Interview offers a 360-degree look at Pope Francis

In a wide-ranging interview with Jesuit publications, Pope Francis said today’s church needs to “heal wounds” by proclaiming the Gospel and moving away from the “small-minded rules” that have sometimes dominated its message.

The interview, published in the United States by America magazine, is well worth reading in its entirely. It gives a more complete picture of the Argentine pope, including his spirituality, his goals as pope and some interesting self-criticism.

Asked what the church needs most today, the pope said it was “the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.”

“I see the church as a field hospital after battle.It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else,” he said.

“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all,” he said.

Francis said his primary role as pope was “discernment” and promised that this would be done with consultation. This is not something he always did as a young Jesuit provincial, he said, and his authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led to trouble.

At the Vatican, he said, he wants to offer consistories of cardinals and synods of bishops a real chance for input, which means giving them “a less rigid form.” That’s the idea behind the “group of eight” cardinals he’s named to consult on Curia reform, he added.

“I do not want token consultations, but real consultations,” he said. In particular, he said the Synod of Bishops in its current form is not dynamic and could learn lessons in collegiality from Orthodox brethren.

As for the Roman Curia, the pope indicated that many problems and complaints brought to Rome’s attention can and should be dealt with by local bishops. “The Roman congregations are mediators; they are not middlemen or managers,” he said. Nor should they be “institutions of censorship,” he said.

Pope Francis emphasized that the Catholic faithful, as the people of God, are “infallible in matters of belief.” He spoke of the “common sanctity” witnessed in daily life: “a woman who is raising children, a man who works to bring home the bread, the sick, the elderly priests who have so many wounds but have a smile on their faces because they served the Lord, the sisters who work hard and live a hidden sanctity.”

In this sense, he said, the church is “the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.”

The Ignatian idea of “thinking with the church” involves a dialogue between all its members, he said. “We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church.”

As he told reporters on his return flight from Brazil in July, the pope said the church “cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.”

“This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context,” he said.

“The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” he said.

Francis said the way the church teaches in the modern world is crucial to the success of evangelization, which must focus on the essentials.

“The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently….We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel,” he said.

Asked the about importance of the Second Vatican Council, the pope said its fruits have been enormous, particularly in the area of liturgy.

He said the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to grant wider use of the Tridentine Mass was “prudent,” but added that there was a worrying risk of exploiting the old liturgy ideologically.

All this confirms what we’ve seen and heard in bits and pieces over the last six months: that this pope has a new vision of papal ministry and is unafraid to put it into practice.

In letter to newspaper, Pope Francis broadens dialogue with non-believers

Pope Francis’ skills as a communicator were on display today in two very different forms, one that made headlines and one that moved people to tears.

The headline in the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, “Dialogue open with non-believers,” ran above a lengthy papal letter — under the simple byline “Francesco” – addressed to the newspaper’s director, Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist who had posed several questions for the new pope earlier in the year.

In effect, Francis laid out a road map for dialogue with all those who do not find themselves in the Christian faith, a dialogue the pope said should be “open and without preconceptions.” After explaining how his own faith was rooted in a personal encounter with Christ, the pope argued that Christ was a figure of openness not exclusion, whose followers should be motivated by a spirit of service and not arrogance. For the believer, he said, dialogue is not secondary but an “indispensable” expression of faith.

Francis then responded directly to some of Scalfari’s questions, including whether God forgives those who do not believe and who do not seek faith. His answer focused on the primacy of the individual conscience.

“Given that – and this is the fundamental thing – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to him with a sincere and contrite heart, the issue for the person who does not believe in God is in obeying one’s own conscience. There is sin, even for someone who has no faith, when one goes against the conscience. To listen and to obey it signifies, in fact, making a decision in front of what is perceived as good or as evil. And on this decision the goodness or the wickedness of our actions comes into play,” the pope said.

Francis then turned to the question of absolute versus relative truth, and said the terminology required some fine-tuning. “To begin with, I would not speak, not even for believers, of an ‘absolute’ truth, in the sense that absolute is that which is unbound, freed from every relationship.” For Christians, he said, the essential truth is God’s love for us in Jesus Christ – which is itself a relationship, a path that requires humility and openness.

