Yes. This is a kind of public leadership we are no longer used to—unassuming, self-effacing. Leaders of the world now are garish and brazen. You can think of half a dozen of their names in less than a minute. They're good at showbiz, they find the light and flash the smile. But this man wasn't trying to act like anything else.
And so, as they're saying in Europe, Francis the Humble.
May he be a living antidote. He loves the poor and not in an abstract way.
He gave the cardinal's palace in Buenos Aires to a missionary order with no money. He lives in an apartment, cooks his food, rides the bus. He rejects pomposity. He does not feel superior. He is a fellow soul.
He had booked a flight back to Argentina when the conclave ended.
But these two traits—his embrace of the church's doctrines and his characterological tenderness toward the poor—are very powerful together, and can create a powerful fusion.
He could bridge the gap or close some of the distance between social justice Catholics and traditional, doctrinal Catholics. That would be a relief.
I'm picking up an austerity vibe.
I hope I'm mis-reading this, fearing an emergent "redistribute the scarce 'precious' metals more equitably" type of approach to socio-economic justice from the Vatican; i.e. more "charity" in the modern sense. A "trickle down" form of self-justification.
In contrast to his predecessor Benedict who was led to simply express indignation in response to his view of all the socio-economic injustice that is currently being foisted upon the west.
"More charity!": This we DO NOT need. What we DO NEED is blind-moron eradication from among our midst.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are taking tithes from the mint and the dill and the cumin, and leave the weightier matters of the law..." (Mat 23:23)I guess time will tell where this is going, and I hope my early read here is wrong.
