A Pope for the Poor

In the North of Rio de Janeiro is the miserable slum of Manguinhos. It is a stubborn place. Again and again the local government tries to evict the residents in urban cleansings that sweep into the favela with instruments of construction assigned to destruction. The demolitions have grown more desperate as Brazil prepares to play host to the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Bulldozers and jackhammers and backhoes shear off sides of buildings, revealing staircases that go nowhere. Exposed to the elements are the red, turquoise and yellow walls that were once living rooms. But many of the people refuse to move. They jerry-build electricity and water supplies to maintain themselves even as rivers of sewage run past the front of what they still call home. Under the rubble, the streets remain visible. They were named for saints.

In miserable Manguinhos is the even more miserable neighborhood called Varginha. Its tenacity has increased because the Pope is coming to visit. The last Pope to visit a Brazilian favela–John Paul II in 1980, on the first of several trips to the country–helped save it from a similar demolition plan simply by paying it attention. The authorities relented; the bulldozers went away. The people of Varginha are praying that Francis will perform the same miracle. On the front of one house, someone has painted in light blue, “The Pope is coming to Varginha to visit the poor. The poor will be very happy!”

They know that Francis is the Pope of the poor. Did he not name himself for the son of the rich man from Assisi who gave up everything to walk barely shod, a saint in sackcloth? Has not this new Pope refused to live in his palace? And did he not say that the shepherd of the faithful must smell like his sheep? The astonished whispers are everywhere, not just Brazil, before his first scheduled foreign trip since his election and his first return to his home continent. A Pope for the forgotten; a Pope for the godforsaken. And not just among Catholics: Anglicans are thinking of a compact of churches to fight poverty, and evangelicals see Francis as a Pontiff they can deal with. Atheists are gob-smacked that he has said some of them might merit heaven. A Pope for everyone?

Brazil may prove to be a showcase for the powers of this humble Pope and the fresh face he is putting on the ancient papacy. In this, the most populous of Catholic countries on the most Catholic of continents, he faces in microcosm the challenges the church is confronted with around the world: the magnetism of Protestant evangelism and the temptations of secular culture. And it is in this enormous Latin American nation that the Pope of the poor may just begin to have the destabilizing influence that John Paul II had in Eastern Europe: to turn the tide against the rivals of the church and re-establish its primacy in places where it once held incontestable sway. Already Brazil wonders if Francis might exacerbate the protests that swept its cities last month. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina is probably grateful that the Pontiff, whom she used to deride when he was a Cardinal, decided against visiting his native land as it prepares for a crucial round of elections.

A Gentle Cunning

“Go forth and set the world on fire.” In his own nonincendiary ways, Pope Francis, the first Jesuit to become Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, is heeding the words of the founder of his order, the 16th century Basque soldier-saint Ignatius of Loyola. Just four months into his reign, Francis has raised expectations for change and renewal in the 2,000-year-old spiritual empire simply by changing tactics. His retired predecessor’s reputation for theological remove has been replaced by the new Pope’s seemingly spontaneous ecumenical embrace of all.

This new Franciscan style, however, may not simply be the overflowing of the divine spirit in an incipient saint. The Jesuits were a militant order at their founding–the shock troops of the Counter-Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries–and the head of the Society of Jesus is still referred to as Father General. Francis is not technically the head of the Jesuits, but he once ran the division of the order in Argentina and has had to contend with secular powers–like Fernández–inimical to his church. He has a stratagem straight from Jesus: “I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Speak with the gentleness of Assisi, but think with the cunning of Loyola.

The gentleness was on display on the night of March 13, the moment Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was revealed as the new Pope on the balcony high on the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica. The first Pope from the New World did not straightaway invoke his fresh, God-given powers by blessing the crowd; instead, in a surprising act of spiritual democracy, he asked the faithful in the piazza beneath him to keep silence and to pray for him. The days that followed established the persona of the modest Pope: going back to pay his hotel bill; wearing sensible black shoes, not the showy red of his predecessor; getting his own coffee from a vending machine; suddenly stopping the Popemobile as it journeyed around St. Peter’s Square to embrace an infirm young pilgrim. During Holy Week, he stunned conservative Catholics when, during the traditional washing of feet–in emulation of Christ doing the same for his disciples, who were all men–he ministered to a Serbian woman, an imprisoned non-Catholic felon invited to be part of the ritual. Says Rome-based theologian Robert Dodaro: “A simple gesture is not always a simple gesture when it is the Pope’s gesture.” What is this Pope trying to say?

