While Pope Francis has always been a strong advocate and sincere practitioner of social justice, he has stated on numerous occasions that the Church of Christ is not to be equated with an NGO (a nongovernmental organization), such as the Red Cross, UNICEF, or the United Way. While many NGO’s perform good deeds, if the Church acted as another NGO, it would be a pitiful one because that is not its call and the reason for its existence. The Church is called to be the Bride of Christ. As a result, the Church pleases Christ by serving him in the poor. Pope Francis likewise keeps his distance from clericalism, where the clergy assume privilege at the expense of the laity and lack a spirit of service.
The Holy Father says that in meeting a clericalist, “I suddenly become anti-clerical.” He is a strong believer in Vatican II’s emphasis on the Church as all the people of God, served by their leaders in the clerical hierarchy. Hence Pope Francis told his priests on Holy Thursday that they must be “shepherds living with the smell of their sheep.” And at his meeting with journalists on March 16 he said, “How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!”
Vatican II teaches that the Church is holy because Christ, her head, is holy. What people see of the institutional Church is often short of Christ’s holiness because the Church and its leaders are made up of sinners. Pope Francis, too, identifies himself to the world as a sinner. Even the Pope is a sinner, and the Church’s teaching on papal infallibility, limited to particular instances of teaching officially on faith and morals, has never denied that. Much like Jesus himself, Pope Francis is not afraid to make controversial statements to shake people, both believers and non-believers, from their comfort zone and change their paradigm of thought. For Pope Francis, the problem with the Church today is not its teachings or moral doctrines, but rather the members of the Church, and even many of the leaders, do not sufficiently practice what they preach. If the world saw Catholics truly living like they believed what they said they believed, then the world would have more respect for the Church when it teaches on abortion, homosexuality, or other such topics.
Pope Francis is not afraid to call out the Church on hypocrisy. He even brought up the topic of the sex abuse scandals on his own at World Youth Day, and has confronted the issue head-on during his time as a cardinal. Speaking not of the institution of the Curia itself, but of Vatican-centric cronies and bureaucrats, he told Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica, “Leaders of the Church have often been Narcissus, flattered and sickeningly excited by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.” He continued in describing this attitude that must change, “It sees and looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, for the most part, temporal interests. This Vatican-centric view neglects the world around us. I do not share this view and I’ll do everything I can to change it.”
The Curia itself, as Pope Francis told Father Spadaro, is a necessary institution intended to assist the Pope. There are various congregations, such as on the Clergy, on the Faith, on Evangelization, on Bishops, on Justice and Peace, on Worship, and more. The Pope, as a single man, could never accomplish all the work on his own regarding situations throughout the world. The Curia has sometimes been reactionary and has had the tendency for centralization and institutionalization. Pope Francis has noted, for example, that many of the cases that come to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that concern matters of heterodox teachings could be much more suitably handled at the diocesan level.
Pope Francis has admitted that he does not fully know on his own what to do about all the problems of the Vatican, yet he is committed to learning more about the issues and seeking the proper reforms. His most effective leadership for reform is his example of humility, openness, and authenticity, for as he has said, the reform of the Church must first begin with the conversion of hearts. On April 13, Pope Francis, appointed eight cardinals to form a panel to look into how the Curia might be reformed to more effectively serve the Pope and the Church. Initially, Pope Francis kept the incumbents in the Curia, but after the summer he made a number of key changes. On August 31, he appointed Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a veteran Vatican diplomat, as Secretary of State in place of Cardinal Bertone.
Then, on September 21, he named new prefects of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for Evangelization. He also appointed a new Apostolic Penitentiary to oversee investigations regarding the sacrament of Reconciliation. He also appointed a new Secretary General for the Synod of Bishops to give the discussion among the bishops of the world a more prominent place within the Vatican. Pope Francis also has a special interest in reforming the Vatican Bank. He requires greater transparency in the institution and appointed an audit commission to monitor the corruption-prone bank. The Vatican Bank issued its first ever earnings report on October 1, 2013.
Pope Francis has emphasized that the focus of the Church must always be on Christ and that proclaiming the love of Christ is primary. Other doctrines of the Church follow the more fundamental ones. The General Directory for Catechesis, issued in 1997 by the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, states that the Catholic faith “has a comprehensive hierarchical character, which constitutes a coherent and vital synthesis of the faith. This is organized around the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, in a christocentric [or Christ-centered] perspective, because this is the source of all other mysteries of the faith, the light that enlightens them.”
Recalling this hierarchy of truths, one in which more fundamental truths enlighten the others, Pope Francis told Father Spadaro, “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent.
“The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus.” Pope Francis is not critiquing the Church’s teachings on abortion or homosexuality. Instead, he is speaking about a clear presentation of the core Gospel message, without which, these teachings will fall on deaf ears. In fact, on May 12, Pope Francis had surprised over 40,000 people gathered for the Italian March for Life by personally joining them.
The topic of the role of women in the Church has been kept at the fore, especially in the media. Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that “in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance... I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” The Church, bound by Scripture and Tradition, finds no support in the message for women to be ordained as priests, and the fact that Christ himself chose only males for his Apostles reinforces this belief.
Pope Francis confirmed that the ordination of women to the priesthood should not be considered. He told journalists on the plane to Rio that “with reference to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says, ‘No.’ John Paul II said it, but with a definitive formulation. That is closed, that door... But he has called on numerous occasions for a deeper theology of women in the Church.” While women do hold many positions of authority within the Church and its institutions today, Pope Francis says the first question is not whether a woman may hold this position or that one.
He told the journalists, “No! It must be more, but profoundly more, also mystically more, with this that I said about the theology of the woman.” Such a deepened theology of women in the Church must consider that while the Apostles were given the authority of the Church, Mary, the Mother of God, is still greater than they are for the life of the Church.