Papa Franciscus

My first liturgical reaction to the new Pope Francis is how to say his name in the English Missal: "Francis" (from the French) or "Francisco" (from the Spanish)?  Well, in order to obviate that problem and continue the Reform of the Reform of the Liturgy I shall say his Papal name the way it was announced from the balcony: "Franciscus."  "Papa Franciscus" is his name: "For Franciscus our Pope!"  But the dative is "Francisco!"  So we are back to Spanish.  In this case the Latin is Spanish!  It is ironic that we should not "Frankicise" Franciscus.

My second reaction to the fact of the new Holy Father is more serene and less alarming than yesterday's post.  The traditionalists are upset because this does not fit their political agenda.  It seems that Pope Francis is not an ideologue but rather a faithful Jesuit priest and bishop.  May he bring to the Church the Jesuit efficiency to purify with Evangelical commitment.

Father DaSousa (EWTN) has said throughout this Papal Election that we do not presently need a strongly doctrinal pope because we have the heritage of doctrinal clarity of the two great post-conciliar popes past.  We need a pope to put our house in order and to appeal again to the world which is in such disarray and again disenchanted with the Church.  The Pope's first order of business should be getting rid of dishonest and immoral clergy, to clean the house of God.  One of the distinctive marks of the good kings of Israel was to purify the land (and the priesthood) of "the effeminate": e.g. "Asa did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, as did David his father: and he took away the effeminate out of the land, and removed all the filth of the idols, which his fathers had made."  (1[3] Kings 15:12.  Men who are not living the fundamental Christian moral life, and making their celibate lifestyle manifest, should not be allowed to enter seminary nor promoted to holy orders or otherwise promoted within the ranks of the clergy (which is presently not the case as we see epitomized in the Scottish Cardinal who resigned with a history of numerous sexual encounters with his own clergy!).  Priests should be real men of holiness and act like men and give a shining example of how to live a life of real Christian men, like Saint Francis and Saint Ignatius and Saint Benedict and Blessed JPII, like Pope Emeritus Benedict and now Pope Francis.  There is a real and essential continuity here!

Saint Francis came on the ecclesiastical scene at the height of the monastic age.  The monastery was the model of holiness and Saint Francis rejected it to become an itinerant preacher of the Gospel in radical mendicant poverty and dependence on divine providence.  Saint Benedict had left the world for the monastery because of the impediments of Roman worldliness.  Saint Francis left the world and the lure of the monastery because of the same impediments of worldliness that also lurk in the halls and the gardens of the cloister (as we see in our corrupt clergy).  In other words, we need the sacraments and the liturgy and the arts to live a life of holiness and only insofar as they serve the life of personal holiness.  If they do not lead us to communion with God but to fornication and every form of shameful immorality, to hell with them!  One thing I have often noticed with Latin American clergy is their characteristic Christian honesty and striking lack of a political agenda even when they might seem to lean this way or that.  We need today at all levels of the Church and of society saints!  men who know Jesus Christ personally and follow him unreservedly without fear as Saints Benedict and Francis did and as Popes Francis and (Emeritus) Benedict do!

The beginning of this Papacy is beautiful sign of reconciliation and unity in another sense too, this first Jesuit Pope taking the name of the founder of the Franciscans, in that the Jesuits were suppressed by a the Franciscan Pope Clement XIV.  And please notice that our Holy Father is thoroughly Marian!  Mario (masculine rendition of Maria) is his middle name!  Jorge: George the dragon slayer (he should re-institute the Saint Michael prayer after Mass for the purification of the clergy), and patron of Greece.  How significant that he prays the Ave with the crowd and with the world, in addition to the Pater, and that his first act as pope is to take flowers to the preeminent Marian Shrine of Christendom: Maria Maggiore!

By the way, one other note on the continuity, the first person the Holy Father notified about his election was the Holy Father Emeritus, by phone, before exiting to the balcony!  He first went to the Pauline chapel to pray and then to the phone and then to the balcony.  The Church continues her glorious reconciling and sanctifying history in a corrupt and cynical world.

One more note on unity.  My experience is that most of the religious in the Eternal City are Spanish speaking!  We could certainly say that Spanish is by far the native language most common to the seminarians, priests, religious and hiearchy resident in Rome, and it represents many nations.  Actually, in that sense, we have to say that Spanish (a dialect of Latin) is the most Catholic language in the world today and the Holy Father with all those people of the Catholic world, in Rome and throughout the world, will need no interpreter!  Beautiful!  DEO GRATIAS!  Thank God for Saints Benedict, Francis and Dominic and Ignatius without whom there would not be a Pope Francis today!