Less than two weeks before his scheduled trip to Brazil, he rode an Italian coast guard vessel to the forlorn island of Lampedusa, where he preached to, among others, Muslim migrants who had braved the Mediterranean reaching for a better life. An estimated 8,000 people entered Europe through Italy in the first six months of this year. From 1994 to 2012, more than 6,000 others died in the attempt. “Who wept for these people who were aboard the boat?” Francis asked in his homily. “For the young mothers who brought their babies? For these men who wanted to support their families? … We are a society that has forgotten how to cry.” By adding Lampedusa to his itinerary, he injected himself into Europe’s furious debate about immigration and economics, coming down as the unapologetic advocate for those left behind by the global culture of greed and materialism.

Francis’ unabashed championing of the poor and his criticism of the heartlessness of financial markets have had the effect of returning the church to its ancient strength: the pursuit of social justice. The pronouncements have recalibrated the church’s engagement with the world away from the enervating scandals of priestly sexual scandal. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger may have tried to clean up the mess after he became Pope Benedict XVI, but he was too much part of the tainted bureaucracy to effectively reform the church–or alter public attitudes about the sincerity of the Vatican’s contrition. Francis may yet be hobbled by the controversies: the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child has requested that the Vatican “provide detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy, brothers and nuns.” In the meantime, however, he seems to have moved to investigate new allegations.

He has also apparently withdrawn from active participation in debates over sexual morality and biology, raising few public arguments over the right to life and making only passing reference to gay marriage despite loud protests from the French church as Paris legalized it. The singer Elton John, who is gay, has praised him.

It is not that Francis is about to change church doctrine on those matters–he is not. His first encyclical was actually written for the most part by the conservative Benedict, who lives in retirement in the luxurious Vatican Garden. Francis merely put his imprimatur on it with an innocuous sentence or two praising the Pope emeritus. Their differences are mainly matters of style. When Francis said that atheists could find themselves in paradise, his message was in line with a long tradition of church teachings and the words of Benedict himself. But where Ratzinger would have taken carefully parsed paragraphs to make the case, Bergoglio delivered it simply and clearly as a conclusion. The Pope emeritus too dined with the poor during his reign and, unprecedentedly, met with and consoled victims of priestly abuse. But his approach was all too cerebral, hampering his efforts. “Pope Benedict was classical music,” says Dodaro. “Pope Francis is folk. Both are beautiful, but they’re very different types of music.”

Francis does appear to be trying to balance the contending flanks of Catholic ideology that developed since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Liberal Catholics were heartened, for example, when he decided to move Pope John XXIII–the great modernizer of the church–toward sainthood on the same schedule as Pope John Paul II, who helped end the Cold War but was much more conservative. Francis did that despite John XXIII’s not having what was thought to be the requisite second miracle to certify his candidacy. Both men are expected to be canonized by the end of 2013.

The dramatic change is that Francis seems to have quite consciously decided that the efforts of the church–for its own long-term interests–are best expended on economic issues. If the past four months are any indication, that shift resonates with the faithful and those who have drifted away. Near the church of Santa Maria Consolatrice in Rome, an area hard hit by Europe’s economic crisis, many storefronts are empty. But, says Father Giovanni Biallo, who runs the parish, the working-class parishioners have been deeply touched by what Francis has had to say. “Every Sunday,” says Biallo, “there is someone coming into the church and confessing after many years.” He says young people are especially moved by the message of simplicity. “Gay marriage is not the world’s first priority right now. The economy is. The crisis can be a good moment to come back to the real needs of the people.”

Blessed Are the Poor

“He’s a heavenly Rock Star,” says Omar Bello, the author of a new book on the Pope. An adviser for the television station of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires and the editor of La Verdad, the Catholic Church’s newspaper in Junín, Argentina, Bello says Francis is genuinely spartan in his lifestyle. But, he adds, despite the gentle public persona, Bergoglio in private can be intimidating. “He jokes and makes you laugh,” Bello says. “But watch out if he gets angry, because he can be very tough. He is no papal Lassie.” To Bello, the Pope’s affability is a natural by-product of his management style. “He likes to stay informed, and he likes power,” says Bello. “He’s both open and very conservative. Speaking with everybody is his way of leadership. He’s very charming, but he can also be a controller, as all powerful people are.”

