14 Dec 2013

Ever since St Peter’s rang with Habemus Papam, the last nine months have been punctuated with unsettling transformation for the Vatican, which measures change by the century. Conservatives, liberals, faithful, secular media, just about everyone have been confounded by the phenomena which the Church has come to call the ‘Francis effect’, as lapsed Catholics return to Mass and confessions.  

With over three million people gravitating to see him at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, like a liberal rockstar Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2013 continues to draw ecstatic crowds to St Peter’s Square. The Pope’s popularity has made Francesco the most popular male baby name in Italy. At the same time the Catholic pontiff has placed himself at the heart of the fundamental questions of our time—“about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power”.

The celebrity 76 year old Pope was also named Vanity Fair’s Man of the Year in recognition of his words and deeds during his first one hundred days as pontiff. 

“…In a very short time, a vast, global, ecumenical audience has shown a hunger to follow him. For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world’s largest church to confronting its deepest needs and for balancing judgment with mercy,” Time said in announcing Pope Francis as this year’s winner.

When leadership is in crisis everywhere, the media has hailed Pope Francis, raining superlatives on him of a different kind. “If he carries on like this,” Marina Hyde wrote in the Guardian, “we may have to consider the almost unthinkable: that a good man has been made Pope.” The online magazine Slate went on to call him “a flaming liberal”. Upon his elevation, the then Cardinal Bergoglio had been described as a ‘kick in the teeth’ for the conservatives.

He has to some extent lived up to that description. What sets Pope Francis apart from most predecessors is his willingness to tread formerly forbidden territory, talking ex-tempore on condoms, abortion, women and homosexuality. So much so, that conservative Catholics have been sent scurrying to reach for the scriptures and tomes on church doctrine to look for interpretations. Yet Pope Francis has not substantively deviated from ecclesiastical or doctrinal markers.

Asserting the role of women in a male dominated church, Pope Francis said, “We cannot limit the role of women in the Church to altar girls or the president of a charity, there must be more.” 

On homosexuality—and issue that has brought several to the streets in India in view of the Supreme Court judgement—Pope Francis said “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?”

The Pope’s punishing asceticism, his shunning of the ornate splendour of the Vatican, the cult status he has acquired, the message of compassion and openness in kissing the face of a disfigured man, in washing the feet of a Muslim woman, in urging priests to baptize the children born out of wedlock and his reference to the pastoral Church “as a field hospital after battle” with a mission to heal, would have all weighed in the Time magazine choice for the person who made the greatest impact this year. 

An affable Pope who has made justice, charity and the poor the focus of his Papacy, has been indeed a gift and will shine a light on millions in the true spirit of Christmas this season.