POPE FRANCIS - "AFTER THE HYPE"

Thanks to my friend Jane Redmont for the link on her Facebook page to the best essay I have read thus far on Francis, the new pope.  In his essay, "After the Hype", Jorge A. Aquino, provides a thoughtful, insightful, measured glimpse of what we might expect from the papacy of  Francis. 

Watching reactions to the papal election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, I have been knocked over, even awed, by their far-flung and contradictory range, by their passion, and by the fiercely polemical attitudes that have constellated in discussions about him. Mapping these responses tells much about the crossroads Roman Catholicism straddles today.
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I read Bergoglio’s election as a top-down compromise by a Roman Catholic hierarchy struggling—like the proverbial Dutch boy before the teetering wall of the levy—to reconcile deepening tensions between these two poles of authority and power in Catholic-Christian churches throughout the world. His papacy would represent continuity in the Vatican’s 30-year-plus strategy to co-opt and neuter the more radical political and social options of the post-conciliar period. The most obvious target has been the discourse and pastoral praxis of liberation theology—including its merger of church-building into radical political options. More recent targets include women’s ordination movements, as well as LGBTQ equal rights. To the extent that Pope Francis has anything to offer as “the first Third World pope,” it is in this context that such an offering will be made.

Early on, when I heard about the election of Francis, I wondered about his role in Argentina's history when he was Provincial Superior of  the Society of Jesus from 1973 to 1979, during the time when a "military junta led by General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera launched a reign of terror on liberal and Marxist groups after their March 1976 coup overthrew the government of Isabel Perón."  I remember the stories of arrests in which people "disappeared", los desaparecidos, and never emerged alive. Aquino explores the period in Argentina's history at length in his essay and notes what is known about Francis during his time as superior of the Jesuits.

Although Aquino finds no direct evidence of Bergoglio's complicity with the despotic rulers, he says:

At the same time, I do not see in Bergoglio a prophetic voice of the sort that we saw in El Salvador, with the martyred Archbishop Romero, or in Brasil’s famously prophetic Dom Helder Câmara. Bergoglio seems not to have denounced the dictatorship in any memorable way until well after it was over.  
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And despite Bergoglio’s reputation as a pastor to the poor, I do not recognize him as any sort of latter-day liberation theologian.

I agree.  From the present membership of the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals, all of whom were appointed by either John Paul II or Benedict XVI, it was not possible that a pope on the order of Câmara or Romero would emerge. I urge any of you who are interested in matters Roman Catholic to read the splendid essay.   I speak as an ex-Roman Catholic, who tries very hard not to be a bitter ex-Catholic (but who doesn't always succeed), and I maintain many friendships with members of my former church, in which I spent 60 years of my life.  

Jorge A. Aquino, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Theology & Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco.