Jesuit reflection on Pope Francis

Fr Dominic Robinson SJ, Parish Priest at Farm Street Church, Mayfair, writes: "We are not living an era of change but a change of era". Francis' comment to Italian bishops in 2015 became something of a mantra for his papal ministry in a fast changing world in which the Catholic Church had lost so much credibility and needed to be humbled back to simplicity. The choice of name said it all, defining the agenda of reform by a style, like the poverello of Assisi, of living simply, above all attuned to the poorest on the peripheries and caring for the beleaguered planet.

It was Jesuit formation and not Franciscan spirituality, though, that taught Francis how to discern the signs of these strange times and to respond to them with the heart of the sinner who knows he is loved by God as he is. "Who am I to judge?" was surely the fruit of such discernment when he famously responded to a journalist's question on homosexuality. That pastoral heart which was attuned to the human capacity for love surely taught him how the pain of marital break-up and falling in love again was where the Church's pastoral ministry required first mercy and compassion, not unthinking judgment and condemnation. He had once been an authoritarian Jesuit superior but he had learned the hard way the essence of servant leadership in listening carefully and from that building consensus among fellow pilgrims walking together into hope.

The fault lines in the Church between so-called progressives and conservatives, mirroring the culture wars of this new era, at least in the west, have led to unfair critiques which have threatened to mar Francis' revolutionary pontificate. Some will argue that nothing really did change and this would be fair if we are thinking solely of the Church's teaching. This is not for a pope to change. The development of Catholic Social Teaching, however, especially on the response to environmental crisis and, encompassing this, the return to an emphasis on humanity's humbled place as a steward of creation, is groundbreaking in its rediscovery of a theocentric understanding of the Christian vocation which we share with other faiths and people of good will who search for an overall meaning of our very existence. Some will argue that the question of some kind of formal authorised ministry for women in the Church, be it deacon or deaconess or other, should never have been discussed in commissions or at the Synod. Some will say nothing has happened anyway. However the truth is that the need for some clear pathway to more significantly hearing women's voices and bringing women's gifts to the centre of leadership and pastoral ministry cannot be ignored as we continue to walk a synodal path across vastly different cultures in one diverse Body of Christ at our head.

The mature historian of the Church in decades to come will surely look at the pontificate of this monumental figure with a discerning mind and see how a pope, who was regarded by some who claim ground on the right or the left as divisive, was in fact a true 'pontifex', a builder of bridges between a vast swathe of good faithful disciples who were fallen away and a Church which continues to profess eternal truths about God and the world and our place in it, and sets the bar high in how we follow Christ in our lives as flawed human beings. As such Pope Francis is in the line of great popes of the Second Vatican Council, a council of the Church which is irreversible in its opening a dialogue between the Church, which is founded by Christ for eternity, and a world which in its changing of eras is always searching anew for meaning and fulfilment. Francis has taught us to listen to that encounter between our modern world and the eternal truths of our faith handed down from apostolic times. He is still now, through his legacy, teaching us to walk together, to listen carefully, to learn and to always respond first and foremost with a big heart open to God, open to know his love for us as we are.

This tribute is also being published by the Redemptorist Press.