As Pope Francis lay in state inside St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, his footwear attracted some attention. Instead of the traditional red shoes of the fisherman, the late pope’s were scuffed and well worn. These shoes of a shepherd testified to his great work, now done.
In his 12-year pontificate, Pope Francis flung open the doors of the Catholic Church. Instead of being a closed club of the supposedly virtuous, he saw the church as an ospedale da campo, a field hospital where the wounded may be healed. The Eucharist — for Catholics the summit of faith life — “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”, as he put it.
The idea that the laws of the church could find pastoral applications that do not condemn and exclude delighted many but scandalised others. The latter, one might say, acted like the elder brother of the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ parable: some ruthlessly politicised pastoral concerns; but most were likely genuinely concerned about moral relativism, which, in Catholic understanding, is the erroneous belief that moral truths are subjective and changeable, rather than objective and grounded in God’s eternal law. That debate will doubtless continue.
Moral relativism also concerns issues other than the “sins of the flesh”. Pope Francis lived the social teachings of the Catholic Church, which condemn the exploitation of the poor, the culture of greed, and economic systems that tolerate — or even create — poverty and suffering. These teachings refer as much to individuals as to geographical regions on the periphery of the global economy, many in Africa and some ravaged by war over access to natural resources and minerals. For Pope Francis, giving witness to these teachings was a priority.
In his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”), he condemned the neoliberal economy, suggesting that the trickle-down theory is a lethal fallacy. “Today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills,” he wrote. “How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.”
In some quarters, Pope Francis’s critique of prevailing capitalist systems was met with angry accusations, with some critics suggesting he was a socialist — even a Marxist.
Such accusers were poor students of Catholic social doctrine. Everything Pope Francis said on the moral crises of capitalism faithfully echoed the concerns expressed by all his predecessors since Pope Pius XI, elected in 1922. They all — including the supposed “conservatives” Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI — drew from a pioneering encyclical on the “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour” titled Rerum Novarum (which means “of revolutionary change”), issued in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII.
In his concern for the environment — Pope Francis wrote a landmark encyclical on the subject, Laudato Si’ — he built on the work of his immediate predecessors. On the question of migration, he was as forthright as Pope John Paul II, who in 1982 called the reality of millions of refugees throughout the world “a shameful evil of our time”.
Unlike his predecessors, Pope Francis lived in the age of opinion saturation through social media, which amplified all he did and said — and the reaction to his every action.
The popularity of Pope Francis rested on his humility, modesty, kindness and humour
Pope Francis’s concern for those on the peripheries — the poor, the homeless, the ill, migrants, the LGBTQ community and others — was always rooted in the Gospel, which Christians are called to proclaim faithfully.
The popularity of Pope Francis rested on his humility, modesty, kindness and humour. But more than that, he was so beloved — and controversial — because he modelled the key Gospel value of compassion like few popes before him.
Will the next pope follow Pope Francis’s path, trod by those worn-out orthopaedic shoes? Perhaps he will. More likely he will chart his own course, building on some of his predecessor’s magisterium and possibly de-emphasising others.
But there will be one area where the new pontiff — whether “conservative” or “progressive” (categories that are not particularly useful when analysing Catholic leaders) — will stand on common ground with Pope Francis and his predecessors: the Catholic social teachings.
Expect the new pontiff to echo the voices of popes Francis, Benedict, John Paul, Paul, John and the last two Piuses as he advocates for an economic and social mentality that is compassionate, ethical and socially and environmentally responsible, and which promotes peace and protects migrants and the poor.
Simmermacher is the editor-in-chief of the national Catholic magazine The Southern Cross
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