The inspiring Pope Francis

Written By: - Date published: 5:36 pm, December 6th, 2023 - 18 comments
Categories: Deep stuff, religion, sustainability, uncategorized - Tags:

Though I don’t find it easy to be inspired at the moment, Pope Francis consistently tells me to lift my game.

Pope Francis has been pope for a bit over 10 years. He’s made a difference.

It was 8 years ago that he set down in clear theological terms the relationship between global inequality, poverty, and climate change in his long paper Laudate Si. I hadn’t seen writing like it. It made hard connections between rights to fresh water and water scarcity, biodiversity loss and poverty, accelerating climate change, and simply railing against our utilitiarian thinking that all life is merely a resource to be used and used up. Putting in extended quotes so you can get the style of writing he deploys:

It is not enough, however, to think of different species merely as potential “resources” to be exploited, while overlooking the fact that they have value in themselves. Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever. The great majority become extinct of reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.

It may well disturb us to learn of the extinction of mammals or birds, since they are more visibl. But the good functioning of ecosystems also requires fungi, algae, worms, insects, reptiles and an innumerable variety of microorgamisms. (…)

A sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.”

That’s a powerful set of messages to send out to the 18% of the entire world who are Catholic, and the many millions more in communion in the various Orthodox denominations.

It is in his COP28 remarks that we now see Pope Francis simply calling out bluntly what one might ordinarily hear from Greenpeace or the Green Party: simply stop all fossil fuels by calling for “a decisive acceleration of ecological transition through means that meet three requirements: they must be efficient, obligatory and readily monitored. And achieved in four sectors: energy efficiency; renewable resources; the elimination of fossil fuels; and education in lifestyles that are less dependent on the latter.”

But as in Laudate Se, in 2023 he goes deeper, broader and further and makes the connection to climate change and war: “How many resources are being squandered on weaponry that destroys lives and devastates our common home! Once more I present this proposal: With the money spent on weapons and other military expenditures, let us establish a global fund that can finally put an end to hunger.”

What Pope Francis usually does in his messaging is to bring the moral focus away from the powerful – in particular anyone in power in his church – and towards the poor. At COP28 Pope Francis put it in phrasing that might have come from Greta Thunberg:

”Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest. (…)  You are responsible for crafting policies that can create concrete and cohesive responses, and in this way demonstrate the nobility of your role and the dignity of the service that you carry out. In that end, the purpose of power is to serve. It is useless to cling to an authority that will one day be remembered for its inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so.”

And then he gets straight back to the gross inequality of all this damage going straight onto the backs of poorer countries:

“It is not the fault of the poor, since the almost half of our world that is more needy is responsible for scarcely 10% of toxic emissions, while the gap between the opulent few and the masses has never been so abysmal. The poor are the real victims of what is happening: we need think only of the plight of indigenous peoples, deforestation, the tragedies of hunger, water and food insecurity, and forced migration.”

If one remembers for a moment that COP28 is being held in a Muslim petro-state, hosted by a Muslim petro-king making side hustles with oil companies at the same time, inside one of the most outrageously unequal societies on earth which also hosts one of the largest military bases in the world, milling with thousands of oil lobbyists and world leaders pretending and extending the current oil use we have now, you get to see the accuracy of the Pope’s targeting. He carries the voice of 18% of people into that single moral message.

At COP28 Pope Francis wasn’t able to attend due to ill health, but his message was resolute.

I am not of course defending the Catholic church, which made its deal with the Roman empire about 1700 years ago and many parts of its institutional sin and damage continue to come to light.

I am simply stating that this is a leader I get inspired by.

Pope Francis is the first Southern Hemisphere pope. He’s the first to bring women into high office in Rome or elsewhere. He’s massively tilted the Cardinals to be majority Southern Hemisphere and from developing countries rather than Europe. In doing so he has permanently shifted the centre of gravity of the church towards the poorer countries and away from the rich. He has made it much more likely that this is a permanent shift and that his successor will also be from a developing and poor-dominant country.

He’s pushed as hard as reasonable in the current Cardinal makeup to getting women to be deacons, even if he draws the line at priesthood. He has actively welcomed gay and transgender people back into the church. He clearly believes ordained celibacy is optional. He is a very rare gender liberal among any Abrahamic faith. His successor will likely continue this set of tasks into fresh rules.

He is anti-jail, pro-refugee, anti-poverty, anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-utilitarian, and pro-life in its continuity of anti-abortion, anti-death penalty, and anti-euthenasia forms.

He has had no compunction against firing or downgrading United States conservative and rich Bishops who undercut him. He loathes church management with a passion and tells them so en masse and to their face. In return, as a church leader you are either on his team or he just loathes you.

It’s likely he will retire in the next couple of years since he applies a clear up-or-out policy to himself as much to all his management.

In the meantime, while he’s still around, I find him inspiring.

18 comments on “The inspiring Pope Francis ”

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  1. Blazer 1
    6 December 2023 at 5:45 pm

    AFAIK there are only two countries on Earth where divorce is illegal.

    They are the Philippines and the Vatican City.

    Should be easy work for this inspiring,liberal…Pope.wink

    • bwaghorn 1.1
      6 December 2023 at 7:16 pm

      I guess any step in the right direction is a step in the right direction!!! When I see a woman pope then I'll take real notice.

    • Ghostwhowalks 1.2
      6 December 2023 at 8:47 pm

      If you are a Muslim in the Phillipines you can divorce

  2. adam 2
    6 December 2023 at 5:58 pm

    It really comes across that Pope Francis is the only western leader worthy of the name Christian.

    The only other one of note is Shawn Fain.

    To many others are besotted by the hocus-pocus of christian nationalism.

  3. SPC 3
    6 December 2023 at 7:45 pm

    It takes some time to change the direction of an institution near 2000 years old, especially when that might well require climbing down from an infallibility claim. Authority is not easily given up.

    Geering and Veitch decades back proposed the idea of transforming the old god into the modern one, and that was in a church not constrained by infallibility (but the elect doctrine and maybe predestination and adherence to the authority of the bible word). Who can forget the role of the presbyter parliament in the 17th C?

    Like those of end time millennial aspect in the American religious sphere, one suspects that some will aspire to a Christian dominionism in association with an authoritarian regime before accepting change.

    Centuries ago John Wycliffe said it was the invisible church, those of faith without the official status and power to corrupt them, that would continue the tradition.

    Then they might understand that 6 pairs of men would be superseded by the equality of the other half of humanity. Maybe they should consider the story of the woman by a well and the meaning of that story.

    • Ad 3.1
      7 December 2023 at 11:09 am

      Geering has been the best theologian the Southern Hemisphere has produced.

      I'm a fan even if I disagree with him.

      • Rolling-on-Gravel 3.1.1
        7 December 2023 at 2:57 pm

        I like the idea of a truly modern God, I've long thought if we have to have God somewhere, I want Them to be as modern as possible even if They are not personally relevant to me as an atheist.

        I do not want anybody to cede religion to the fundamentalists & theocrats, even if the modern religion declines into nothingness.

        If we have to have God while the concept of Them is dying, let's make it at least as smooth as possible and make it cause ourselves as little problems as possible in the process.

  4. Mike the Lefty 4
    7 December 2023 at 5:02 pm

    Francis is the most progressive pope the Catholic church has had in a century.

  5. Chess Player 5
    7 December 2023 at 7:45 pm

    Has he cleaned out the paedophiles yet?