Profoundly personal, profoundly humble and profoundly Jesuit, the interview was granted to a consortium of 16 Jesuit publications around the world. Conducted in Italian by Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro of La Civilta Cattolica in three sessions in August, after the Pope’s return from World Youth Day in Brazil, the interview was translated into English by America Magazine, the major Jesuit publication in the United States.
The interview made inevitable headlines in the secular press that focused on the Pope’s comments about abortion, contraception and gay marriage. The Pope spoke candidly about the dangers of speaking constantly about Catholic social teachings while underlining the need to emphasize mercy, not judgment. Church leaders urged a reading of the complete text to fully understand the context of the comments and the depth of the Pope’s thinking on many topics.
“A 12,000-word interview cannot be reduced to 12 words,” said Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast.
Pope Francis may have offered a key to understanding the interview when he was asked how he would explain what it means to “think with the Church.” “The Church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows,” he said. “Thinking with the Church, therefore, is my way of being a part of this people. We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the Church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the Church.
“I see the sanctity of God’s people, this daily sanctity. There is a ‘holy middle class,’ which we can all be part of.”
As the Canadian bishops’ annual plenary got underway, Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton was thinking hardest about what the Pope had to say about laboratories and frontiers.
“Ours is not a ‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ an historical faith,” said the Pope. “God has revealed Himself as history, not as a compendium of abstract truths. I am afraid of laboratories because in the laboratory you take the problems and then you bring them home to tame them, to paint them out of their context. You cannot bring home the frontier, but you have to live on the border and be audacious.”
Smith predicted that this would be what the Canadian bishops would be talking about.
“This call of Francis to go out to the periphery is really going to shape a lot of the things we talk about this week,” he said. “What’s the Canadian periphery and how are we as Canadian bishops called to be with our people to bring the Gospel, whether it’s being with our First Nations folks, whether it’s being in situations where the traditional understanding of family is being marginalized, whether it’s with the poor and the homeless, whether it’s on issues where fundamental human rights are being pushed aside. It’s these kinds of issues.”
While Jesuits recognize a Jesuit voice speaking Jesuit truths, Canada’s Jesuits are no less surprised and energized by Pope Francis’ words than the rest of the Church, said Fr. Peter Bisson, provincial superior of English Canada’s Jesuits.
“His words have the same impact on us as on everybody else,” Bisson said. “When he talks about preaching or the message of the Church, that in general it should first of all warm hearts and heal, I think he’s having that impact on us and showing us that this is what we should be about too.”
When Francis talks about discernment, he’s using language that permeates Jesuit lives from their first day in the novitiate. “Communal discernment means basically trying to listen for God by listening to each other. That’s part of what it means to be the people of God,” Bisson said.
Most of all, Bisson is impressed by the Pope’s ability to reveal himself and share himself without reservation.
“I think he means what he says,” said Bisson. “As you go through the interview he points out mistakes he feels he made, especially as a young provincial. He said he was too authoritarian and he made decisions too quickly, without consulting. So he’s not afraid of talking about how he has grown and what he has grown from.”
The interview will be well received by the Church’s ecumenical partners, particularly the Orthodox, said Fr. Damian MacPherson, the archdiocese of Toronto’s ecumenical and interfaith relations director. The Pope’s embrace of consultation as a feature of how the Church is governed, his positive description of synods of bishops as the place for “real and active” consultation, will be sweet music to Orthodox, who are open to communion with the patriarch and bishop of Rome but suspicious of universal jurisdiction for any bishop.
“He has a very calming effect on the Orthodox in terms of his approach,” said MacPherson.
A deeper and more substantial level of consultation with bishops is also what Catholic bishops have been seeking, said Regis College theology professor Sr. Gill Goulding. As a theological expert at last year’s Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization, Goulding witnessed bishops who were deeply grateful and energized by the more open and genuine consultation built into the synod by Pope Benedict XVI.
“I think he (Pope Francis) is quite conscious that bishops who had been to previous synods were saying that the last synod they thought was the best that they had been to,” Goulding said. “That is very important in terms of governance.”
Reforms to how the Vatican and the Church governs itself will get a kick start when Pope Francis meets with his eight cardinal consultors the first week in October. But the key to the reform may have more to do with the Pope’s style, priorities and attitude.
“If we look beyond that interview, Pope Francis is very consistent in calling the Church to be a more humble Church — something that the bishops, particularly from Asia, were emphasizing at the synod last year,” Goulding said.
Canada’s bishops are ready for the challenge, said Smith.
“We’re all together in the same moment right now, waiting to see the particular direction in terms of any structural reform that the Pope wants to give,” Smith said. “He is emphasizing consultation but placing that in the broader, spiritual context of discernment — discerning what the Lord is saying to the Church at any particular moment and seeking that through consultation.”
(With files from Deborah Gyapong.)