The ‘Francis Revolution’ enters the New Year

Jan 14, 2018

By Robert Mickens
We are just into the first week of 2018, but this new calendar year is already showing clear signs that this will be a challenging and exciting time for the continuing reforms Pope Francis has been trying to bring to the Vatican and the entire Catholic Church.

The 81-year-old pope, who will mark his fifth anniversary as Bishop of Rome in only a few months from now, has a full slate of events over the next twelve months. They promise to form yet another series of decisive moments in his efforts to change the mentality and practise of what it means to be Church in the 21st century.

The aim of all this papal activity over the next year is to put more flesh on the inspiring, yet skeletal outline and blueprint Francis issued for his pontificate in the 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel).

“I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelisation of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation,” Francis wrote in that remarkable document.

“The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and, in this way, to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself,” he stressed, still in the early months of his papal ministry.

The Church in the world

More recently Francis forcefully pointed out again that he wants the Holy See and the rest of Catholicism to be more pro-active and outward-looking in its interaction with people, institutions and nations — well beyond the Church’s own confines and believing community.

In his annual pre-Christmas address to top officials in the Roman Curia, history’s first Jesuit and New World Pope said, “The Church is, by her very nature, projected ad extra.” That is, she’s projected “outward.”

He went on to say that the Church’s mission is to make clear God’s “visceral closeness, his limitless love and his divine desire that all men and women be saved and come to enjoy the blessings of heaven.” He then underlined that this Church is “to be in the world but not of the world, and to be an instrument of salvation and service.”

Vatican diplomacy, said Francis, is one of the most tangible and high-level ways the Church of Rome seeks to serve the international community as “a builder of bridges, peace and dialogue between nations.” He called it “a diplomacy at the service of humanity and the human person,” which seeks to “cooperate with all peoples and nations of good will.”

The Pope has set clear priorities for the Vatican diplomats — and, in fact, for all Catholics who work with international, political or social organisations. But he chose to highlight two of them in his talk to the Roman Curia. One is “protecting ‘our common home’ from all destructive forms of selfishness;” the other is working for peace and reminding the world “that wars lead only to death and destruction.”

He expounded these two themes when he gave his New Year address to the more than 180 ambassadors who represent their governments and international organisations to the Holy See.

In this annual speech to the high-level diplomats, the Pope commented on the geo-political issues around the globe that the Holy See regards as most troubling, as well as those most encouraging. It was an opportunity for him to clarify the Roman Church’s concerns and views on issues threatening peace, development, human rights and — above all — the dignity of every human person.

Pope Francis again underlined the urgency and human duty of dealing justly with migrants and refugees, as he did in this year’s World Day of Peace Message.

He spoke about the most serious threats to peace, especially the existence of nuclear weapons and the actual fighting that is currently taking place in the various theatres of what he called our “piecemeal” Third World War.

Other issues the Pope addressed were the spread of “fake news,” the need to better ensure implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement and counter environmental destruction, the rise of political populism in Europe and the unequal distribution of wealth and natural resources, among other concerns.

Flying the friendly skies

Meeting with ambassadors and heads of state is only one of the ways the Bishop of Rome uses his powerful bully pulpit to make the Church’s message echo across the world stage. He also sends personal messages, issues appeals and publishes documents of various weight.

His apostolic journeys around the world are also a means by which the Pope promotes the aims of Vatican diplomacy, peacemaking and bridge building. And, this year, Pope Francis is again expected to make three to five trips to places far beyond his base at the Vatican.

Two of them are already confirmed. The first — a visit to Chile and Peru — is only a couple of weeks away. The January 15-21 journey will mark the sixth time that Francis has travelled back to his native Latin America since becoming pope.

And these will be the eighth and ninth countries in the region that he’s visited, while still not having returned to his home in Argentina.

Experts say this will be a particularly “difficult” visit — especially in Chile, which borders Argentina — because of a number of social and political issues. In Peru, on the other hand, the Pope will have a chance to more personally put his stamp on a local church that he’s been trying to refashion through the appointment of bishops who share his vision for ecclesial reform and merciful, missionary outreach.

The other papal trip that has already been confirmed is in late August when Francis goes to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families. That event — co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Dublin and the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life — is being organised around the Pope’s teaching on marriage and family life as found in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.

It will offer a further opportunity to move beyond the polemics over that document, which have been whipped up by a few bishops and a tiny minority of lay Catholics. The August trip to Ireland — which may include visits to other parts of the island, including the British-ruled and still mostly Protestant north — will also be a chance for the Pope to give a boost to the country’s demoralised and increasingly less influential Catholic Church, as well as an opportunity to help bolster ecumenical relations.

Although not confirmed at this time, there are also plans for Pope Francis to visit India sometime in the first half of 2018. Interestingly, the Pope recently had a private meeting at the Vatican with the papal nuncio to the vast and hugely populated South Asian country. So an announcement is expected sometime soon.

Negotiations are also underway with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to secure a papal visit to those Baltic countries, probably in mid-September. And it has been reported that Church and civic leaders in Romania would like the Pope to visit their East-Central European country for the beatification of several martyrs of Communism. --LCI (international.la-croix.com)