In Argentina, the future Francis was admired for his willingness to sweat it out like ordinary folk, trundling to work on buses and trains. Voluntary poverty, of course, has always been a spiritual exercise, bringing a person closer to God by stripping away attachments and temptations. But there also are practical reasons for living in a humbler state than his predecessors. Donations to the Holy See from Catholics around the world for charity purposes have declined from $101 million in 2006–during Benedict’s honeymoon period–to $65.9 million in 2012, an indication perhaps of the global economic crisis, disgust over the unabated abuse controversies or both. The Vatican is paying more in property taxes to the Italian state–an additional $5 million. At the very least, a Pope’s choosing to live on the cheap is a cost savings and leadership by example that might trickle down to the more lavish princelings of the church.

The ongoing reform of the Vatican’s bank–the Institute for Works of Religion, known by its Italian acronym, IOR–helps make the case for change as the Holy See has allowed itself to be policed. Italian authorities arrested a senior monsignor, Nunzio Scarano, for allegedly planning to smuggle more than $25 million into Italy on a private jet. Law-enforcement reports described the monsignor’s opulent apartment in the southern Italian city of Salerno, including expensive religious art and paintings by Giorgio de Chirico and Marc Chagall. Benedict initiated the reforms–including greater transparency for IOR and its unpublished assets as well as adherence to accepted rules of accounting–but Francis may reap the benefit if they bear fruit. It is a first and critical step in the formidable task of reforming the byzantine Vatican bureaucracy, which is full of entrenched privileges that predate Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The Latin American Challenge

Francis may have a better handle on his global challenges. Brazil could be the perfect stage to show off his skills and proclivities. His visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida will be a reminder of his role in a 2007 regional bishops conference there. He was one of the principal authors of its key document, one that condemned “the greed of the market” and championed communal prerogatives over individual rights. While the Vatican has kept quiet about the recent protests in Brazil’s cities, the senior Cardinal of the country has not. “We’re not used to seeing mass movements including young people,” said São Paulo’s Archbishop Odilo Scherer. “People decided to make their voices heard in the streets. This should be interpreted by the political class.” Archbishop Orani João Tempesta of Rio told Brazilian TV that young people “want a new Brazil, one that is more just and socially conscious. That agrees with what we, the bishops, are also looking for.” He told TIME of the Pope’s visit, “Because he himself is Latin American, there is a sense among the bishops here that he will speak to their specific concern.”

If Francis is to reaffirm his church’s primacy on the continent, he has to make that kind of inspirational inroad among the youth. Brazil has 10% of the world’s Catholics. But its internal demographics have changed dramatically over the past 20 years. From 1991 to 2010, the proportion of Brazilians who identified themselves as Catholic dropped from 83% to 68%, while the proportion of Protestant evangelicals–fostered by televangelism and new media–grew from 9% to more than 20%.

Francis brings his experience with Argentine evangelicals to the Brazilian stage. Argentina’s Protestants love him. “Whenever you talk to him,” Juan Pablo Bongarrá, president of the Argentine Bible Society, a Protestant evangelical organization, told Christianity Today, “the conversation ends with a request, ‘Pastor, pray for me.'” As Cardinal of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio reportedly once attended a prayer meeting of evangelical preachers and, kneeling in front of a congregation of nearly 6,000, had Protestant pastors lay hands on him to pray. (Conservative Catholics are still shocked over it.) If Francis can create a similar religious détente or even alliance in Brazil, the secular government would have to take notice. Indeed, even without such an alliance, the leftist administration of President Dilma Rousseff abandoned an election plank that favored the legalization of abortion for fear of losing the religious vote–both Catholic and Protestant.

A Cardinal consorting with non-Catholic preachers is one thing. A Pontiff doing so is much more complicated. Unscripted moments can cause theological consternation. “It’s wonderful and problematic at the same time,” says the theologian Dodaro. “Catholic theologians are used to treating each word of the Pope as the magisteria, as part of his teachings, which has a binding authority on the church.” The Pope enjoys speaking off the cuff, especially when he holds morning Mass. During the addresses, which last five to 10 minutes, Francis has no written text, not even notes. The homilies are colloquial and, when he wants to make a point, repetitious. He delivers them in Italian, which is not his native language–though his parents were Italian immigrants to Argentina–so he sometimes uses the wrong words. Not wanting to have him speak in mangled Italian, the Vatican newspaper often paraphrases Francis in order not to misquote him. Says Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor of L’Osservatore Romano: “If he uses an inappropriate verb, we synthesize that passage.”

Francis, Dodaro says, seems to be aware of the potential for doctrinal confusion and has given instructions that his unscripted homilies not be published as official documents. But that hasn’t stopped people from poring over them. “We want to try to discern policy, but deeper than that, teaching.” It is only four months into his papacy. There will be many more words and actions to ponder, sifting through the gentle and the cunning, to reach the heart of Francis.