RICHMOND — Baptist World Alliance president John Upton will represent the global organization and its 42 million Baptists at the March 19 inauguration of Pope Francis, the BWA has announced.
“The BWA celebrates with the Catholic Church the announcement of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis,” said Upton, who also is executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. “The prayerful discernment process of the Catholic Church in selecting the pope has been a comfort to us all. Pope Francis will have our prayers as he begins his responsibilities.”
Pope Benedict XVI shakes hands with BWA president John Upton at a 2011 peace and justice summit in Assisi, Italy.
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The visit will be Upton’s second interaction with a pope during his tenure as BWA president, which began in 2010. In October 2011 he joined BWA general secretary Neville Callam and about 300 world religious leaders at an interfaith summit of peace and justice hosted by Pope Benedict XVI.
Callam, who is unable to attend the papal inauguration of the former cardinal from Argentina due to a prior engagement in India, said Pope Francis’s “commitment to the proclamation of the gospel, his record of solidarity with victims of social injustice, his affirmation of the value of a simple lifestyle and his exemplary humility has provided much encouragement to the community of believers in Christ.”
Meanwhile, an Italian Baptist leader urged prayer for “our fellow believers in the Catholic Church.”
“The Catholic pope has an enormous power to influence masses of people all around the world,” Anna Maffei, a pastor in Florence and former president of the Christian Evangelical Baptist Union of Italy, said in an email. “Together with other Christians, Roman Catholics can make a difference in the world in many fields — peace, justice, religious liberty, human rights, equity, the fight against poverty.”
But, she added, success will come only if people “gain trust in our own faithfulness to the gospel. … This is difficult but it is our common call — Baptists and Catholics, Presbyterians and Pentecostals.”
Cardinal Jorge M. Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — celebrating mass in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2008. (Photo/Wikimedia Commons)
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The Baptist Union includes about 120 congregations in Italy — a nation facing severe economic stresses and fierce political partisanship.
“We live in a very difficult moment in Italy,” said Maffei. “Our society is affected by a deep financial crisis but also a serious spiritual and moral crisis. This is therefore a time of a common commitment to what is valuable, the time of praying for the Spirit to give us new dreams and visions that can renew our churches, give us new directions and make us people of hope.”
Maffei said that despite doctrinal differences with Catholics, Italian Baptists have avoided a “sectarian mindset.”
“Most of our congregations and pastors do have an open understanding of what being Christians means and even if we do not agree with some Catholic doctrines and ways of expressing faith, nonetheless we think confessing Catholics are fellow Christians,” she said. “We all have many Catholic friends that we consider brothers and sisters in Christ. With them we pray and act for peace, justice, human rights and the integrity of the environment.”
In a column for EthicsDaily.com, Daniel Carro — himself an Argentinean who teaches at the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va. — wrote that no one was more surprised by the papal election than the new pope’s fellow citizens.
“When Argentineans … repeated the famous ‘habemus papam’ — ‘we have a pope’ — the accent was strongly on the ‘we,’ ” wrote Carro, who also is a consultant in Latino ministries for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and a BWA vice president.
As a cardinal, Bergoglio showed “himself very conciliatory and ecumenical, open to evangelicals, at least those of the more charismatic persuasion,” said Carro.
“Raúl Scialabba, president of the Argentine Baptist Association and member of the executive committee of the Baptist World Alliance — who has known Bergoglio for years … — has described Bergoglio as a person who, while soft-spoken and affable, is quite strong and uncompromising,” said Carro.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.