Pope Francis: Where have the people gone?

The new papal funeral rite has a striking detail: in the first phase, the one at home, the dead Pope is exposed in a simple white cassock. This is particularly unusual. Priests are composed in their vestments because a priest is a priest forever. All the more so for a bishop, who is “chief priest” and possesses what we call “fullness of orders” in Catholic parlance. All gets back to normality when the exposition is public, in the second phase, and the Pope is dressed in red vestments. However, the details says something.

The idea appears to be to make the Pope’s funeral rites the rites of a pastor. The Pope is no longer Pope but a man among men, and therefore, in a simple white cassock.

If this is the reading, it is problematic for several reasons.

First, the pope is still a priest and the sacrament of Holy Orders is not a sign of power. Even if the choice to expose the pope in a simple cassock at the beginning seems to be driven by a desire to uproot and discard every sign and symbol of clerical privilege—the stuff of clericalism—the exposition of a priest in in the vestments of a priest is mere acknowledgment of a vocation visibly worked among men as one called to be a minister of God.

So, the choice is problematic because it bespeaks a twisted approach to the whole papal symbology (and perhaps to symbols in general).

From the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has not wanted to use the red mozzetta, considering it an example of the Pope’s temporal power. He never wanted to wear the red shoes, a symbol of the martyrdom of the popes. Regarding his preference for the bespoke clodhoppers that are his footwear, Francis is on record as preferring personal continuity and official discontinuity. These are the shoes he has always worn, and he is just a guy.

Francis is the guy who pays for the hotel room where he stayed before the Conclave (a gesture more for the media than for reality because the hotel is property of the Holy See, and therefore the Pope was paying himself ); he is the guy who has the officials of the Argentine embassy come to Santa Marta to renew his passport (but the Pope does not need a visa, he is the one who makes passports); he is the guy who goes to the optician to have his glasses changed, or to the orthopedist or the record shop.

On his first official visit to the President of the Italian Republic at the Quirinal Palace (once a papal residence), Francis decided to avoid the protocol that included the procession, in effect giving the meeting diminished importance, almost as if he were just another guy on a visit.

Not that other Popes haven’t already done so. John Paul II was famous for his forays outside the Vatican, especially at the beginning of his pontificate, but these were kept in the strictest secrecy. John XXIII was intolerant of the Vatican and would even go out without an escort. And it is said that even Benedict XVI, having long maintained his home and library in the Piazza della Città Leonina, would go there privately from time to time, sometimes even visiting his old neighbor, Cardinal Virgilio Noé.

But there is something different in Pope Francis’s choices, something ostentatious in his nonchalance. It is the idea of having to give a sign to a world that, according to him, must be changed. It is a form of power, in some way masked, however, by the idea of taking away all power.

It is, in essence, the paradigm of Juan Domingo Perón and the descamisados—the “shirtless ones” who were the working poor and Perón’s major political support. At the beginning of his pontificate, there was much discussion about Pope Francis’s Perónist mentality. Francis himself once explained that he defined himself as a populist, not understanding that the reading of populism in the West is different from the Argentine one.

Being a Perónist does not necessarily mean being a follower of Juan Domingo Perón in matters of policy. It means, instead, being imbued with the Argentine mentality that was fascinated by Perón. And how did Perón fascinate them? By taking off his shirt with the descamisados and professing himself as one of them. Few understood that, by taking off his shirt, Perón was saying the exact opposite: that he represented power and was “descending” to the level of the descamisados. The descamisados considered him one of them.

Pope Francis makes many “Argentine” gestures, and it could not be otherwise. Pope Francis is Argentine; he has only known the Argentine example. Until he became pontiff, he did not even travel much, nor did he have a particular interest in worldly things. All his choices are conditioned by his experience in Argentina.

In addition to stripping oneself of the signs of power to ensure immortality in men’s memory, there are other types of measures.

The appointment of a sole administrator of the Pension Fund in the Vatican might have behind it, for example, the nightmare of the Argentine experience of the corralito or the freezing of liquidity. In a period of economic hardship, Pope Francis could also take the measures of the Argentine government, which also suspended the payment of pensions until the economy had reached acceptable levels.

However, something has been missing in these last years of his pontificate—the concept of pueblo.

In 2016, Professor Loris Zanatta of the University of Bologna dedicated an essay and then a book to Francis’ populism. A scholar of Argentine Peronism, Zanatta identified the patterns he believed to be in continuity and highlighted that Pope Francis’ key concept was that of the pueblo, i.e. people.

In the last four years of his pontificate, however, the theme of the people has slowly disappeared.

There have been no more meetings with popular movements, except for a message to celebrate the movement’s tenth anniversary. On the other hand, there have been more interventions by the central government, which does not look to the people but makes decisions for them.

It has been seen in many areas: in the “tightening” of the traditional Mass to the letter with which the Pope underlined that the final document of the Synod is to be considered part of the magisterium; in the reaction to the criticisms on the declaration of the Doctrine of Faith Fiducia Supplicans on the blessing of irregular couples, to how the case of the disgraced Fr. Ivan Rupnik, accused of serial abuse perpetrated over three decades against mostly religious women (in line, in general, with the management of other cases of abuse involving people known to Pope Francis).

Ultimately, Pope Francis has increasingly centralized power on himself, distancing – as seen with the choices of the cardinals – those who could have exercised power with him from the centers of power itself. In his decisions, Francis is an arbitrary Pope who does not follow a straight logic but lives by exceptions. The diocese of Rome seemed destined to remain without auxiliaries, for example, and with episcopal vicars in place of auxiliary bishops. However, the Southern sector received a new auxiliary, Tarantelli Baccari, whom the Pope appointed vicegerent.

The concept of people remains when speaking of popular devotion but is lost in speeches in which the Pope increasingly attacks careerism and clericalism.

Is this why the Pope has never returned to Argentina? A trip to Argentina would clarify his way of thinking and show how having come to power, he could also detach himself from that mentality. Could a trip to Argentina undermine the image of Pope Francis?

It is a legitimate question, considering that the Pope emphasizes in his biography – the one published before he was elected Pope – that he was so homesick for Argentina in Germany that he went to the airport to watch the planes leaving for his homeland. Why has there been no more homesickness since Francis became pope?

Meanwhile, Pope Francis has begun eliminating symbols, using new ones, and arranging things differently. All Popes have done this, but even Paul VI did not abolish the Pontifical Household. He reformed it, maintaining continuity with the past.

Pope Francis wants to send a different signal.

He wants to say that the old world of power is over. The point is that it can’t be. It is replaced by new forms of power, with new symbols that, however, have less depth, because they have less history. The result is a loss of profound identity. And, paradoxically, in a pontificate that claims to be outgoing and missionary, the very role of the priest comes to be considered as a function of power.

It is all for the people, but the people are no longer there.