The anniversary of the
Pontificate, looking to the essential
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| Anniversary of Popr Francis' pontificate |
Pope Francis has lived, and about to live out, several
intense months between voyages and Synods. His sixth year was characterized by
the scourge of abuse and by suffering from internal attacks; the response is an
invitation to turn to the heart of the faith.
By Andrea Tornielli
The sixth anniversary of the election sees Pope Francis
engaged in a year filled with important international journeys, marked at the
beginning and the end by two “synodal” events: the meeting for the protection
of minors, which took place last February with the participation of the
presidents of the episcopal Conferences of the whole world; and the special
Synod on the Amazon, which will be celebrated – also at the Vatican – this
coming October. Particularly noteworthy was the recent journey to the United
Arab Emirates, which saw the Bishop of Rome signing a joint Declaration with
the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar. It is a document that hopefully will have consequences
in the field of religious liberty. The theme of ecumenism will be prevalent in
the upcoming journeys to Bulgaria and Romania, while the hoped-for – but not
yet official – journey to Japan could help to keep alive the memory of the
devastation caused by nuclear weapons, as a warning for the present and for the
future of humanity that is living through the “piecemeal World War III” of
which the Pope often speaks.
But a glance back at the year just passed cannot ignore the
re-emergence of the abuse scandal, and of the internal divisions that led the
ex-nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò to publicly call for the resignation of the Pope
for the handling of the McCarrick case, precisely at the moment Pope Francis
was celebrating the Eucharist with thousands of families in Dublin, proposing
anew the beauty and value of Christian matrimony. Confronted with these
situations, the Bishop of Rome asked all the faithful throughout the world to
pray the Rosary every day, throughout the following Marian month of October, in
order to unite themselves “in communion and penance, as the people of God, in
asking the Holy Mother of God and Saint Michael the Archangel to protect the
Church from the devil, who always seeks to divide us from God and to cause
divisions among ourselves”. Such a detailed request is unprecedented in the
recent history of the Church. With his words and the appeal to the people of
God that they pray to maintain unity in the Church, Pope Francis has made clear
the gravity of the situation, and at the same time has expressed the Christian
understanding that human remedies alone are not able to ensure a way forward.
Once again, the Pope has recalled what is essential: The
Church is not made of super-heroes (or even super-popes), and does not move
forward in virtue of its human resources or of its strategies. She knows that
the evil one is present in the world, that original sin exists, and that in
order to be saved we need help from above. Repeating that does not mean
diminishing the personal responsibility of each individual, and even the
responsibility of the institution, but of situating them in their real context.
In the Vatican communiqué announcing the Pope’s request for
the Rosary last October, we read, “With this request for intercession, the Holy
Father asks the faithful of the whole world to pray that the Holy Mother of God
place the Church beneath her protective mantle: to preserve her from the
attacks of the devil, the great accuser; and at the same time to make her more
aware of the faults, the errors and the abuses committed in the present and in
the past”.
“In the present and in the past” – because it would be an
error put the blame on those who came before us, and to present ourselves as
“pure”. Even today the Church must seek from some Other to be delivered from
evil. This is a fact of reality that the Pope, in continuity with his
predecessors, has constantly recalled.
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