who would minister to the needs of the young especially the poor[1] insisted that a secular and religious education should equip the children of poor and working class families to advance economically and spiritually so that they could take their place in society and ensure that the next generation would be able to take advantage of opportunities not available to their parents and grandparents. He described these children as “far from salvation;” meaning that, without an education, they would not only be denied the opportunities readily available to children from more affluent families, but would also never receive the “the truths of religion” (De La Salle’s ministry was launched in France - a thoroughly Catholic country at the time) which would enable them to participate in the saving message of the Gospel.

            It is this Jesuit and Lasallian vision of a world in which Church institutions enable the marginalized to not only sit next to the sons and daughters of affluent families (one of De La Salle’s earliest classroom innovations) but to enter the world of commerce as equals that nurtures Pope Francis’ desire to experience a “church that is poor and for the poor.” He, like Ignatius and De La Salle, recognized that a Church burdened by the trappings of power and prestige is inclined to be “tone-deaf” when it attempts to meet the needs of the poor and marginalized. And yet, any Lasallian Partner visiting our ministries in Tijuana or De La Salle Blackfeet Reservation or any of the Miguel or Cristo Rey Schools will nod affirmatively in response to this assertion in Evangelii Gaudium:

“I can say that the most beautiful and natural expressions of joy which I have seen in my life were in poor people who had little to hold on to.”

This paradox of the Gospel imperative (that the poor have something to teach us) is not only the fundamental irony inherent in what the poor give to those of us who don’t share in their circumstances, but an existential paradigm governing what we must do to respond to Jesus’ call:   “… whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”(Matthew 25: 40)

             Saint John Baptist de La Salle clearly understood the “no-win” situation faced by poor children and their parents in 17^th century France: they had no access to education and, faced with parents who constantly worked to make ends meet, were often left to their own devices. By telling the Brothers:

“It can be said with real reason that a child who has acquired a habit of sin has more or less lost his freedom and has made himself miserable and captive.”

De la Salle recognized the transformative power of education in the lives of the least fortunate among us.  As Pope Francis argues in Evangelii Gaudium:

“While it is quite true that the essential vocation and mission of the lay faithful is to strive that earthly realities and all human activity may be transformed by the Gospel, none of us can think we are exempt from concern for the poor and for social justice…”

so, too, have Christian Brothers in over 80 countries been articulating this Gospel imperative to the students entrusted to their care - regardless of economic status - for over three hundred years. I’d like to think that the then Cardinal Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires - a priest of and for the people - who daily took the subway to work, would have passed by one of the of ten Lasallian ministries operating within the city limits of Buenos Aires; knowing that their service to poor and affluent children alike reinforced his vision of a “church that is poor and for the poor.”

            And if that was the case, then it is also the case that he would later become the first Jesuit and Lasallian pope…which is what makes him different.

 

 

 

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[1] In 1680 De La Salle wrote this Mission Statement governing the work of the Christian Brothers for the next three centuries: “The purpose of this Institute is to provide a Human and Christian education to the young, especially the poor.”