Pope Francis at 10 years
A reformer’s learning curve, plans
Pope Francis celebrates the 10th anniversary of his election Monday, far outpacing the “two or three” years he once envisioned for his papacy and showing no signs of slowing down.
On the contrary, with an agenda full of problems and plans and no longer encumbered by the shadow of Pope Benedict XVI, Francis, 86, has backed off from talking about retiring and recently described the papacy as a job for life.
Yet a decade ago, the Argentine Jesuit, the first Latin American pope, was so convinced he wouldn’t be elected as pope that he nearly missed the final vote as he chatted with a fellow cardinal outside the Sistine Chapel.
He was elected the 266th pope on the next ballot.
SEX ABUSE
Francis had a big learning curve on clergy sex abuse, initially downplaying the problem in ways that made survivors question whether he “got it.” He had his wake-up call five years into his pontificate after a problematic visit to Chile.
During the trip, he discovered a serious disconnect between what Chilean bishops had told him about a notorious case and the reality: Hundreds or thousands of Chilean faithful had been raped and molested by Catholic priests over decades.
“That was my conversion,” he told the AP. “That’s when the bomb went off, when I saw the corruption of many bishops in this.”
Francis has passed a series of measures since then aimed at holding the church hierarchy accountable, but the results have been mixed. Benedict removed some 800 priests, but Francis seems far less eager to defrock abusers, reflecting resistance within the hierarchy to efforts to permanently remove predators from the priesthood.
SIGNIFICANCE OF SYNODS
When the history of the Francis pontificate is written, entire chapters might well be devoted to his emphasis on “synodality,” which is a gathering of bishops. Francis’ philosophy that bishops must listen to one another and the laity has come to define his vision for the Catholic Church: He wants it to be a place where the faithful are welcomed, accompanied and heard.
After listening to the plight of divorced Catholics during a 2014-2015 synod on the family, for instance, Francis opened the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried couples receive Communion. Calls to allow married priests marked his 2019 synod on the Amazon, although Francis ultimately rejected the idea.
LATIN MASS
Catholic traditionalists were wary when Francis emerged as pope for the first time on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica without the red cape that his predecessors had worn for formal events. Yet they never expected him to reverse one of Benedict’s signature decisions by reimposing restrictions on the old Latin Mass, including where and who can celebrate it.
His crackdown on the Tridentine Rite became the call to arms for the anti-Francis conservative opposition.
Francis justified his move by saying Benedict’s decision to liberalize the celebration of the old Mass had become a source of division in parishes. But traditionalists took the renewed restrictions as an attack on orthodoxy.
ROLE OF WOMEN
Francis’ quips about the “female genius” have long made women cringe. Women theologians are the “strawberries on the cake,” he once said. Nuns shouldn’t be “old maids,” he said.
But, it’s also true that Francis has done more to promote women in the church than any pope before him, including naming several women to highprofile positions in the Vatican.
While only one in four Holy See employees are women, the trend is there and “there is no possibility of going back,” said María Lía Zervino, one of the first three women named to the Vatican office that helps the pope select bishops around the world.
LGBTQ FAITHFUL
Francis’ insistence that long-marginalized LGBTQ Catholics can find a welcome home in the church can be summed up by two pronouncements that have book-ended his papacy to date: “Who am I to judge?” and “Being homosexual is not a crime.”
He ministers to members of a transgender community in Rome. He has counseled gay couples seeking to raise their children Catholic. During a 2015 visit to the U.S., he publicized a private meeting with a gay former student and the man’s partner to counter the conservative narrative that he had received an anti-same-sex marriage activist.