“That doesn’t mean the truth is variable and subjective, on the contrary. But it means that truth is given to us always and only as a path and a life,” he said. In discussing things like truth, the pope said it was necessary to back away from terminology that closes off dialogue and places everything in opposition.

The pope closed his letter with a pledge to continue dialogue with non-Christians and non-believers, in a way that promotes a clearer understanding of the church’s mission.

“The church, believe me, despite all the slowness, the unfaithfulness, the errors and sins that it may have committed and may still commit in those who constitute it, has no other meaning and goal than that of living and witnessing Jesus.” The church, he said, quoting the Gospel of Luke, aims “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

This was a remarkable papal bridge-building effort that, as Francis said in the letter, is inspired by “the Second Vatican Council, desired by John XXIII” and by the actions of succeeding popes. It’s already created a buzz in Italy, and is further evidence that this pope feels as comfortable expressing himself in the columns of a newspaper as in formal papal documents.

The pope’s non-headline encounter took place at the tail end of his weekly general audience, and in a sense was routine: he took about 25 minutes to bless and converse with sick people and their caretakers. I’ve watched other popes do this, too, but Francis seems to have a special feeling for the sick and an ability to make them feel special. Maybe it’s his unhurried pace, his willingness to lean in and listen to them for minutes at a time, his ability to carry out conversations with people who may be partially paralyzed, disabled or, in one case, strapped into a portable respirator. He accepted their gifts with a big smile and comments, and this was clearly a big moment for many of them.

He held one elderly woman’s hand for what seemed like an eternity, listening to her story with patience. Whatever she told him brought a smile to his face.

This, too, is communication Francis-style and it has a deep impact on those who witness it. It seemed like the perfect complement to the pope’s newspaper essay.

As pope meets Curia, new secretary of state makes waves

As Pope Francis presided over a meeting of Roman Curia department heads today, his new pick for Secretary of State was making news on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Archbishop Pietro Parolin, in an interview with the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, said among other things that the church’s tradition of priestly celibacy was not dogma and was therefore open to discussion. And he said that while the church was not a democracy, it needs to reflect the democratic spirit of the times and adopt a collegial way of governing.

Neither statement is exactly groundbreaking, but the fact that the new secretary of state feels free to make them says a lot about the current atmosphere in the Vatican.

Parolin said that priestly celibacy, which remains the norm in the Western church, is a tradition that goes back to early Christian times and that has been strengthened through the centuries.

“The effort made by the church to institute ecclesial celibacy must be taken into consideration. One cannot simply say that it belongs to the past,” he said.

The question, he said, represents “a great challenge for the pope,” because the pope’s ministry is one of unity, and any decision on celibacy would have to be made without damaging the communion of the church.

He added that “it is possible to discuss and reflect on these topics that are not defined faith, and consider some modifications, but always in the service of unity and according to God’s will.” One also needs to be attentive to the signs of the times, he said.

The question of priestly celibacy has long been a lightning rod at the Vatican. In 2006, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes made a similar statement, saying that although celibacy was “part of Catholic history and culture, the church could review this question, because celibacy is not a dogma but a disciplinary question.”

Cardinal Hummes made the comment in an interview in Brazil shortly before assuming his post as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy. Within a few hours of his arrival in Rome, he was pressed to issue a statement declaring that priestly celibacy was an ancient value in the church and was not up for discussion.

Archbishop Parolin, who is ending his term as papal nuncio in Venezuela before assuming his new post in mid-October, said it is a good thing for the church to implement a “more democratic spirit, in the sense of listening carefully, and I think the pope has indicated this as an aim of his pontificate, a collegial leadership of the church in which all requests can be expressed.”

In Rome, meanwhile, the Vatican had little to say about this morning’s three-hour-long meeting between Pope Francis and about 30 heads of Vatican departments. The pope opened the encounter with words of welcome but then sat back and did more listening than talking, sources said.

It was the first time Francis has presided over a Vatican department head meeting, but a statement issued by Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi took pains to underline that the pope has, over recent months, met personally with each of the top Roman Curia officials.

Father Lombardi also emphasized that suggestions or reflections from today’s meeting will naturally be part of discussions when the papally-appointed group of eight cardinals meets in early October to consider Curia reform and issues of church governance. The point seemed to be that the Roman Curia will be heard in this process of reform, and that the “Group of 8” will not be working on a completely separate track.