Pope Francis’s vision of a wounded church converted by mercy

Shortly after Pope Francis was elected, I noticed a woman at my church wearing a T-shirt that read “I ‘Heart’ Pope Francis.” I was surprised to see a member of my very Protestant con­gregation sporting Catholic fan gear. She told me she was happy about Francis because he was a progressive who she hoped would lead to a more open future. She was not alone. A lot of Protestants cheered the election of Pope Francis.

The perception of Francis as a progressive rests on the assumption that ideas and movements can be identified as either liberal or conservative. When this interpretive scheme is applied to Catholic history, Vatican II often gets portrayed as a liberal turning point. John Paul II and Benedict XVI are typed as conservatives who shut the theological window opened by John XXIII, and Francis is portrayed as a liberal struggling to reopen it and allow fresh winds back into the church. There is a grain of truth to this narrative, but it fails to display the complexity of the Second Vatican Council, which was as much about retrieving the tradition (res­sourcement) as it was about updating doctrine (aggiornamento).

Austen Ivereigh contended in his earlier biography, The Great Reformer, that Pope Francis is neither liberal nor conservative. He is radical, seeking to reform the Catholic Church in ways that confound liberals and conservatives alike. Francis is not one to shy away from confronting presumably settled issues, nor does he refrain from challenging the religious culture that stands in the way of being more faithful to the gospel.