VATICAN CITY (AP) — Too much has happened for such a short pontificate.
Pope Francis marks the 10th anniversary of his election on Monday, far exceeding the “two or three” years he once envisioned for his papacy and showing no signs of slowing down.
On the contrary, with a schedule full of problems and projects and without the shadow of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Francis, 86, stopped talking about retirement and recently described the papacy as a job for life.
The first Latin American pope in history has already left his mark and his impact could grow in the years to come. But ten years ago, the Argentinian Jesuit was so convinced he would not be elected that he nearly missed the last ballot while chatting with another cardinal outside the Sistine Chapel.
“The emcee came out and said, ‘Are you going to come in or aren’t you going to come in?'” Francisco recalled in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It was my unconscious resistance to enter, I realized it.”
He was elected 266th pope in the following ballot.
SEXUAL ABUSE
Francis had a steep learning curve about clergy sex abuse. At first, he downplayed the issue, leading survivors to wonder if he “got it”. The change came five years after he took office after a troubled visit to Chile.
During the trip, he discovered a serious discrepancy between what the Chilean bishops had told him about an important case and the reality: hundreds or thousands of Chilean faithful had been raped and assaulted by Catholic priests for decades.
“That’s where I converted,” he told the AP. “There the bomb exploded on me, when I saw the corruption of many bishops in there.”
Since then, he has approved a series of measures aimed at holding the church hierarchy accountable, but the results have been mixed. Benedict has ousted some 800 priests, but Francis seems far less willing to expel the attackers, reflecting resistance within the hierarchy to efforts to permanently remove the attackers from the priesthood.
The next stage of the crisis has already manifested itself: the sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse of adults by clergy. Francis is aware of the problem – a new case involves one of his fellow Jesuits – but there does not seem to be a will to act decisively.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SYNODS
When the history of Francis’ pontificate is written, entire chapters may be devoted to its emphasis on “synodalism,” a concept that has little meaning outside of Catholic circles but could go down in history as one of Francis’ most important ecclesiastical contributions.
A synod is a gathering of bishops, and Francis’ philosophy of listening to one another and to the laity came to define his vision of the Church: he wants it to be a place where the faithful are welcomed, accompanied and listened to.
Some of the most important and controversial moments of his pontificate emerged from those celebrated during these 10 years.
After hearing about the plight of divorced Catholics at a synod on the family in 2014 and 2015, for example, he opened the door to allowing divorced and civilly remarried couples to receive communion. Calls to allow priests to marry marked the 2019 Amazon synod, although Francis ultimately rejected the idea.
October was an unprecedented poll of the Catholic faithful on their hopes for the Church and the issues they have faced, prompting women to push for greater leadership roles, including ordination.
Mass in Latin
Catholic traditionalists were suspicious when Francis first appeared as pope in the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica without the red cape his predecessors wore to official events. Yet they did not expect him to reverse one of Benedict XVI’s signature decisions by reimposing restrictions on the Old Latin Mass, including where and who can say it.
Although the move only directly affected a small portion of Catholics who attend Mass, the crackdown on the Tridentine Mass has become a call to arms for conservative opposition to Francis.
The pontiff justified his decision by saying that Benedict’s decision to liberalize the celebration of the Old Mass had become a source of division in the parishes. But traditionalists see the renewed restrictions as an attack on orthodoxy at odds with their “everyone is welcome” mantra.
“Instead of integrating them into parish life, the restriction of the use of parish churches will marginalize and push to the periphery the Catholic faithful who only want to pray,” lamented Joseph Shaw, of the British branch of the Latin Mass Society. .
Although the prospects of the pope relenting anytime soon are bleak, traditionalists have time on their side, knowing that from a 2,000-year-old institution, another will come that is more open to the old rite.
THE ROLE OF WOMEN
Francois’ jokes about “feminine genius” have long sent shivers down the spine of women. Theologians are the “icing on the cake”, he once said. Nuns should not be “spinsters”, she said. Europe must not be a sterile and infertile ‘grandmother’, she told European Union lawmakers, a statement that earned her an angry phone call from the then German Chancellor , Angela Merkel. .
But it’s also true that Francis did more to promote women in the Church than any of his predecessors, including appointing several to high-level Vatican positions.
This does not mean much since barely one in four employees of the Holy See is a woman, that none heads a dicastery or a department, and that Francis supported the doctrine which forbids them to exercise the priesthood.
But the trend is there and ‘there is no possibility of going back,’ says María Lía Zervino, one of the first three women elected to a Vatican office that helps the pontiff select bishops around the world. .
LGBTQ GIRLS
Francis’ insistence that long-marginalized Catholics in the LGBTQ community can find a welcoming home in the church can be summed up in two phrases that have marked his pontificate to this day: “Who am I to judge? and “Being gay is not a crime.”
Among these historic statements, Francis has made community outreach another hallmark of his papacy.
Serves members of a transgender community in Rome. He advised homosexual couples who want to educate their children in Catholicism. During a visit to the United States in 2015, he went public with a private meeting with a gay former student and his partner to counter the conservative narrative after hosting an anti-same-sex marriage campaigner.
“The Pope reminds the Church that the way people treat each other in society is of far greater moral importance than what people can do in the privacy of their bedrooms,” said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ acceptance. Catholics.