Mixed smoke
Mamma mia!”, cried Sister Walburga, a polyglot nun from Germany as lights switched on at the balcony on St. Peter’s basilica. “Habemus Papam”. People massed in the piazza cheered as the new pontiff, clad in a simple white cassock, stepped forward. “Buona serra,” he began.”Good evening.”
“The Buenos Aires-born son of a railway worker from Turin seemed almost as dazed as everyone else,” UK ’s Guardian reported.
“Sister Walburga did not know who he was.”
Even in Communist Cuba, church bells rang out for election of the Argentine cardinal as the first Latin American pontiff. Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio is 76.
”We’ve waited 20 centuries,“ Fr Jose Antonio Cruz in Puerto Rico told the Economist
“It was worth the wait.”
By choosing the first pope from the New World, the cardinals sent a strong message of change, the New York Times noted. “The church’s future lies in the global south, and a scholar with a common touch may be its best choice to inspire the faithful….. ”
The bookies, meanwhile, were burned. Early March, oddsmaker Paddy Power put America ‘s Timothy Dolan at 33-1 and Africa ‘s Peter Turkson at 2-1. After the Sistine Chapel doors closed, oddmakers tagged Cardinal of Milan Angelo Scola as front runner, the Times David Leonhard wrote. Second-tier favorites included US Timothy Dolan to Brazil’s Pedro Odilo Scherer. “Cardinal Luis Tagle, of the Philippines, was sixth.” The Agrentinian didn’t even register on the betting screen.
Rewind to 2005. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the pick and “bookies looked prescient”: Yet, 35 years earlier , they and “by extension, the wisdom of crowds”, did poorly. Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla, who became John Paul II, wasn’t among the favorites.
Over the last 2,000 years many popes picked the name John. Three pontiffs chose “Pius” in the past century. He chose the name of Francis after two days of conclave meetings and five ballots. In the 13th century, cardinals could not decide for over two years. A lock up and a diet of bread and water hastened the vote.
Pope Francis “is a man who transmits great serenity,” Buenos Aires housewife Ana Maria Perez said of her paesan. She foresees he “is going to be pope of the streets.”
Then Cardinal Bergoglio didn’t live in the archbishop’s palace. Instead, he lodged in a small room within a downtown Buenos Aires home. He parked the diocese’s limousine. Instead, he rode the bus to work or when visiting Argentine slums. He scrubbed pots and pans, after cooking his own meals. Argentenians recall how, on Holy Thursday 2001, he visited AIDS patients in a hospice where he washed and kissed the feet of 12 patients. He flogged priests who’d refuse baptism to children of single mothers.
Did the new pope mean St. Francis Xavier? This 16th-century Jesuit’s missionary zeal took him through much of Asia . Or was he referring St. Francis of Assisi who gave away a vast inheritance.
Francis crafted an uncluttered lifestyle that “catalyzed the “Renaissance”, which is older than many European states”, recalls George Will in his column “Memories of a Wandering Fire.” Faith “is not made more credible by arranging its institutional furniture,” this 43-year-old friar taught. His example led thousands to adopt evangelical poverty.
He was a “wandering fire,” writer G.K. Chesterton marveled. Then and now, we seek “wandering fires” – men and women whose values “endure even after the sun goes out.” Or do harsh times only rediscover them?
“We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least,” then Cardinal Bergolio told Latin American bishops in 2007. “The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.”
That would resonate in the Philippines of 2013 . Here, one out of four pregnant women are at risk because of chronic hunger and inadequate services, a health department and National Institute of Health development workshop reports. Deficits in folic acid, iron, and Vitamin A result in high deaths among infants 28 days after birth. “There has been no change in the past 15 years.”
A “1000-day window of vulnerability” traps pregnant women and infants: this is 280 days from conception to two years of birth.” But decisive intervention by local government officials can convert this death trap into a “window of opportunity”.
Local governments in barangays, towns to cities “have the power and resources to save many pregnant mothers from preventable disability and death,” nutiritonist Florentino Solon writes. After election, local executives should ensure vulnerability transposes into opportunity.
The institutional or church one is covered by the media. Coverage “concentrates on a Vatican City smaller than some Wal-Marts”, writes Loyola University emeritus professor of psychology Eugene Cullen Kennedy. A papal interregnum and election is manna for media’s insatiable appetite.
Church Two is “the faithful”, that is, the millions of everyday lay Catholics who live their faith.. “This is the real church for whose members faith is the touchstone of their lives. The drama acted out at every papal election is not really relevant to their everyday lives..
“The church remains the home of well-known sinners and unsung saints and is run more by sinners like them than by saints, she adds. That mixed smoke wafting from Sistine chimneys “is the perfect symbol of the church as it is: not quite as pure as it ought to be but human enough to make it a home for the everyday Catholics.”
