This week’s visit of Latin America’s first pontiff
to his home continent is rich in symbolism, something at which Pope
Francis has excelled since his election in March.
However, in a
series of public addresses and homilies over the next four days to the
enormous crowds of pilgrims attending World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro,
he will also have a chance to begin giving a clearer indication of the
direction in which the first pope from the “global south” intends to
lead the Catholic Church.
More than 70 per cent of
the world’s Catholics are now from Latin America, Africa and Asia and
the election of the first pope from their ranks signals a change in an
institution dominated for centuries by Europeans.
“This
is the first pope from the global south. The cardinals made a strategic
decision to cut their losses in a highly secularised Europe,” says
Andrew Chesnut, the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies
at the Virginia Commonwealth University.
“But while the church is thriving in Africa
and in many Asian countries, it is not in Latin America and I think the
thinking within the conclave was, with 42 per cent of the world’s
Catholics from Latin America, perhaps it is not too late for critical
intervention there as it is in Europe.”
As an
Argentinian, Pope Francis knows well the main challenge in Latin America
is not – as in Europe and North America – from secularism.
Instead
it is evangelical, mainly Pentecostal Protestant, churches that have
experienced rapid growth across the region in recent decades consigning
to history Rome’s near-monopoly on the region’s souls.
Indeed,
as cardinal of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis made his reputation as a
pastor who, allied with other cardinals in the region, spearheaded an
evangelising campaign that sought to compete with the Pentecostals
across Latin America.
This pastoral experience led
him to push Argentina’s clergy into the slums where the evangelical
sects were making most gains. It means he brings to the papacy a
different set of priorities and skills than the anti-communism of John
Paul II and the intellectual concern with Europe’s deepening secularism
of Benedict.
This change, grounded in personal
experience, can be seen in the new pope’s expressed desire for a “poor
church for the poor”, embodied by his own personal simplicity that has
won him millions of admirers.
It is a message
that will resonate in a Latin America where, despite a decade’s
progress, poverty and inequality remain entrenched.
“It
is clear he is someone who has had direct contact with misery, who
visited the slums of Buenos Aires and knows what human suffering is,”
says Leonardo Boff,
a left- wing Brazilian theologian who left the priesthood after a clash
with Pope Benedict when the latter was head of the Congregation of
Faith.
“Everything must start with compassion and
indignation. Without these sentiments, there can be no serious
engagement in favour of the poor. This pope shows these sentiments.”
This new emphasis on the global iniquities of poverty and attacks on capitalism, however, does not necessarily mean that Pope Francis is about to radically change Rome’s doctrines on sexuality, of which he was a defender as cardinal and which are less questioned in the global south than in Europe and North America.
“Because
of the fact he is a Latin America and the first Jesuit pope, and because
of his personal emphasis on simplicity, Francis represents a historical
break,” says Manuel A. Vasquez, author of several books on the Latin
American Church.
“But there are a lot of
continuities with John Paul II and Benedict and I think we should be
careful not to overemphasise the differences.”
Instead, Vatican watchers say what is under way is a shift in emphasis.
“I
expect a rebalancing of papal teaching which means stepping back from
the very strong emphasis of the last 25 years on sexuality,” says Massimo Faggioli, a historian of the Vatican.
“I
think Francis realises this message has not just become divisive within
Catholicism but has overshadowed all the church’s other teachings such
as those on poverty and social justice.”
How Pope Francis plans to execute this rebalancing could become clearer by the end of the week.