PEDESTALIZING POPE FRANCIS

No buses or biryani for poor Pope Francis! Does this shock you? It should. From whatever I saw or heard around me it seemed like business as usual – jubilees being celebrated, board results being celebrated, even during the official 9 day mourning period. Familiar excuses, as at the wedding feast; “Come to the wedding, but they were not interested, one went off to his farm, another to his business” (Mat 22:5-6).

I attended two memorial services for Pope Francis, one in my own parish, and another inter-religious one. Speeches were made; floral tributes paid, but very little was said about the real Francis. I did not get any sense of deep, let alone personal, loss. It was like just going through the motions.

The attendance at these memorial services was pathetic, shameful infact. I see it as a reflection of people’s apathy or gross ignorance of Pope Francis, and the values that he stood for. The Catholic Church is a past master at event management. Buses and biryani are arranged and the “faithful”, like hungry beggars flock to such events. I feel more hurt than angry at the short shrift that Francis got. A church activist from Mumbai told me that she was not even aware of the service attended by the Governor of Maharashtra. In contrast, the CNI, led by Bp Canning, held a solemn service in Kolkata.

Very recently I had written that the well oiled conservative lobby in the church was only waiting for the pope to pop it. Then they would hurriedly declare him a saint, place him on a pedestal and allow his real message to gather dust on the shelves of seminary libraries. The best way of consigning someone to the dustbin of history is to pedestalize that person.

What is pedestalization? I first chanced across this term in the book “The Conspiracy of God” by Rev John Haughey SJ with a foreword by Cardinal Suenens. That book changed my life; my perception of Jesus, what theologians call Christology. It was the answer to Jesus’ very personal question to Peter, “Whom do you say that I am” (Mat 16:15) or in contemporary language; Who am I to you, how do you perceive me? This is a question that each one of us is repeatedly challenged to answer.

So what is pedestalization? In Haughey’s own words, “The pedestalization of Jesus is the main reason for the anaemic condition of Christianity … Pedestalizers assume that the more unlike us Jesus is made out to be, the more awesomely we will look upon him. They seem to think that belief in him flourishes the less his similarity to us is emphasised” (in inverse proportion). In layman’s language a pedestal is something on which we place a statue, usually out of arm’s reach. We then adulate the one up there, to which unassailable heights we cannot aspire. However, Christian discipleship is not a cultic following of an icon “up there”. It is about a flesh and blood human being “down here”.

When we experience Jesus as one of us, one who could laugh and cry, feel hunger and rejection, experience real pain and despair, then we can begin to identify with him. We can now emulate (follow his example) rather than adulate him (in awesome reverence). I see this as a grave danger in the Catholic Church with its undue emphasis on a cultic form of Christianity through pious devotions, novenas, pilgrimages etc. Some simple believers may be shocked at this. Understandable because that is all that the hierarchy and clergy have indoctrinated them to believe. It is so much easier to adulate Jesus than to emulate him.

Our Christology is reflected in our ecclesiology and even in our social praxis. That is why I endorse Haughey’s contention that the pedestalization of Jesus is what has made Christianity so anaemic (lacking the Anima Christi). These reflections are therefore aimed primarily at the hierarchy and clergy, who have even succeeded in pedestalizing themselves. They can do no wrong, even if some of them are accused of rape and serious financial misdemeanours.

It is therefore for good reason that I fear for the pedestalization of poor Francis. It will dovetail neatly into a deeply entrenched Church that is far from scriptural values, Vatican II teachings or the personal example of beloved Pope Francis. Even during his lifetime Francis was adulated more than emulated.  

His personal example endeared him to the world, but not to Church leaders. How many of them relinquished their limousines for small cars, or their bishop’s palaces for humble dwellings? To the contrary, even at the parish level there is no dearth of “construction” activity rather than constructive forms of catechesis. I suspect that the adulation of the outside world may have clouded Francis’ vision of how ineffective he was among his own flock.

How many of us understood his exhortation to have the smell of the sheep? Because of their rich wool, sheep have a strong odour. If a shepherd drives/ herds his flock he will not get its malodour. If, however, as in popular calendar art, he carries an injured or young one on his shoulders, he is bound to get the smell of the sheep. Tragically, our “shepherds” smell of some expensive deodorant, or even a sanitizer, far from the milling sheep. Few really mingle with the sheep. Even at parish feasts they eat separately. They prefer to drive their flock through sonorous Sunday sermons or financial dependence. 

At such times one remembers the late Bp George Saupin SJ of Daltonganj diocese. He identified closely with his people, wearing a kurta, pyjama and angocha (head cloth). He had a bamboo staff as his crosier and would sit on his haunches smoking a bidi like his tribal people.

There is another danger with pedestalization. It is the readymade effect. Be it Jesus himself; we imagine him as a readymade saviour who just had to switch on a button for salvation to unfold. Nothing could be further from the truth. Haughey calls it growing self-understanding or self-realization under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit.

He says, “What he learned about himself, he discovered only gradually. And what he taught he had first to learn … The great misfortune of the Christology bequeathed to us is its portrayal of a figure who effortlessly knew, from the beginning of his incarnation he had nothing to learn … (but) Jesus learned the way every human being learns except that his principal teacher was the Spirit … Jesus became consciously son as he grew more capable of being present to his Father… Jesus’ knowledge of God and his knowledge of himself grew apace”. This is exactly what St Augustine of Hippo meant when he said “Help me know thee, help me know me”. Scripture also tells us that Jesus had a learning curve leading to perfection. “He learnt obedience through his sufferings, whence he had been perfected” (Heb 5:8-9).

In like manner Francis was not a readymade icon. Like Jesus he was growing in both forms of awareness. We find this in Jesuit or Ignatian spirituality. As Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, he lived in an ordinary apartment, cooked his own food and used public transport – bus or metro, even while he was its archbishop and later cardinal.

