Pope of the poor provides showers

Nov 27, 2014

By Andrew Hamilton SJ
Pope Francis, the pope of the poor, had showers installed for people who are homeless in St Peter’s Square. The move followed his meeting a homeless man, discovering it was his fiftieth birthday and inviting him to dinner in a local restaurant, only for the man to decline on the grounds he smelled.

The gesture also illuminates the differences of perspective many have noted between the Pope and other church leaders, such as Cardinals Pell and Burke and Archbishop Chaput.

People have variously named the opposing approaches as liberal and conservative, pastoral and doctrinal, democratic and authoritarian.

Some have suggested that the roots of difference lie in theory or in personality. We believe they lie, rather, in the different imaginative worlds that Pope Francis and those who differ from him inhabit. When Pope Francis looks at the human world he focuses on human beings as concrete and human, not as abstract nor as members of particular religious or other groups. God loves and respects each human being, and so invites Catholics to go out to all people and to welcome them because they share a common humanity and are each precious to God.

Because he sees human beings concretely, Pope Francis is affronted when he sees them treated without respect for their dignity, and asks why this happens. He finds the answer in the greed and the imbalance of power and wealth that distort society. So he consistently attacks the idolatry of economic theories that enable people to make the impoverishment of the poor an unfortunate but unavoidable economic fact rather than the result of human decisions.

Pope Francis calls on Catholics to go outside the comfortably Catholic world to be with people with whom they share a common humanity. In this way, they follow Jesus, who sought to win people. He did not judge people but engaged with them, and through the encounter, opened to them the freedom and joy of the Gospel. The building of showers for homeless people in St Peter’s Square embodies perfectly this project.

The changes that the Pope wishes to make to governance flow out of this imaginative vision. He wants the governance of the Catholic Church to encourage and fit people to find the centre of faith by going to the margins of church and society. In practice, this means appointing people with this vision to lead churches and making the central organs of government enabling rather than controlling.

Although Cardinal Pell, Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Chaput differ among themselves, their imaginative world and rhetoric are very similar. They focus on human beings as Catholic, not simply as human. This is natural because, as bishops, they have been responsible for Catholics.

They wish Catholics to have a right understanding of faith, a disciplined practice and a rich devotional life. The focus is on forming Catholics who will be united in confronting secularism and other ideologies. Their going out into the world will be inherently combative.

For them, church governance needs to be reformed in order to protect the truth, to ensure discipline and unity in faith and practice, so that the Catholics are cohesive and disciplined, sure of what they stand for and faithful in living out their faith.

The Pope and these Bishops have much in common. But they differ about the processes and language through which it is best commended.

However, both these approaches are Catholic. Each poses questions to the other. In our judgment, Pope Francis uniquely offers hope for the future.