Tribute to Pope Francis No. 04: A Great Beacon in the Midst of Darkness

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Reflections on the legacy of Pope Francis for the Church and the world today.

Félix Grández Moreno

In his splendid novel on Pope Francis and the world today, Javier Cercas recalls an essay by Hannah Arendt, in which this philosopher recounts an anecdote that took place in 1963, at the time when Pope John XXIII was dying in the Vatican. According to Arendt, a person who worked with her told her: “Madam, this pope was a true Christian. How is such a thing possible? How could it happen that a true Christian could sit in the chair of Saint Peter?

The same thing that person said about John XXIII could be said today about Pope Francis: a good person, a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, with all his strength, with all his heart. An authentic Christian. A true Christian.

Like Jesus, Francis did not preach himself. He invited Christians and all human beings to return to Jesus, to return to the Gospel. For Francis, the Christian faith is not an ideology, but the joyful encounter with the God revealed by Jesus, who urges us to go out to meet our neighbor. Without this fundamental dimension of his life, the significance of this great and beloved personage and the transcendence of his pontificate cannot be understood.

Having said this, it must also be said that Francis and his legacy cannot be understood without understanding the impact of the Second Vatican Council on his way of being a Christian and being Church. He himself once said: “Throughout my life, my intuitions, my perceptions and my spirituality were generated by the suggestions of the Second Vatican Council’s doctrine”.

At the beginning of his pontificate and even now many speak of Francis as the great reformer of the Church. Undoubtedly, that was one of the purposes that animated his service. He also took up the teaching and the horizon opened by the Council, his intuition of an open Church, in dialogue with the world, attentive to the signs of the times.

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ollowing Jesus, Francis invited us to read and listen to the signs coming from human history. The great themes or causes of what has been called the magisterium of Francis come from the desire to bring the Gospel and contemporary reality into dialogue.

In a society and a world strongly marked by imbalances, wounds and injustices, he brought the message of human fraternity and social friendship, as well as care for the environment and the Common Home. His encyclicals Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti built bridges between the Church and the world at large and illuminated a horizon overshadowed by the orientation of world politics and the dehumanization of relations at the global level.

It is also said that Francis is the pope of the poor and of mercy. And they are right. It is now known that he chose the name Francis of Assisi in a clear expression of his will to put, like Jesus, his heart in the poor, in the poor of the earth.

He made the preferential option for the poor his own. At the beginning of his pontificate, in 2013, he said he wanted “a poor Church and for the poor”. And he recognized in Gustavo Gutiérrez his closeness to the poor and the encouragement that his theological reflection has given to the commitment of the Church and of Christians with the great human aspiration for liberation.

To understand his impact and legacy, it is not enough to refer to speeches or documents, but it is also necessary to look at the works and gestures of this good man, with a merciful heart. Driven by mercy, Francis addressed complex issues such as the problem of sexual abuse and abuses of power in ecclesial environments. He did not shy away from them and initiated ongoing processes.

For the Church as an institution, Francis’ most significant legacy is the rediscovery of synodality, that is, the impulse so that, in the Church, we can all “walk together”, thus rediscovering “the spiritual joy of being a people”.

It is a process, a path of spiritual conversion and organizational change, with an enormous potential to leave behind clericalism and build a Church of disciples, where all people are equal starting from baptism, recognizing the importance of women and the role of the laity.

In short, Francis, as a good disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, lit a great beacon in a world overshadowed by wars, an economy that excludes the majority, authoritarianism of all kinds and the cruelty of many rulers and powerful people of our time.

In these days, after his death, several analysts have rightly affirmed that Francis initiated reforms that have not yet been completed and that there is a risk that they could be reversed.

It is up to Francis’ successor and, of course, also to Christians and people of good will to keep that light burning, to keep that great beacon shining in the midst of the darkness that still inhabits this moment in the history of humanity.