Pope Francis will keep the Vaticanistas hopping

    After a little more than a week of “Pope Francis Meets the World,” one thing is abundantly clear: this is going to be the Catholic ride of a lifetime.
    The Vatican Bank’s finances have come under internal scrutiny in recent months, but an allowable expense is coming. The Vatican will need plenty of heart defibrillators –  not for the 76-year-old pontiff but for the Swiss Guards and papal security personnel as Pope Francis plunges headfirst and unscripted into another adoring crowd.
    Pope Francis sent the message that this was going to be a different kind of pontificate as soon as he emerged on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in his simple white cassock, wearing the understated pectoral cross he has had draped around his neck for years as archbishop of Buenos Aires. Nowhere in sight was the red mozzetta, an elbow-length cape traditionally worn by newly elected popes.
    First, he prayed for his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, and then he asked the hundreds of thousands in St. Peter’s Square – and millions more on TV – to bless and pray for him. He bowed from the waist while the cheering hordes below hushed into silence and fulfilled his request.
    It was a moment of power and grace.
    Jesuit Father Raymond Fitzgerald, the president of Jesuit High School, was with faculty members and administrators planning next year’s academic schedule on March 13 when he first got a glimpse of his Jesuit brother.
    “A friend of mine was at the announcement, and he told me, ‘It’s not often you watch hundreds of thousands of people grow instantly silent in prayer,’” Father Fitzgerald said. “That speaks volumes of what his leadership is already looking like.”
    Additional clues that the mold is being broken followed. Instead of taking a limousine back to his temporary residence at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, Pope Francis rode the bus with his fellow cardinals. It wasn’t quite the public transportation he had become famous for utilizing as archbishop of Buenos Aires, but it sent another clear message of collegiality and collaboration.
    The next day, he took a pedestrian car instead of the papal Mercedes to St. Mary Major Basilica, where he prayed for the intercession of the Blessed Mother for the safekeeping of Rome. On the way back to the Vatican, he stopped off at his pre-conclave hotel to pick up his luggage and pay his bill. If I’m the owner of that residence, those euros would be framed behind the cash register.
    Then, more substance began to emerge. His love for the poor – the major reason he chose the name Francis – came out in a homily to his brother cardinals at his first Mass as pope the next day at the Sistine Chapel.
    Setting aside his prepared text – while you’re at it, order another defibrillator for the Vatican’s communications staff – Pope Francis said: “The only true glory is in the crucified Lord. We can build many things, but if we do not witness to Jesus Christ, then it doesn’t matter. We might become a philanthropic NGO, but we wouldn’t be the church, the bride of the Lord.”
    At a March 16 gathering of 6,000 journalists who had covered the conclave, Pope Francis explained why he had chosen St. Francis of Assisi as his model. He joked that as balloting continued to draw votes in his favor – “when things were getting a little ‘dangerous’” – Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a Franciscan and the archbishop-emeritus of Sao Paolo, leaned over to him and said: “Do not forget the poor.”
    “That word stuck here,” Pope Francis said, tapping his forehead. “The poor. The poor. Then, immediately in relation to the poor, I thought of Francis of Assisi. … For me, he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and safeguards creation. … Oh, how I wish for a church that is poor and for the poor!”
    Francis of Assisi also had a dream that God was calling him to “rebuild my church.” Looking at a fellow Jesuit from thousands of miles away, Father Fitzgerald sees a man who is poor in spirit, ready to make that journey and carry others along with him.
    “He used the expression to be ‘on pilgrimage,’” Father Fitzgerald said. “Then he called us to build. We are walking with the cross of Christ. We are building on the stone that is Christ. And then, we must confess Jesus Christ. If we don’t proclaim him, we are doing nothing.”
    Pope Francis is a different man from Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, Father Fitzgerald said, but he is what the church needs.
    “This is a wonderful thing about the church,” Father Fitzgerald said. “You would never mistake any of the two for one another. Each is his own individual person. But the message is the same. There’s a continuity and a consistency, going back to our Lord and through the centuries. But in every century, in every moment, in every time, the question is how can we make this real now with our own gifts and personalities? I think this is the time in which the Holy Spirit is working through Francis.”
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].