The Heart of Pope Francis E-Book

Diego Fares

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 108

Beschreibung

A presentation of what lies at The Heart of Pope Francis' pontificate, written by his friend and fellow Jesuit
 
At The Heart of Pope Francis' vision lies a keen interest in people, and a passion for understanding the life experience of others. This book by a longtime friend of the Pope clarifies the underlying thoughts and choices Jorge Bergoglio has made throughout his life in developing a culture of encounter that he now proposes as the basis for the rebirth of the whole church, and the world. This little book is essential reading for anyone wanting to contribute to renewal in the Catholic Church.

Leseprobe

The Heart of Pope Francis

How a New Culture of Encounter Is Changing the Church and the World

With a Foreword by Antonio Spadaro, S.J.

DIEGO FARES, S.J.

Translated byRobert H. Hopcke

THE POPE FRANCIS RESOURCE LIBRARY

The Crossroad Publishing Companywww.CrossroadPublishing.com

English translation copyright 2015 by The Crossroad Publishing Company A Herder&Herder Book The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York

The Heart of Pope Francis is a translation of a book originally published asPapa Francesco è come un bambù: Alle radici della cultura dell’incontro

© 2014 Àncora S.r.l.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company. For permissions email [email protected]

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ISBN 978-0-8245-2074-8 (alk. paper)

EPUB ISBN 978-0-8245-2098-4

MOBI ISBN 978-0-8245-2099-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress.

Cover design by George Foster Book design by The HK Scriptorium, Inc.

In continuation of our 200-year tradition of independent publishing, The Crossroad Publishing Company proudly offers a variety of books with strong, original voices and diverse perspectives. The viewpoints expressed in our books are not necessarily those of The Crossroad Publishing Company, any of its imprints or of its employees. No claims are made or responsibility assumed for any health or other benefit.

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Printed in the United States of America in 2015

Contents

Preface by Antonio Spadaro, S.J.

1. “We must go out of ourselves”

2. Encountering the Other

3. “God’s faithful people are infallible”

4. Encountering Jorge Bergoglio

5. The God of Pope Francis

6. The New Ministry of Relationship

7. A New Culture in the Church

Study Guide Questions for Reflection and Sharing, Prayer and Practice

Notes

Photo Credits

Preface

by Antonio Spadaro

Friendship Is Born in a Moment

On Monday, July 22, 2013, Pope Francis was flying from Rome to Rio de Janeiro to participate in the World Youth Day. During the flight, a young journalist who was with him was discussing with the Pope the situation of his own generation, particularly the level of unemployment they were suffering from and the lack of opportunity. Pope Francis suggested that the young man read “the books of Father Fares, an Argentinian Jesuit.” His friend Fares’s name also came off-record during an interview I did with him for La Cività Cattolica in August 2013.

Bergoglio has a great talent for establishing rapport with people who find him clear, direct, sincere, intense, and loyal. This is a Pope who chats on the phone with his friends, as just a part of the normal life he lives out within the course of his ministry. Of course, these days, everyone is wondering who he is as a person and how he thinks, and, in many ways, he has raised our expectations only to exceed them. But he also is a man who raises questions and issues.

Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio? What does he think? When I interviewed him for La Cività Cattolica and other Jesuit publications, I didn’t think I was going to ask him this simple question, and yet I found myself asking it, spontaneously, from the heart. The answer he gave, and the way he gave it to me, struck me and gave me some insight into the person I was spending the day with, but I also got the sense that the answer I got was the very same answer he gives to his dearest friends.

That is why I turned to my fellow Jesuit Diego Fares, for I know he is one of those friends with whom Francis has shared a great deal. When I asked him to write about Francis for the journal that I edit, I confess that I wanted to start a conversation with Francis, in a way, by proxy. That conversation did eventually bear fruit, specifically in the form of this book, and its publication here has a single objective: to help people to become better and more intimately acquainted with one of Francis’s fundamental notions, that of encounter.

Diego Fares’s background is well suited to this task. We might call him an “intellectual,” but his background is not that of the typical middle-class academic intellectual we generally imagine. With a degree in philosophy, he is a Professor of Metaphysics at the Jesuit Universidad del Salvador and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. But he also has worked as part of a team of a hundred laypeople at St. Joseph’s House (El Hogar de San José), a shelter for poor and homeless adults. Together with Jesuit Father Ángel Rossi, he manages Kindness House (Casa de la Bondad), a hospice for the terminally ill. His background is that of an intellectual who lives in the world outside the classroom and who has honed his thought through direct contact with reality on the margins of society.

He was accepted into the Society of Jesus by the then Jesuit Provincial of Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, first in September 1975 for his prenovitiate and then into the novitiate on February 21, 1976. Pope Francis was also his sponsor for priestly ordination. “I remember,” says Father Fares, “that the first conversation I had with Jorge took place in the seat of the Provincial Curia, an old colonial palace, in the Flores neighborhood of the city. I was coming from Mendoza, where I was working with the Jesuits in a very poor area of town, and my first impression of the Provincial’s office was one of wealth, furnished as it was with antiques and a beautiful library. What I was thinking about all this luxury must have been visible on my face in some way, because before leaving to go back to the novitiate, Jorge told me to grab my jacket and come with him. We went up to the rooftop, and there he showed me where he lived: one of those little utility rooms that you find up there, you know, where you generally store the brooms and cleaning rags. That day was a little chilly, and I got the definite impression that the door to his room did very little to keep out the cold. From that point on, my feelings and opinion of Jorge—the integrity with which he lives what he preaches—have never changed. As Péguy has said, “Friendship is born in a moment.”

