(Going On, 2013)
I was coming out of the bank in Blackpool shopping centre last February when the chairperson of Gurránabráher parish council met me and, out of the blue, asked, ‘Have you heard the news?’ ‘What news?’ I asked. ‘The pope has resigned’, she said. I had not heard it, and, for an instant, thought she might be mistaken. But I knew her to be a feet-on-the-ground person and so felt sure she must have got it right. My immediate, unbidden reaction was, ‘Thank God; now there’s hope for the church.’
On 13 March, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope. When he appeared on the balcony he struck me as a man at ease with himself. He did not seem overawed by the responsibility, but appeared calm, relaxed. He asked people to pray with him – that was good. He spoke of himself not as pope but as bishop of Rome – that, too, was good, putting himself on a par with his brother bishops.
He took the name Francis. Since he was a Jesuit, I wondered if it might be after Francis Xavier or Francis Borgia, both Jesuit saints. But I hoped it might be our Francis, and was delighted when it was.
In his appearances, his dress was simple: just the papal white; and he sat on a chair, not a throne. He went and paid his hotel bill, and then decided to live in a modest apartment, not in the Apostolic Palace. Great. As archbishop of Buenos Aires and cardinal, he had lived in a flat, did his own shopping and cooking, and took a bus or train to his office. Better still, and a welcome breath of fresh air.
I like this guy. I have read two of his interviews and liked both of them; he spoke candidly, and is not afraid to call a spade a spade. When one interviewer, Eugenio Scalfari, said, ‘Many church leaders have been [narcissists],’ Francis replied, ‘You know what I think about this? Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.’ I was stunned; even I wouldn’t have said that! I like this man even more.
But he will need to be more than a nice guy to change the direction of the church. He will need to be able to kick ass. Will his eight-man commission of cardinals be willing and able to point the direction and give him the muscle he’ll need to deal with the Curia? Having read mini-biographies of them in The Tablet, I feel unsure. And his methodology? The end must be prefigured in the means, and I don’t see that there. Will it just mean giving the old clowns new noses? He’s seventy-seven, the same age as John XXIII was at his election, so time is not on his side. The curial old guard know how to lie in the long grass, waiting, biding their time till they recover their position. They did it before after attempts at reform by Paul VI who had spent all his adult life in it as an insider, and by John Paul II who came to it as an outsider. Cardinal Martini said, ‘The curia is impervious to reform.’ I hope he’s wrong but fear he’s right. The love of power is addictive.
Francis needs prayer and support; he’s got mine.