Person of the year

The developments in Rome during the year 2013 which is about to end are indeed very significant and out of the ordinary. Somehow they indubitably and convincingly prove that somebody up there is guiding and helping the people of God in facing the problems and relentless attacks besetting them in this world. It all started with the sudden and unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of the year. Many were indeed surprised at his move because even at his advanced age he still looks fit and capable of doing his job as Pope and spiritual leader of the more than 2 billion Catholics all over the world.

 But more remarkable and quite surprising is the choice of his successor. He was not among the early favorites and many expected that the election of Pope Benedict’s successor would take quite some time. Yet in a few days, the College of Cardinals had already chosen the 76-year old Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the next Pope who immediately accepted the position and adopted the name of Francis after St. Francis of Assissi. From the moment he assumed the Papacy as Pope Francis, the world felt right away the fresh winds of change gusting forth from the Vatican. In no time at all, people really noticed so many significant changes making the Gospel messages of Christ more relevant and within the grasp especially of the poor. Hence it is not surprising that the prestigious Time Magazine has chosen him the Person of the Year for 2013.

To better understand the reasons for the Time Magazine’s choice of Pope Francis as the Person of the Year, let me just reproduce herein some portions (shortened and edited) of the write-ups about him:

..”In less than a year, he has done remarkable things. He released his first exhortation, an attack on “the idolatry of money,” just as Americans were contemplating the day set aside for gratitude and whether to spend it at the mall. This is a man with a sense of timing. He lives not in the papal palace surrounded by courtiers but in a spare hostel surrounded by priests. He prays all the time, even while waiting for the dentist. He has retired the papal Mercedes in favor of a scuffed-up Ford Focus. No red shoes, no gilded cross, just an iron one around his neck. When he rejects the pomp and the privilege, releases information on Vatican finances for the first time, reprimands a profligate German Archbishop, cold-calls strangers in distress, offers to baptize the baby of a divorced woman whose married lover wanted her to abort it, he is doing more than modeling mercy and ­transparency. He is ­embracing complexity and acknowledging the risk that a church obsessed with its own rights and righteousness could inflict more wounds than it heals. Asked why he seems uninterested in waging a culture war, he refers to the battlefield. The church is a field hospital, he says. Our first duty is to tend to the wounded. You don’t ask a bleeding man about his cholesterol level”.

The compassion, along with a general aura of merriment not always associated with princes of the church, has made Francis something of a rock star. More than 3 million people turned out to see him on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro last summer, the crowds in St. Peter’s Square are ecstatic, and the souvenirs are selling fast. Francesco is the most popular male baby name in Italy. Churches report a “Francis effect” of lapsed Catholics returning to Mass and confession, though anecdotes are no substitute for hard evidence, and surveys of U.S. Catholics, at least, see little change in practice thus far. But the fascination with Francis even outside his flock gives him an opportunity that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, never had — to magnify the message of the church and its power to do great good”.

“Francis affirms the traditional teachings on the sanctity of life but in his exhortation, abortion is mentioned only once, mercy 32 times. He also both affirms sexuality and warns that the church has become distracted by them. He attacks priests who won’t baptize children born out of wedlock for their “rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism.” He declares that God “has redeemed all of us … not just Catholics, everyone, even atheists.” He posed with environmental activists holding an antifracking T-shirt and called on politicians and business leaders to be “protectors of creation.”

.. “He also says the all-male priesthood is not subject to debate, nor is abortion, nor is the definition of marriage. But his focus on the poor and the fact that the world’s poorest 50% control barely 1% of its wealth unsettles those who defend capitalism as the most successful antipoverty program in history. He is simply saying what Popes before him have said, that Jesus calls us to care for the least among us — only he’s saying it in a way that people seem to be hearing differently. And that may be especially important coming from the first Pope from the New World”.

Thus, “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”.

Now I am more convinced that the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the election of Pope Francis are the workings of the Holy Spirit.

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