Once dubbed the people’s pope, he quickly became an ideological enforcer, driving ancient traditions underground.
To mark his 10 years in office, Pope Francis has granted several exclusive interviews. How do you explain any errors under your leadership, La Nación asked? I can be impatient, he replied. This is the papal equivalent of telling a job interviewer you “work too hard”, the difference being that in this case it is true. Francis is 86, he uses a cane and wheelchair, and he sounds disappointed. It is probably time for him to retire.
When he was elected on this very day in 2013, he appeared on the balcony in St Peter’s and smiled. The world’s media decided no pontiff had done this before, hence was born the myth of the people’s pope, or what journalist Paolo Rodari described to him as “the Pope of the least”. “It is true that I have a preference for those who are discarded,” said Francis, for he is a humble man and would be the first to admit it.
Showers have been installed in St Peter’s for the homeless. Francis met refugees. He wrote a beautiful encyclical about the environment. And he tried to find a pastoral response to tricky personal matters such as divorce or homosexuality.
“Gender ideology”, however, remains “a dangerous ideological colonisation”. If you find the Pope’s pick-and-mix liberalism odd (pro-gay, anti-trans), then it’s because he embodies less a coherent philosophy than the generational prejudices of the 1960s (for those who lived through it, apparently the most important moment in religious history outside the life of Christ). The era dictates their taste in art, music, liturgy and politics, and this narrow frame of reference not only winds up traditionalists (because Francis’s party rejects some of what came before), but also liberals (because their concept of what is possible stops around the millennium).
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