So much in such a short amount of time…

Pope Francis is celebrating the 10th anniversary of his election on Monday, well beyond the “two or three” years he once envisioned for the post, and showing no signs of slowing down.

Instead, with an agenda full of challenges and plans, no longer burdened by the shadow of Pope Benedict XVI, Francis, 86, is not thinking about retirement, recently describing the papacy as a life’s work.

The first Hispanic pope in history has already made his mark and may have even more influence in the coming years. However, ten years ago, an Argentine Jesuit was so confident that he would not be elected pope that he almost missed the final vote when he chatted with a fellow cardinal outside the Sistine Chapel.

“The master of ceremonies came out and said, ‘Are you coming or not?’,” Francis recalled in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “Then I realized that it was my unconscious resistance to entering the room.”

He was elected as the 266th Pope in the following vote.

harassment

Francis went through fire and iron to learn all about clergy sexual abuse, initially downplaying the problem in a way that left survivors wondering if “he figured it out”. He woke up five years later, after a hectic visit to Chile.

During the trip, he discovered a serious discrepancy between what the Chilean bishops told him about the infamous case and reality: hundreds or thousands of Chilean believers have been harassed and harassed by Catholic priests for decades.

“That was my appeal,” he told the AP. “Then the bomb went off when I saw the venality of many bishops.”

Since then, Francis has taken a number of measures aimed at holding the church hierarchy accountable, but the results have been mixed. Benedict deposed about 800 priests, but Francis appears to be more reluctant to remove offenders, reflecting resistance within the hierarchy to attempts to permanently remove “predators” from the priesthood.

And another crisis is already looming: sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse of adults by the clergy. Francis is aware of the problem – the new case concerns one of his fellow Jesuits – but seems unwilling to take drastic action.

Importance of Synods

When the history of Francis as pope is written, it would be possible to devote entire chapters to his emphasis on “catholicity,” a term that means little outside of Catholic circles, but which can be called one of Francis’s most important ecclesiastical contributions.

A synod is an assembly of bishops; in this context, Francis’ philosophy is that the bishops should listen to each other, and the laity are the ones who determine the vision of the Catholic Church: the Pope wants the church to be a place where the faithful are accepted, supported and heard.

The councils held during his first 10 years revealed some of the most important, but also controversial moments of his papacy.

After hearing about the Golgotha ​​of divorced Catholics during the 2014-2015 Family Synod, Francis left a “loophole” to allow divorced and remarried couples to receive communion. Calls to allow clergy marriage were flagged by the 2019 Synod on the Amazon, although Francis ultimately rejected the idea.

The October Synod included an unprecedented grassroots demand by Catholic believers for their hopes for the Church and the challenges they faced to be heard, prompting women to take on higher leadership roles, including ordination.

latin mode

Traditional Catholics were wary when Francis first appeared as pope in the portico of St. Peter’s Basilica without the red cloak his predecessors wore to official events. However, they never expected him to revoke one of Benedict’s “signatures”, re-imposing restrictions on the old Latin liturgy, including where and who could celebrate it.

Although only a small percentage of Catholic believers were directly affected by this decision, the suspension of the traditional Latin liturgy was … a call to arms for conservative opposition to Francis.

Francis justified his move by saying that Benedict’s decision to abolish the old liturgy was a source of division in the parishes. But traditionalists saw the new restrictions as an attack on orthodoxy, which they felt was contrary to Francis’ mantra of “all are welcome.”

Although the immediate prospects for Francis to retire are slim, the traditionalists have time on their side, knowing that another pope more friendly to the old liturgy may come in at a 2,000-year-old institution.

The role of women

Francis’ jokes about “female intelligence” have long made women cringe. Women theologians are “the icing on the cake,” she once said. Nuns are not supposed to be spinsters,” he commented elsewhere. Europe should not be a barren, barren “grandmother,” he told MEPs, a remark that prompted an angry phone call from then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

However, it is also true that Francis did more to advance women in the Church than any of his predecessors, including appointing many women to high positions in the Vatican.

It doesn’t matter much, given that only one in four of the Holy See’s staff is a woman, no woman heads a department, and Francis upholds church doctrine that forbids women from holding the priesthood.

But things are already running their course, and “there is no turning back,” said Maria-Lea Zervino, one of the first three women appointed to the Vatican office, which helps the pope choose bishops around the world.

LGBTI+ believers

Francis’ insistence that long-marginalized LGBTI Catholics be accepted into the Church can be summed up in two statements that mark his tenure to this day: “Who am I to judge?” and “Being gay is not a crime.”

Meanwhile, in making these historic statements, Francis has made working with LGBTI+ people a hallmark of his tenure more than any other pope.

Serves members of the transgender community in Rome. He has counseled same-sex couples seeking to raise their children in a Catholic lifestyle. During a 2015 visit to the US, she publicly held a private meeting with a former gay student and his partner to rebut a conservative account she had taken against an anti-same-sex marriage activist.

“The Pope is reminding the church that how people treat each other in public is of much greater moral importance than what people can do in the privacy of their bedroom,” spokesman Francis DeBernardo said. Ministry of New Wayswho advocates greater acceptance of LGBTI+ Catholics.

Source: Associated Press.