Pope Francis, five paradoxes of his pontificate

Paradoxical and incomplete. The Pontificate of Pope Francis can be summed up in these two words. The time will come for all the excellent analyses apt to help us clarify whether Pope Francis’ revolution has given direction to the Church, or whether it was just a twelve-year tempest in a teacup. In short, to determine whether the mentality changed with Pope Francis, or whether the Pope was the only revolutionary; whether people were taking advantage of the changes he wrought, or simply waiting for everything to pass around him.

When Pope Francis appeared for the first time from the loggia twelve years, he was wearing papal white. Only, but he appeared without the red mozzetta and he spoke the people’s language with a simple “Buonasera.” Indeed, he had the people bless him—one of the many South American twists to which he would accustom us over time.

But was the pontificate of Pope Francis, a pontificate for the people?

Instead, it was a pontificate for the pueblo, an almost mystical category typical of Latin American populism. The Pope was thinking of the pueblo when he joined the cry for land, shelter, and work with popular movements; when he emphasized the presence of a God who welcomes todos, todos, todos; when he complained about the elites, and highlighted that from the periphery one could see the center better.

At the same time, however, Pope Francis behaved like Juan Domingo Peron, who, by taking off his shirt along with the descamisados, showed that he was one of them and at the same time showed that he was not, because he “descended” to their level. Pope Francis did not go to the periphery. He created a new center.

Here lies the first great paradox. His fight against the papal court, against what he considered the Vatican’s deep state, led him to create a different system, parallel and equally deep, with the difference that the system around Pope Francis, freed from the rules of formality and institutionality, was less transparent than the previous one. Pope Francis was, in some ways, a victim of his reform and a victim of the men he chose to carry it forward.

Pope Francis decided to move the center of influence away from the Curia. He demonstrated it with the choices of new cardinals (in ten consistories, at a rate of almost one per year). He rewarded men of the Curia only when they were his men—with some exception in the earliest phase of his Pontificate—and he tended to favor secondary residential sees, unless there were men he trusted in the important ones. He demonstrated it when, after years of discussion on the reform of the Curia, he implemented all the changes outside the meetings of the Council of Cardinals he had established to help him craft the curial reform.

On second thought, victim is probably not the right word.

Pope Francis demonstrated this with the significant Vatican trials: Visible and almost humiliating in the cases involving people who no longer had his trust, such as the one on the management of funds in the Vatican, which involved Cardinal Becciu, or the one involving Cardinal Cipriani Thorne, Archbishop Emeritus of Lima; invisible and not at all transparent in those involving people who had his trust, or at least his esteem – the latest, most sensational cases, involved Fr. Marko Rupnik and Archbishop Zanchetta, both protected and even pardoned even when everything demonstrated the opposite.

In the pontificate of Pope Francis, everything was asymmetrical because everything was somehow decided on the spot. It is the model of the reform in progress: first, there was the era of the commissions, then the era of the motu proprio, and then the era of the adjustments of the motu proprio. The plan was almost subversive and the means to carry out the plan changed depending on the situation. It is said that only the stupid do not change their minds, and it is true. In the case of the reforms, however, one notices a lack of long-term planning or, in any case, of the legal competence necessary to create a system that does not collapse.

But was it a true revolution?

The answer to this question brings with it the second great paradox. Pope Francis wants to change the mentality starting from the peripheries, but in doing so, he not only creates a new center. Instead, he adopts the point of view of the elites he fights. He enters Western thought through the most mainstream themes, such as the ecological question, human trafficking on the secular side, the question of divorced and remarried people, the role of women, and the acceptance of homosexuals on the doctrinal side.

These are all themes that come from the First World. The Third World—as we used to call it—desires to live the faith. The people on the peripheriesdesire to live the faith. The people in Europe and the West want to save the planet. People in the developing world are concerned with survival, but the Christian faith helps them survive. This theme dramatically exploded when the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released the declaration Fiducia Supplicans on the blessing of irregular couples, almost entirely rejected by the very Christian regions to which the Pope seemed to address himself most often.

In these situations, the third paradox of the pontificate arises: making universal the themes of the (very) particular Church of Latin America.