Bergoglio was thus his rector and director of formation at the Colegio Máximo de San José, and continued afterward as his spiritual director. “From the time I was young, he has been my guide through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and he taught me how to conduct the formation of young people, intellectually and spiritually.” In particular, Fares thinks Bergoglio’s attitude toward the poor serves as an example for his entire generation: he has shared with all around him his own enthusiasm for working with the humblest in society, and he has been tireless in constantly seeking new ways to teach and assist those in need, at all times honoring their dignity and humanity through his service.

Jorge and Diego have been friends for nearly forty years, so what follows here is one glimpse deep into the heart of a friendship and into a way of thinking that for Francis has grown over time, shaped by a lifetime of encounters, both spiritual and intellectual, that he has had with others, as well as by way of his ministry and social action.

In a recent interview, when asked to comment on the current moment we are living in the history of the Church, Diego Fares said,

The arrival of Francis is a time of consolation for people, and not just those in the Church but for the whole world. This is what St. Ignatius called it, consolation: an increase in hope, faith, and charity, an interior joy that comforts, soothes, and quiets the soul in its Creator and Lord. Consolation is a grace. Our Pope lives this grace personally. He has “put on the peace of the Holy Spirit,” as a bishop friend of his said, and he communicates this peace to whoever is open to receiving it. We hope that as a Church we will know how to receive this peace from him and how to pass it on to the world through works of justice and mercy.

By reading the following pages, we will take a journey through Bergoglio’s thought, we will touch upon the roots of this thought—in his life and intellect—and we will consider the fruits that his particular vision of a “culture of encounter” can bring to the world. One might say that Fares here has begun to sketch out the foundation for a Bergoglian political anthropology, first by examining the roots of Bergoglio the Jesuit in Chapters 1 through 3, particularly the writings of Romano Guardini, but also Dostoyevsky and contemporary Jesuit thought, then by Bergoglio the archbishop of Buenos Aires in Chapter 4, and then finally, of course, Bergoglio as Pope Francis in Chapters 5 through 7.

Fares’s approach throughout, however, is personal, not dogmatic, and he interweaves his survey of Francis’s thought with observations of his personality, which often reveal previously unappreciated aspects of this Pontiff and give us a deeper understanding of who he is. Fares’s image of the “bamboo Pope,” as well as Francis’s “shoeleather and church-bell thought,” will stay with the reader as memorable ways to think about the Pope in his life and in his ministry.

ONE

“We must go out of ourselves”

OUR BELOVED FRANCIS, by the grace received in virtue of his ministry, has awakened in the Lord’s faithful people hope in the God of mercy and in the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This grace is an “active” grace that spurs us all to move, to go forward toward encountering God himself and our fellow human beings, beginning with those most in need, the marginalized.

This action of the Spirit, which in everything seeks the common good,1 inspires us to listen to Francis, who exhorts us to keep our eyes wide open so that we might witness the miracles God has brought about among his people. He inspires us all further to help one another discover that which God—through Francis—has to say to each one of us personally, both as Church and as a people.

To speak personally, authentically, and directly is one of Francis’s most striking characteristics. Every day, in his homilies, in his Wednesday audiences, in the Angelus, in the Mass, and even by way of Twitter, he speaks directly to us, because to meet us where we are is something truly and deeply dear to his heart. So open has he been about himself, particularly in the course of his present ministry, that whether with a journalist who was writing a biography of the Pope or with a doctoral student writing his dissertation about him, I myself have often had to apologize for not being able to be especially useful in providing any more information or stories or items of interests about Francis that he himself has not, in one place or another, already disclosed.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of Francis’s favorite authors, places the study of aesthetics and theodramatics before the study of logic. In the same spirit, therefore, exploring the Pope’s thinking ought not to be undertaken in order to classify or systematize his thought but rather is best used as a way to “wonder about” him, to awaken our spiritual sense about the meaning of what he says and does. Further, we would do well to loyally and unconditionally accept his invitation to experience for ourselves what he calls the two “transcendences,” two ways we “go beyond ourselves”: the first, in our encounter with the Father, through adoration; the second, through the encounter with our neighbor, starting first with the neediest around us, in service to them with the help of the crucified Christ.

But ask yourselves this question: how often is Jesus inside and knocking at the door to be let out, to come out? And we do not let him out because of our own need for security, because so often we are locked into ephemeral structures that serve solely to make us slaves and not free children of God. In this “stepping out” it is important to be ready for encounter. For me this word is very important. Encounter with others. Why? Because faith is an encounter with Jesus, and we must do what Jesus does: encounter others