What’s really miraculous about Pope Francis?

Mar 12, 2015

John L. Allen Jr
This week I was in New York for publicity on the launch of my new book, The Francis Miracle: Inside the Transformation of the Pope and the Church. Doing the media rounds, most questions I drew were fairly predictable, beginning with the classic American curiosity about whether this Pope is a liberal or a conservative.

I was a bit surprised, however, that few interviewers popped a question that seems fairly obvious, given the book’s title. It is: “What do you mean, ‘miracle’?”

For Catholics who harbour theological or political grievances with Francis, calling him a “miracle” can seem terribly partisan. Even those with no bone to pick with Francis may find it premature, since he’s been in office only two years and it’s a bit early to be drawing such dramatic conclusions.

Both are perfectly reasonable reactions, but neither actually captures what I mean by a “Francis miracle.”

Instead, the point is that there’s something about this Pope that can’t be adequately accounted for in terms of purely human calculations, something that requires a supernatural or mystical point of reference in order to be properly understood.

In a nutshell, the enigma is this: What accounts for the sharp contrast between Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina and Pope Francis today?

For sure, that contrast is not absolute. During his 15 years as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio was committed to the poor, strove to re-light the Church’s missionary fires, and lived a life of gospel simplicity. All are traits he’s carried into the papacy.

Yet there clearly is a difference in style and personality, because the Bergoglio of Argentina was nobody’s idea of a pop culture sensation.

The cardinal rarely appeared in public, and almost never gave formal interviews. When he did have to take the public stage, friends would call him “shy” and critics “boring.” Nobody came away saying he turned the world on with his smile. In fact, it’s hard to find a photo of a beaming Bergoglio taken before his election two years ago.

Neither was he the spontaneous, shoot-from-the-hip sound bite machine the world sees today. He came off as more controlled, more circumspect, always preferring to operate quietly behind the scenes, rather than in public view.

When I asked her in April 2013 what she made of the change, Maria Elena Bergoglio, the Pope’s only surviving sibling, said jokingly: “I don’t recognize this guy!”

The question therefore presents itself: What happened?

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By nature, I’m not inclined to look for supernatural explanations of things, and I’m often skeptical when they’re floated. Yet, in keeping with the Sherlock Holmes dictum that after you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, this seems to me one case in which a mystical account is required.

To put the point differently, Francis himself appears convinced there’s a mystical subtext to the kind of Pope he’s become.

Here’s an insider account I provide in the book that makes the point.

“Over Christmas 2013, a veteran Latin American cardinal who has known Bergoglio for decades made an appointment to see his old friend in the Santa Marta, the hotel on Vatican grounds where thePope has chosen to reside. (He lives in Room 201, a slightly larger room than the one he stayed in during the conclave that elected him, giving the pontiff enough space to receive guests comfortably).

“The cardinal, who didn’t wish to be named, said he looked at Francis and, referring to the exuberance and spontaneity that are now hallmarks of his public image, said to him point-blank: ‘You are not the same man I knew in Buenos Aires. What’s happened to you’?

“According to the cardinal, this was Francis’ answer:

“On the night of my election, I had an experience of the closeness of God that gave me a great sense of interior freedom and peace,’ the cardinal quoted the Pope as saying, ‘and that sense has never left me.”

In other words, Francis believes he experienced a miracle.

There’s nothing new, of course, about popes seeing a touch of the divine in the things that happen to them.

Pope St. John Paul II was profoundly convinced that on May 13, 1981, the Virgin Mary changed the flight path of a bullet to preserve his life and his papacy. That was the day of the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square, and it also was the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima. The pope believed Mary was the reason he survived.

Among other things, that conviction explains why it was always implausible that John Paul would resign, no matter how frail he grew near the end. He believed the Virgin wanted him to continue, and he was never going to wake up one morning and just call it quits.

In similar fashion, it seems unlikely Francis today will heed calls to rein in his free-wheeling public persona in any significant way, given that it’s not the product of a PR war room, but rather what he believes he experienced as an act of God.

Whether his papacy is truly “miraculous,” in the sense of boosting the long-term fortunes of Catholicism in some world-changing way, remains to be seen. There’s no doubt, however, that as Francis views it, his is a mission with a miracle at its core.

Source: Cruxnow