Fiducia Supplicans was published when Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, the Pope’s ghostwriter, had come to the helm of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Pope waited nine years to call Fernandez to Rome, but since his appointment, he has defined a change of narrative.

The desire to change the narrative was already evident in the unusual letter that Pope Francis sent to Fernandez when he appointed him prefect of the former Holy Office. In it, the Pope even referred to bad practices of the past. It was a distortion of history and a sullying of an institution that had known the limits of human nature but also carried within itself the greatness of faith.

Fernandez has brought to the fore typically Latin American themes, with the continuous publication of documents, responsa ad dubium that previously remained confined to the relationship between the Dicastery and the local bishop. There is even talk of the faithful who do not approach communion because they feel ashamed of how they are judged by the pastors—a theme that will then be transformed into the request for forgiveness for the “doctrine used as a stone” at the beginning of the last Synod of bishops.

Thus, Pope Francis, who wanted a “clearer view of the center” from the peripheries, instead ended up carrying the full weight of his legacy and his disappointment in the final phase of his pontificate. Part of this is also found in the final decision to dissolve the Sodalitium Christiane Vitae, a lay society whose founder was guilty of abuse. This decision is outside the tradition of the Church, which always seeks to recover the good from the realities of faith. Still, it aligns with the reversal of the “war” experienced in Latin America after the Second Vatican Council.

The fourth paradox is precisely in the style of government.

He is a Pope who wants to walk as a “bishop with the people,” but in the end, he makes all the decisions alone. During the pontificate of Pope Francis, five synods were celebrated (the last one divided into three parts), and the Church was placed in a state of permanent Synod. In the end, however, this synodality is more shown than practiced. The Pope indeed welcomed the Synod’s final document, approving its publication as if it were a magisterial document.

In these twelve years, however, Pope Francis did not make a single decision in anything like a recognizable synodal manner. He has talked at length of the Synod—but the point of his approval of the Synod’s final document this last time was that he, Pope Francis, approved it—but he has given the Synod very little, indeed. The last Synod saw Pope Francis appoint ten study groups that continue to meet on the most controversial issues. He took those away from the Synod.

The fifth paradox concerns transparency.

Never has a Pope spoken so much about himself, even in four autobiographical books in the last two years and dozens of interviews, given with ever more extraordinary generosity and always looking outside the Catholic fold. And yet, we know very little or nothing about this Pope. We do not see the period of the “desert” when the Jesuits sent him to Cordoba and isolated him. We do not know in depth how he behaved during the Argentine dictatorship. We do not even know the depth of his real theological studies, even if various studies have tried to attribute to him the influence of various authors.

Finally, there is the great paradox of the pontificate itself: It was loved and hated in equal measure.

It was appreciated initially, even in his successful diplomatic efforts. However, it was despised in the end, and perhaps the reason is that the good at the beginning was still a residue of the work done in the past, while the final part was all attributable to Francis’s men. A popular pontificate at the beginning, when the Pope’s communicative strokes of genius left catchphrases destined for history. A pontificate muted and almost invisible at the end, when Pope Francis continued to repeat the same concepts without flashes of novelty.

So, what is Pope Francis’s legacy?

At the government level, the institution and trust in it need to be rebuilt. At the doctrinal level, theological uncertainties need to be overcome, and certain aspects need to be clarified. But there is also the beautiful part, that of grand gestures, of Pope Francis kneeling dramatically to hear confession, or of the Pope who dedicates himself incessantly to the crowds.

It is a complex and ultimately unfinished legacy.

Why unfinished, then? Because Pope Francis’s last great revolution was appointing a woman, Sister Raffaella Petrini, to lead the governorate. But Sister Petrini’s mandate has not begun, and a subsequent Pope could make a different decision—upon the Pope’s death, all Curia positions lapse.

Because the last great decision was to dissolve the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, this dissolution has not yet been “initiated” to the congregation, and a subsequent Pope could decide not to proceed. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was working on documents dealing with slavery, monogamy and Mariological issues. If those documents are ever published, it will likely be in fashion very different from the one Pope Francis’s men had begun to give them.

Everything is now in the successor’s hands, but the transition will be more complex than ever.