Beyond the deadwood

The secret is “busting out all over,” as a 1956 Broadway tune puts it. The Vatican isn’t talking. Neither is the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

Pope Francis will fly here early January 2016. He’ll attend the 51st International Eucharistic Congress in Cebu City. Pope Paul VI came in November 1970—and a Bolivian psycho tried to stab him. Pope John Paul II visited in 1981 and 1985.

Could the Philippine meeting be moved up from May 2016 (dates set in Dublin)? asked Archbishop Piero Marini. He heads the pontifical committee on international eucharistic congresses. The Pope traditionally attends World Youth Day, just after May. The CBCP thus reset the congress to Jan. 25-31, 2016. That comes after Cebu marks the annual Santo Niño festival…

“The Philippines may be on Pope Francis’ travel itinerary in 2016,” said Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, who heads the CBCP. “We told [Rome] that January was fine. Our suggestion was to make the Pope’s visit to the Philippines a priority.”

Barely two months into office, “Francis already has changed the tone of the papacy,” the New York Times notes. The shift does not stem from concrete changes or setting an ambitious policy agenda. Rather, they flow from “Francis’ emphasis on attention to the poor. [His] style is more akin to that of a parish priest, albeit one with one billion parishioners.”

He still refuses to live in the papal apartments. “There’s enough room there for 300 people,” he said. He lodges in the spartan  Casa Santa Marta residence inside the Vatican. There, he eats dinner in the company of low-ranking priests and visitors.

Simplicity cuts through institutional deadwood. That didn’t start after Francis’ election. He put aside the ermine cape and red shoes handcrafted by the papal cobbler. “Wear them if you want, Monsignor,” he said. “But the carnival is over.”

In Buenos Aires, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio turned over his sprawling residence for nuns to use as a hospice. He lived in a two-door apartment and took the bus to work. “Are a few simple gestures such a big deal?”

Francis reaches people whether discussing his grandmother or his decision to become a priest, Reuters reports. “While praying before going to bed, I doze off from fatigue but [God] understands.”

“If we step outside of ourselves, we will find poverty,” he said. One must do more. “Seek out those on the fringes of society who need help the most,” he said. Today, the news is scandals, but the many children who don’t have food—that’s not news.

“The financial crisis … is [ultimately] a profound human crisis,” he told diplomats. “We have created new idols. Worship of the golden calf of old found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking humane goals.”

“We can’t rest easy while things are this way,” he added. “We cannot become starched Christians, who speak of theology calmly over tea.” He worried “about a Church that too often closes in on itself instead of looking outward.” How would some Filipino bishops, who barrel on single-track issues like the RH Law, react to this thrust?

Is Pope Francis running the risk of “overheated expectations”? asks John Allen, the experienced Vatican correspondent of the National Catholic Reporter.

Under Pope Benedict, the Catholic Right prophesied a liturgical “reform of the reform.” Before long, Benedict proved too gradual for some early enthusiasts. Today, the Church’s conservatives are upset by the new Pope. “Indeed, some are openly alarmed.”

“Liberals may feel more simpatico with Francis… But they’re inoculated from overheated expectations of any pope by their low view of hierarchs. Moderates, however, seem almost giddy with enthusiasm. And that’s where the danger of exaggerated expectations is most acute.”

This week, the chair of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts floated the notion of naming a “moderator” for the scandal-tarred Curia. He’d coordinate often conflicting various departments. “Veteran insiders seem to be trying to get ahead of the reform curve rather than resisting it,” Allen writes.

Will Francis move fast enough and far enough to “satisfy moderates most elated by his election? [They’ve] already projected a fairly elaborate set of hopes onto his embryonic pontificate…. The truth is, in some ways it’s surprising that wariness hasn’t already set in.”

“It is unlikely that on most matters of faith and morals Francis will represent any real departure from either John Paul II or Benedict XVI. Sooner or later, he’ll likely draw the same mixed reactions… When the one-year mark of Francis’ papacy rolls around, it will be interesting to see the moderates ask where the early promise has gone.”

In January 1995, John Paul presided over World Youth Day at Rizal Park. Over four million attended the closing Mass. That’s the “current world record for the largest papal gathering.”

Francis will have similar drawing power—or more. Filipinos will look beyond institutional deadwood and identify with his concerns for the deprived. And his visit will do much for a Philippine Church where some bishops “too often close in on [themselves] instead of looking outward.”

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