A Jesuit learns to live with a Jesuit Pope

What’s it like to get a Jesuit pope?’ A hard question to wake up to, but I have got used to it during the day.

I must say that I hadn’t thought of the new Pope in Jesuit terms. I was glad we had a new Pope, felt the sense of hope and possibility that seems to accompany any such changes, and felt sympathy and benevolence for Cardinal Bergoglio in the demanding responsibilities he had assumed.

But of course then I began to recognize in myself the quirky responses that had quickly to be censored. The partisan reaction, for example. A Jesuit pope, great. Just like a Demons player winning the Brownlow. Eat your hearts out, Magpies…Franciscans and Dominicans! Look who won the big one.

Censored, too, was the self-congratulatory thought that the new Pope is one of us and will understand our Jesuit ways. And that the Church, of course, will benefit immeasurably from his Jesuit training.

That satisfying reflection was immediately followed by a touch of anxiety that I was also reluctant to share. ‘Perhaps he will understand our Jesuit ways all too well,’ I thought. ‘He will recognize some of the slovenly habits we Jesuits have picked up and send us to reform school.’ By this time people had begun congratulating me on the first Jesuit pope, and sharing our satisfaction that now we had our man in the Vatican. I was mildly irritated. ‘Don’t they know that when Jesuits become bishops, still less the Bishop of Rome, they do not live under the Jesuit rule? The Pope owes the Jesuits nothing, but the Jesuits owe the Pope respect and obedience in accepting jobs he gives us. He is not our man in Rome.’And don’t they know that Ignatius, the Jesuits’ founder, was strongly opposed to Jesuits accepting ecclesiastical dignities, especially becoming bishops and cardinals? He saw it as incompatible with the kind of service to which Jesuits were called. Of course, the good of the universal church sometimes trumps the good of the Jesuit order, so there have been many Jesuit bishops and cardinals. But this is more a cause for grief than for congratulation.’

So I thought to myself with increasing passion. But there was no reason why people should know any of these things, so I accepted the congratulations cheerfully. Congratulations are a way of sharing the hope and cheer that comes with a new pope and of finding connections, even through raggle taggle Jesuits.

Then I stopped to think more deeply. And began to recognize in Jorge Bergoglio things that are characteristically Jesuit. I felt some pride that we as a religious congregation had been able to nurture these gifts.

Above all there was his simplicity of life. For a cardinal to live in the burbs, cook for himself and to catch a bus to work is more than an affectation. It is a statement of intent, a definition of ministry, especially when it is combined with his consistent defence of the rights of the poor and his criticism of clericalism.

He was making a statement of what matters, and what matters to him is clearly the proclamation of the Gospel in its simplicity and strength, and particularly its proclamation to the poor. He lives what we Jesuits aspire to.

Inherent in this way of living and in his calling himself Francis is a habit of discernment, another Jesuit ideal. He is clearly in the habit of reflecting on his actions, on the world in which he is called to act, and on the Gospel, and of being ready to act decisively and surprisingly. He is a man after St Ignatius’ heart.

This suggests he will be his own man in the Vatican, not bound by conventions of titles, of ceremonial or of administrative practice. The habit of asking what matters is a necessary starting point for developing forms of governance appropriate to the contemporary church and to meet the challenges posed by sexual abuse.

Finally I got back to thinking of myself, not as a Jesuit but simply as a human being, and felt sympathy for another man from whom so much will be expected and demanded, more than any man can deliver. And so I said a prayer for him that he will find consolation as well as attrition in his service as Pope.

Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street and a policy officer for Jesuit Social Services.