We too are invited to grow spiritually. Unfortunately, especially among diocesan priests, after 12-15 years of “formation” they come out as omniscient, subjantawallahs (SJs – a term sometimes used for the Jesuits)! However, a seeker after truth must enter “The Cloud of Unknowing”, a 14^th century anonymous contemplative work. Francis was aware of his unknowing status. That is why he had famously said, “I hope that I will never have to exercise the authority of infallibility”, which he never did. It is also what may have prompted him to say “Who am I to judge” when questioned about a person’s sexual orientation. When we enter the cloud of unknowing we learn humility. When we sit on a mountain top above the cloudline, we are in danger of the pride that comes before a fall. Where are we perched?

Pope Francis had his limitations and perceived failures. There have been many eulogies, again a tendency to pedestalize him. So I am now going to share some of my disappointments. They do not reduce my admiration for him, they enhance it.

Though I am a layman I have learned from many Jesuits while my guru was Fr Deenabandhu Ofm Cap, a genuine Indian Franciscan. When I learned that a Jesuit had chosen the name Francis I rushed to my family altar and prostrated in joyous thanksgiving. I saw it as a great portent for a moribund Catholic Church.

As with Pope John Paul II, Francis too started well, making all the correct noises. But then I noticed a certain reticence creeping in. In the words of Desmond Desouza CssR, was Francis a case of more style than substance? His style was fantastic, but he gradually seemed to be lacking in substance.

The Amazon Synod had generated much hope that degenerated into hype. The Western lobby criticised Francis for his overtures to a different culture. There was expectation of a bold declaration on married and women clergy. Nothing happened. The Synod on the Family and subsequently the much hyped Synod on Synodality ended up as damp squibs, with zero impact on the orthopraxis of the Church. Where is the participation and communion that was the synod’s clarion call? Swallowed up in the all too pervasive clericalism.

A critical dimension of Francis’ ministry that hasn’t got the traction that it merited in India is his outreach to Muslims. There has been a history of conflict between Christianity and Islam, especially in the Middle East and southern Europe. Vatican II humbly and frankly admits that “Although in the course of centuries many quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems (sic), this most sacred Synod urges all to forget the past and to strive sincerely for mutual understanding” (NA 3).

Post World War II and the discovery of oil in the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic countries became economic super powers. The West now needed to reset its equations. They were no longer the white supremacists a la “Lawrence of Arabia”.

Post decolonization north Africa also saw the rise of many despotic dictatorships resulting in a refugee influx into Europe. Some cases of vandalism and terrorism by such refugees resulted in heightened Islamaphobia, the rise of right wing nationalists in Europe and the resultant animosity towards refugees (read Muslims). Pope Benedict XVI had earlier added fuel to the fire by a grossly insensitive remark about Islam being the major source of violence. 

Going back further in history we have the crusades. As an aspirational young man St Francis of Assisi was infatuated by the Christian knights going to liberate the Holy Land from the Saracens. That was before his encounter with Jesus. In his latter avatar he travelled with one companion to Egypt during the 5^th Crusade in 1219 to meet the caliph, Sultan al Malik al Kamil to bring about peace and rapprochement.

Following in his footsteps on 11/2/2019 Pope Francis went to the UAE where he met the head of the Sunni Muslims, the Grand Imam Ahmed al Tayyab of Cairo and signed a joint declaration for peace and friendship.  Later on 6/3/2021, during Covid times he travelled to Najaf in Iraq to meet the Grand Ayatollah of the Shias, Ali al Sistani. In his own way he was negating the “Clash of Civilizations” of which Samuel Huntington had written in 1996. Significantly, the Pope’s first visit was to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa where many illegal migrants landed.

Perhaps our Catholic bishops of Kerala could have taken a leaf out of Francis’ book. They didn’t. Because of some minor localised land disputes they tended to be Islamaphobic; some supporting the BJP in the mistaken belief that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. They fanned the fires of love jihad, the controversial movie “The Kerala Story” and even lent their voice to the Waqf Amendment Bill. These myopic bishops did not have the magnanimity of Vatican II, St Francis of Assisi or Pope Francis. This is just one more instance of Pope Francis’ inability to influence those down the line. 

While on Kerala I have another disappointment with Pope Francis; his misguided support to archaic liturgical rituals in the Syro-Malabar Church that were contrary to the example set by Jesus himself at the Last Supper and the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. Francis even threatened to ex-communicate the reformist leaders in the Ernakulam archdiocese.

Some in India also lamented his inability to visit India. I say, “Just as well”, because the last papal visit by Pope John Paul II was an unmitigated disaster. As a guest of the State, and on Indian soil, he had the temerity to proclaim that the third millennium of Christianity was meant for the conversion of Asia (including India). Till today we are paying the price for that gross indiscretion.

It is not easy to comment or pass judgement on mahatmas like Francis. We do not know what his inner compulsions or restrictions were. Was he hedged in by the likes of Abp Vigano, the former papal envoy to the USA, who kept attacking him in public? Was he being blocked by the conservative bishops of the USA? Was he hemmed in by the presence of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI living on the same campus, whom many conservatives believed was the real pope? Could he not have done more to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine or Gaza by literally putting his head on the block? Easy for us to say, but history will want answers.

By the time this appears in print we could have a new incumbent in the Vatican. Will he be Francis II, Benedict XVII or John Paul III? That itself would be indicative of the legacy of Pope Francis. Was it style or substance? I believe that Francis did take substantial strides in the reform and renewal of the Catholic Church, and by extension the world and the environment that we live in. There may yet be time for buses and biryani to celebrate the life and times of Pope Francis.

Also read “Pedestallising Poor Francis”