In January, Pope Francis will make his sixth trip to Latin America. He will travel to Peru and Chile, which shares a 3,200-mile border with Argentina. But the Holy Father won’t cross the frontier into his homeland. This is curious: when Pope John Paul II visited Chile in 1987, he made sure to visit Argentina as well.
In this age of papal globetrotting, non-Italian popes are expected to visit their native lands shortly after their elections. John Paul II was elected in October 1978 and visited Poland eight months later, in June 1979. Benedict XVI travelled to Germany just four months after the conclave of 2005. But four years and three months after becoming Pope, Francis still hasn’t set foot in Argentina.
Recent custom suggests that Francis should have visited his homeland in July 2013, when he travelled to Brazil. But the closest he came was addressing Argentine youth in Rio cathedral (famously telling them to “hacer lío” – “make a mess”).
Why does the Pope seem to be avoiding his homeland? There are competing theories. One is that Francis is, in effect, punishing Argentina’s centre-right president Mauricio Macri. The pair have clashed in the past: in 2012, they had a run-in over abortion when Macri was mayor of Buenos Aires. Last year the Pope granted an “icy” 22-minute audience to the president. He then rejected a charitable donation from Macri’s government (partly because the sum contained the number 666). According to this theory, Francis is denying Macri the publicity coup of receiving him in Argentina.
Others argue that the Pope is, in fact, planning to make Argentina the last stop on his frenetic global pilgrimage. That is, he will return there after resigning from the papacy, perhaps to live out his final years as a humble priest. Supporters of this theory note that he renewed his Argentine passport in 2014 and continues to travel with it.
Yet another explanation is that the Pope is simply being a faithful Jesuit. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola promote an awe-inspiring detachment from earthly bonds. For centuries, Jesuits have been prepared to go where they are most needed. Francis is now the world’s parish priest. Having devoted 76 years to his homeland, he may justly feel that other countries deserve his attention. His priority is “the peripheries” – places such as Albania, Bolivia and the Central African Republic – rather than relatively comfortable nations like his own. As he reminded his countrymen rather bluntly last year, “The world is larger than Argentina.”
Is Francis just teasing his countrymen by visiting Latin America so frequently without venturing onto Argentine soil? Not really. As the first Latin American pope, he clearly feels an acute responsibility for the continent’s welfare. In September, for example, he will visit Colombia, a country that surely deserves a papal visit after dragging itself out of the world’s longest civil war.
If we look more closely at John Paul II and Benedict XVI’s trips to their homelands, we see that they were more than just triumphal homecomings. John Paul II wanted to strengthen a people buckling under the communist yoke. Benedict was fulfilling an earlier papal commitment to attend World Youth Day in Cologne. Francis has no such pressing reason to visit Argentina. We suspect that, unless he discovers an urgent missionary motive for returning home, the Pope will keep his countrymen waiting.
The independent review of the case of Peter Ball, entitled “An Abuse of Faith”, highlights not just the serious sexual misdemeanours of the former Bishop of Lewes, but also a serious failure of leadership in the Church of England. The report says that Lord Carey, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, took measures to protect the reputation of the Church and Ball himself, at the expense of the complainants, one of whom committed suicide.
None of this will surprise Catholics, who will see the sorry history of the Catholic Church’s mishandling of the abuse crisis reflected in the Anglican experience. This should not be a cause of schadenfreude. Nor should it be an occasion for pointing out that the abuse crisis involved other institutions too. Rather, in reading the report, Catholics should use the Anglican experience to reinforce lessons that perhaps have not been grasped by all in the Catholic Church.
First, one must not try to cover up or deny the truth, ever. It is not just futile, it is also immoral. This means maximum transparency in dealing with reported crimes, and passing all such reports on to the police as quickly as possible. Crime is crime. Nor must one attempt the impossible, that is, to try to rehabilitate criminals who have shown no remorse or understanding for the harm they have done.
We need to remember that the word bishop comes from the Greek word “overseer”. Each case of abuse represents a failure of oversight by those charged with the care of the flock. The report suggests that Lord Carey failed in this – as did many Catholic prelates and religious superiors. It is now up to those in authority in the Anglican Church, and in the Catholic Church too, to put that right.
There are still Catholic dioceses worldwide that have yet to implement norms with regard to the protection of children and vulnerable adults. That needs to change, and fast.
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