By Bill Leonard
Those Catholics can do drama, can’t they? Cardinals, 115 of them, all male (still), in their red and lace vestments began the conclave to elect the 266th new pope by chanting a hymn invoking the presence of the Holy Spirit, gathering in the Sistine Chapel a setting packed to the rafters with Michelangelo’s frescos.
Art meets authority at the papal conclave. Then on the fifth ballot at the end of the second day, white smoke poured from the chimney. White smoke — an instant sign of election from a pre-twitter, pre-Facebook, pre-email culture — remains as powerful a visual declaration as it was in the medieval age from whence it came.
The crowd of 100,000 umbrella-huddling human beings gasped as gray-tinted smoke turned white, breaking into a collective roar. An hour or so later, the great windows on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica swung open and the Cardinal-Deacon exulted, “Habemus Papum.” “We have a pope.”
Then the announcement, a Latinized Hispanic name: Jorge Bergoglio, an Argentinian — the first pope from Latin America, home of four in 10 Roman Catholics worldwide. A Jesuit, he is the first pope from the Society of Jesus, the church’s largest order, founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola.
And then the name: Francesco I, the first pope to take the name Francis, a name forever linked in Catholic, indeed Christian, history with the legendary Francis of Assisi, born in 1182.
What’s in a name? In this case, commentators immediately suggested, it could offer a clue to a man who like the saint from Assisi has long been known for his concern for and engagement with the poor.
The new pope’s decision to take the name of the founder of the Franciscan Order is reminiscent of a similar action by Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli, who on his election as pope in 1958 took the name John XXIII.
That exact name, long rejected as a papal option, was taken by the “anti-pope,” John XXIII (A), elected during the Great Schism when there were actually three popes at Avignon, France, Rome and Pisa. John XXIII(A), an ex-pirate, was bought off by the Council of Constance in 1415 to end the papal schism.
The discredited name languished until John XXIII(B) revived it, a prelude to his efforts to “open the windows” of the church by calling Vatican Council II. Underestimated because of his age, John XXIII was 77 when elected, thought to be a papa di passaggio, a transitional pope too old to effect much change. Francis I is 76. Are there similar surprises ahead?
What’s in a name? Actually, the man from Assisi wasn’t originally named Francis. He was christened Giovanni, but his father Pietro Bernardone soon called him Francesco in honor of France, the land of the troubadour poets, a group much admired by the elder Bernardone.
After a somewhat misspent youth and sobered by an experience in war, Francis struggled to find himself. At worship, he responded to the words of Jesus in Matthew 10: “Go and preach the kingdom of God … heal the sick … cleanse the leper … cast out demons … be sheep in the midst of wolves … the spirit of your Father speaks through you.”
Called to “rebuild my church,” he relinquished the entitlements of his wealthy family and lived among the poor, literally reconstructing declining churches.
The historian Will Durant wrote of Francis: “Braving all ridicule, he stood in the squares of Assisi and nearby towns and preached the gospel of poverty and Christ…. Revolted by the unscrupulous pursuit of wealth that marked the age, and shocked by the splendor and luxury of some clergymen, he denounced money itself as a devil and a curse and bade his followers despise it.”
He devoted himself to Lady Poverty and became il poverello, the little poor man, warning his followers not to accept remuneration for their work, insisting that the fewer one’s possessions the freer one was to serve God.
Will Pope Francis follow the witness of his namesake? In some ways he has already, rejecting a palatial Archbishop’s residence, car and driver for a more simplified lifestyle. It is too early to predict the path of his papacy, but he has taken a very important name with a very important history.
And what should American Protestants think of this, other than ordering reruns of the film The Mission from Netflix? Perhaps the memory and mission of St. Francis is a good place to start.
Indeed, in a country where the top 1 percent of the population has an income 288 times the median household income, maybe we Americans should pay attention to that name and the gospel behind it.
If Francis I lives out that name the way il poverello did, it could get the Vicar of Christ and the rest of us, Catholic and Protestant alike, into a lot of trouble. Like it did Jesus?