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| Pope Francis. Against the Roman Curia. Photo: L'Osservatore Romano/Getty |
A cautiously bold move. Or, perhaps, a boldly cautious move. In choosing the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the cardinals of the Catholic Church are trying to indicate that they are open and listening to calls for change, while hewing carefully to their traditions and the conservative doctrine of the past two Popes. We will see in the coming months whether to put the accent on caution or boldness.
The choice of Cardinal Bergoglio does mark a series of firsts: the first non-European Pope in modern times (there were Middle Eastern and North African Popes in the first several hundred years of the Church); the first Latin-American Pope; the first Jesuit Pope—interesting, since the Jesuit order has been viewed with some suspicion in Vatican circles as excessively liberal and intellectual; the first Pope to take the name of Francis, in homage to St. Francis of Assisi, whose life of poverty and attention to the poor was a radical challenge to the monarchic papacy of his time. Bergoglio made a point of wearing simple vestments, even as he greeted the crowd in St. Peter’s Square.
Rare among modern Popes, he has not served any time in one of the offices of the Vatican bureaucracy in Rome; indeed, he has made some sharp remarks about the vanity, self-infatuation, careerism, and pursuit of promotions in the Roman Curia. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he apparently preferred to be called Father Jorge, and was known for his preoccupation with the city’s poorest, reportedly washing and kissing the feet of patients suffering from AIDS.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/pope-francis-against-the-roman-curia.html#ixzz2NZojSEQY
