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National Geographic : 2015 Aug
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56 national geographic • August 2015 Ratzinger after John Paul II’s death in 2005—the archbishop left for Rome in March 2013, says Wals, “with all letters finished, the money in or- der, everything in perfect shape. And that night before he departed, he called just to go over all the office details with me, and also to give me advice about my future, like someone who knew that maybe he would be leaving for good.” Leave for good though he did, and in spite of the serenity he exhibits, Francis has none- theless approached his new responsibilities with gravity leavened by his characteristic self- deprecation. As he said last year to a former student, Argentine writer Jorge Milia, “I kept looking in Benedict’s library, but I couldn’t find a user’s manual. So I manage as best I can.” He is, the media would have it, a reform- er. A radical. A revolutionary. And he is also none of these things. His institution. I jokingly say that Harvard Busi- ness School could use him to teach rebranding. And politicians in Washington would kill for his approval rating.” Of course, as is evident when speaking to Vat- ican officials, the spectacle of a papal personality cult—Francis as rock star—is unseemly to such a dignified institution. To some of them the pope’s popularity is also threatening. It reinforces the mandate he was given by the cardinals who de- sired a leader who would cast aside the church’s regal aloofness and expand its spiritual constit- uency. Recalls one, Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, “Just before the conclave, when all the cardinals gathered, we shared our views. There was a certain mood: Let’s get a change. That kind of mood was strong inside. No one said, ‘No more Italians or no more Europeans’—but a desire for change was there. “Cardinal Bergoglio was basically unknown “THE PERFECT FAMILY DOESN’T EXIST, NOR IS there a perfect husband or a perfect wife, and let’s not talk about the perfect mother-in-law! It’s just us sinners.” —Pope Francis, comments to engaged couples, February 14, 2014 city. I really liked to do that. In this sense, I feel a little penned in.” Friends say that as the head of the Vatican and an Argentine, he has felt duty bound to receive his country’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, even when it has been painfully evi- dent to him that she has used these visits for her own political gain. “ When Bergoglio received the president in a friendly way, it was out of pure grace,” says Buenos Aires evangelical pastor Juan Pablo Bongarrá. “She didn’t deserve it. But that’s how God loves us, with pure grace.” To Wals, his former press aide, Bergoglio’s careful entry into the papacy is completely un- surprising. Indeed, it was foreshadowed by the manner in which he vacated his previous office. Realizing there was a chance the conclave would elect him—after all, he had been the runner-up to impact thus far is as impossible to miss as it is to measure. Francis has kindled a spiritual spark among not only Catholics but also oth- er Christians, those of other faiths, and even nonbelievers. As Skorka says, “He is changing religiosity throughout the world.” The leader of the Catholic Church is widely seen as good news for an institution that for years prior to his arrival had known only bad news. “Two years ago,” says Father Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit and a senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter, “if you asked anybody on the street, ‘What’s the Catholic Church for and against?’ you would’ve gotten, ‘It’s against gay marriage, against birth control’—all this stuff. Now if you ask people, they’ll say, ‘Oh, the pope—he’s the guy who loves the poor and doesn’t live in a palace.’ That’s an extraordinary achievement for such an old
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