A leading cultural historian welcomes Pope Francis’ new book as an audaciously radical manifesto for a renewal of the world after the Covid crisis
Towards the end of Albert Camus’ The Plague, the journalist Jean Tarrou asks the heroic Dr Rieux: “Can one be a saint without God?” To which Rieux responds: “Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me … What interests me is – being a man.” More than 70 years since that book was published, and with the whole world in the grip of another plague, Pope Francis has written a contemporary riposte to Camus’ question. And although Francis’ concept of a saint and a hero – and a man – differs profoundly from the French-Algerian existentialist’s, he also is searching for ways to be good and to serve the common good in desperate, vitiated times.
In Let Us Dream, God exists chiefly in the form of the Good Spirit, the special relationship with Israel offers a model of God’s love for the whole humankind and the sacrifice of Jesus offers an example of love overflowing. But the overall effect of the book isn’t especially religious or theological, and Francis emphatically does not invoke papal authority in the manner of an encyclical. Rather, it resembles secular diagnostics, such as Barack Obama’s writings or even Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. It’s a manifesto for life after Covid, a how-to manual for renewal in the aftertime of this plague, and, just as Camus was writing about fascism rather than a health crisis, Francis is confronting political realities.
The pandemic is a rupture from which a new polity might spring, undoing the besetting ills of the contemporary world: Pope Francis rounds on populist nationalism, intolerance and xenophobia, neo-liberalism and its idolatry of growth, profit and the market, “the isolated conscience” or atomised individualism, competitive consumerism and the binary polarities of current politics. He warns against the operations of the Bad Spirit, especially in hardening narcissism, avarice and individualistic menefreghismo (from the Italian for “Who cares?”, or “so whatism”). Instead, he advocates ecological consciousness, a woman-centred community of mutual care, a philosophy of synthesis, reconciliation and a peaceful search for common ground. This embraces local customs and culture – including evolving modes of worship of indigenous peoples in Amazonia.
