View from Rome

View from Rome

Catholics are normally seen as Christians who sing the Alleluia without smiling, keeping their arms firmly by their sides and pointed towards the floor at all times.

Under Pope Francis, this is changing. Last Saturday, along with around 60,000 charismatic worshippers, the Latin American pontiff stood in Rome’s Circus Maximus praying with his arms slightly outstretched, hands raised and eyes closed. In the crowd there was dancing, singing and speaking in tongues, and flanking him on either side were two female leaders of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

The meeting was taking place in Rome to mark 50 years since the group’s founding, marking a coming of age for a movement that has usually been on the fringes of Catholic life. The gathering on the vigil of Pentecost was a moment of major institutional affirmation from the first Pope to be entirely on the same page as them.

Years ago, Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio had been wary of Pentecostals and charismatics, worried by the haemorrhaging of Catholics to these vibrant new communities. But he developed friendships with charismatic Protestant pastors, allowing them to “pray over” him at a large conference.

When he stepped out on to the balcony of St Peter’s for the first time, he bowed down and said to the crowd: “Before the bishop blesses the people I ask that you would pray to the Lord to bless me.” It was a leaf out of the charismatic playbook.

This goes deeper than preferred liturgical style. A key to understanding Francis’ papacy is his “openness to the spirit”. The Pope wants a Spirit-filled Church ready to follow a bold, daring path, “without rigidity”, unencumbered by old ways of doing things.

This inspires Francis to make bold, spur- of-the-moment decisions such as agreeing to visit Sweden to mark the Reformation’s 500th anniversary. On Francis’ insistence, last Saturday’s vigil had a strong accent on ecumenism.

 “Christian unity is now more urgent than ever,” the Pope told the crowd. He then urged them all to “advance together, work together, love each other”. Amen!
 
The following day, Pentecost Sunday, the Pope reflected on how the Holy Spirit guards against the idea of Catholics on “the right or the left”. Instead, the Spirit encourages a “reconciled diversity” which never becomes simply uniformity.

Divisions within the Church are clearly on Francis’ mind at the moment. He has raised the matter more than once in recent weeks, for example in Genoa, where he likened the Church to a river. “The important thing is to be in the river,” he stressed. “If you are in the centre or more to the right or more to the left, but inside the river, this is a legitimate variety.”

To his critics, by calling the synods on the family and opening up the possibility of Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, the Pope has already let the genie of division out of the bottle. It can’t be put back. Historians, on the other hand, will point out that vigorous disagreements inside the Church can be traced back to the times of the apostles.

By choosing to use the terms “left” and “right”, Francis shows he is less worried about internal spats than by a politicisation of the Church, with the different camps lining up against each other, and viewing one another with suspicion or hostility. It is the ecclesial mentality of winning and losing that the Pope dislikes.

“When we take sides and form parties, when we adopt rigid and airtight positions,” he explained, “we choose the part over the whole, belonging to this or that group before belonging to the Church. We become avid supporters for one side, rather than brothers and sisters in the one Spirit.”

Speaking of internal rows, there has been a fairly big one rumbling on between the Pope and Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, the Archbishop of Mexico City. They clashed last year, after Francis scolded the country’s hierarchy for clericalism, gossip and corruption.

But now the Pope has a chance to reshape the Mexican Church’s leadership, as Cardinal Rivera has just reached the retirement age of 75, which requires him to send in his letter of resignation.

The word in Rome is that his successor will be Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, who was given the red hat by the Pope last November, and is currently Archbishop of Tlalnepantla. Aguiar Retes is one to watch: he has a PhD in theology and speaks five languages, and is a bishop in the Francis mould – he is even being talked of as a possible successor.

If he is transferred to Mexico City, then he will certainly have a better relationship with the Pope than Rivera Carrera. Days after Francis’ stinging rebuke, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Mexico City carried an unsigned editorial claiming that Francis had received “bad advice” before scolding the bishops. This was widely seen as Cardinal Rivera hitting back.