Hopefully the first non-European pope in a thousand years will bring a fresh wind into a church badly in need of renewal. It is not likely he will solve all of its problems. It is enough he will bring in a fresh perspective into its current and most pressing problems.
Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio has chosen to be called Francis after the saint from Assisi who led a life of austerity and whose first followers supported themselves by begging in the streets. And so he will be assuming his position, the highest in the Roman Catholic church, with a suggestion of the theme of humility.
Hopefully, this theme translates into a make-over for a church that badly needs to reassert itself in the world. The literature says the church is badly in decline in advanced countries even as it works to continue its mission of conversion in many developing countries.
Part of this decline stems from a view of the Catholic church as a rich and powerful church marked by ostentation. In a way, this view is inevitble given its history inside the context of the larger history of Europe.
Since it became the state religion of the Roman empire at the beginning of the firt millenium the church has lost its old image as a church struggling to survive inside a non-Catholic world. It was once the church of martyrs where now it has become a rich and powerful church. Hopefully, it might now aspire to become a church of the poor.
There is a good chance of that because the new pope comes from Argentina which had been the seat of much social turmoil in the 60s and 70s. The new pope would be familiar with issues related to oppression and liberation. He would be familiar with the issue of mass poverty and how the church may position itself where this issue is concerned.
Much has changed, of course, since the 60s and 70 when the church had to grapple with poverty against the backdrop of growing communist movements worldwide. This led to violent repression, disppearances and murder, strong-arm tactics employed by many governments including the Philippines to put down emergent armed guerilla movements. These armed movements have dramatically decreased. And yet, The poverty has not.
If anything, it has worsened and spread to affect even advanced countries where the number of jobless and homeless has seen an increase in the wake of worldwide economic depression. It is a tunnel whose end is far from visible.
In the Philippines, there had been an emergent social action movement even at the height of the repression of Marcos’ martial law regime. These were movements that went by concepts of social development and liberation. They employed tactics of community organizing in order to empower the poor so they might peacefully confront their oppressors or otherwise work to solve their problems collectively at the most basic social level, the grassroots.
It is arguable how much impact these movements finally have in significantly alleviating poverty. Yet at the very least they have made popular such concepts as empowerment and social consciousness.
The church has generally grown away from these movements in recent history. Church-based social action has been in decline since the mid 80s when it was a significant motive force in bringing about the final end of martial law at EDSA.
This mix of historical experience is peculiar to us as perhaps it might also be to other developing countries like Argentina. Hopefully, these will be a mix of experiences the new pope will be bringing to the Vatican.
He is Jesuit and so he will most likely be familiar with the role the church plays in education. He will understand how and why education is such an important issue for developing countries. The Jesuits have a pre-inclination towards social involvement in issues of poverty including social housing or housing the poor who cannot afford homes for themselves.
Hopefully, we will see more of these in the coming years. At a time of decline perhaps they might become areas where the church finds greater relevance and a better sense of its importance in the lives of all humans, Catholic or not. And it might present itself as well as a contributor to the slow work of making a better world for all of us, a world more friendly to those who have less or have nothing at all.