Raise a ruckus

 

­Today Pope Francis returns to Rome after an incredible journey to World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro.

His visit to a favela was a continuing sign of his commitment to the poor as was his visit to a drug rehabilitation center at a hospital.

He also showed a concern for justice. He raised questions about the police "purification" a few months ago of the poor neighborhood he visited. He spoke strongly for the rights of the indigenous in the Amazon.

He spoke, as he has since his first days as Bishop of Rome, against consumerism, individualism,  and materialism.

He must have driven his security details crazy by his continuing desire to be in contact with people.

He is a personable pope, more like a lovable parish priest than an ecclesiastic. As I wrote previously, he feels like an “Uncle Frank.”

But in Rio, as in other places, he has spoken in ways that should shake up the church. In off the cuff remarks in Spanish to the Argentinian youth in Rio he said:

Quisiera decir una cosa. ¿Qué es lo que espero como consecuencia de la Jornada de la Juventud? Espero lío. Que acá dentro va a haber lío va a haber, que acá en Río va a haber lío va a haber, pero quiero lío en las diócesis, quiero que se salga afuera, quiero que la Iglesia salga a la calle, quiero que nos defendamos de todo lo que sea mundanidad, de lo que sea instalación, de lo que sea comodidad, de lo que sea clericalismo, de lo que sea estar encerrados en nosotros mismos, las parroquias, los colegios, las instituciones son para salir, sino salen se convierten en una ONG ¡y la Iglesia no puede ser una ONG!

Que me perdonen los obispos y los curas, si alguno después le arma lío a ustedes, pero es el consejo. Gracias por lo que puedan hacer.

I shared this on Facebook under the title: “raise a ruckus in the dioceses,” even though the AP translated “lío” as “mess.” One friend suggested “fuss” which is better than “mess.” I might, however, accept “mess” if it were talking about “messing up.” But "ruckus" is, I think, better.

But then I looked today at the Vatican website translation where I found "lio" translated as “noise.” What a way to tame a strong statement. What bishop is going to be upset if the youth make some noise. They’d just be like crying babies in church.

Here’s what the Vatican site translation is:

Let me tell you what I hope will be the outcome of World Youth Day: I hope there will be noise.  Here there will be noise, I’m quite sure.  Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise, no doubt about that.  But I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves.  The parishes, the schools, the institutions are made for going out ... if they don’t, they become an NGO, and the Church cannot be an NGO. 

May the bishops and priests forgive me if some of you create a bit of confusion afterwards.  That’s my advice.  Thanks for whatever you can do.

The translation is weak, to put it mildly.

I think the pope is really saying that he wants the youth to raise a ruckus so that the church goes out of itself, that it is truly missionary. But he wants this to be done without clinging to worldliness (which he seems to relate to desire for power and control), without being stuck where the Church is and has been. He warns of getting too comfortable.

Most strikingly, he warns of “clericalism.” Hearing this, I felt so grateful that someone in the hierarchy is warning about “clericalism,” a scourge in the church which I find not limited to one faction in the church. I have seen and experienced the clericalism of some priests who would consider themselves “radicals.” When I priest I work with spoke of his concern about clericalism a few weeks ago I almost fell out of the chair where I was sitting. What a breath of fresh air.

But one sentence of the Vatican translation really takes the cake for trying to gloss over the radical nature of what Pope Francis sai:

Que me perdonen los obispos y los curas, si alguno después le arma lío a ustedes, pero es el consejo.

The Vatican site translation is: 

 May the bishops and priests forgive me if some of you create a bit of confusion afterwards.

A more literal (and, I think, accurate) translation might be:

May you bishops and priests forgive me if some one later raises a ruckus for you. 

That’s a lot more serious than “creating a bit of confusion.” One idiomatic translation of “armar lío” I ran across is “stir up a hornet’s nest.”

This is not the first time I’ve seen the Pope’s words translated in a way that softens their impact – and it probably won’t be the last. So we need to be attentive to attempts to soften his prophetic words.

But the call is clear: “Raise a ruckus,” get out of the closed-in, insular Church and be the Gospel of Love to the world.

I am grateful for a pope who offers a vision of a church in the streets, with the poor, not fearful of going out and making changes. This can help us nurture hope.

This is what he said to young people at the end of his talk in the favela of Varginha, in Rio:

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Here, as in the whole of Brazil, there are many young people. Dear young friends, you have a particular sensitivity towards injustice, but you are often disappointed by facts that speak of corruption on the part of people who put their own interests before the common good. To you and to all, I repeat: never yield to discouragement, do not lose trust, do not allow your hope to be extinguished. Situations can change, people can change. Be the first to seek to bring good, do not grow accustomed to evil, but defeat it. The Church is with you, bringing you the precious good of faith, bringing Jesus Christ, who “came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10).

I hope that he and all of us can truly live up to this challenge – raise a ruckus and don’t be afraid of stirring up a hornet’s nest. That way we may bring to people Jesus, the God of Life.

A prayer for Pope Francis

What a sense of humor God has. A Latin American Jesuit is elected pope and takes the name Francis.

Inside of St. Peter's dome, The Vatican

Pope Francis,

May the Spirit of God light a fire in you 

so that you may be Good News to the Poor, 

a sign of contradiction to the powers of this world, 

and a witness to the compassion of Jesus.

Papa Francisco (Pancho),

Que el Espíritu de Dios encienda en ti un fuego 

para que seas Buena Nueva a los pobres, 

un señal de contradicción a los poderes del mundo, 

y un testigo de la compasión de Jesucristo.

When I was in Rome last month I took the above photo of St. Francis and his companions facing the Lateran Basilica, where the pope lived in Francis' day. 

My prayer in the past few weeks can be summed up as asking God that the next pope be more like Francis of Assisi than a Renaissance potentate.

May Pope Francis live up to his name. 

I just had an errant thought. What if he took the name Francis after St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary? That's not a problem for me.

Here's a great quote from a letter of  St. Francis Xavier, taken from Henri Nouwen's Road to Daybreak:

      “Often I am overcome with the desire to cry out against the universities, especially against the University of Paris . . . and to rage with all my powers like a fool who has lost his senses.

      “I would cry out against those who are more preoccupied with becoming scientists than with letting people in need profit from their science . . . I am afraid that many who learn their disciplines at the university are more interested in using them to acquire honors, bishoprics, privileges, and high position than in using them for what is just and necessary. . . The common word is: ‘I will study “letters” in order to get some good privileged position in the Church, and after that  I will live for God.’ These people are brutes, following the guidance of their sensuality and disordered impulses. . . They do not trust in God, nor do they give themselves completely to him . . . they are afraid that God does not want what they desire and that when they obtain him they are forced to abandon their unjustly acquired privileges. . .

      “How many would be enlightened by the faith of the Gospel if there were some who would put all their effort into finding good people who are willing to make sacrifices to search for and find not what belongs to them, but what belongs to Jesus Christ. In these lands so many people come to faith in Jesus Christ that many times my arms fail me because of the painful work of baptizing them.”

Arm of St. Francis Xavier in the church of the Gesù, Rome

St. Francis Xavier is said to have baptized hundreds of thousands, beginning with his mission in India. He was an evangelizer who was not afraid to leave home and seek other shores to bring Good News to the poor.

 

May God, Mary, and all the angels and saints guide Pope Francis, who not only blessed the Church but also asked us to pray to God to bless him.

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John Allen's portrait of Pope Francis can be found here. 

Brief thoughts, with pictures, of Rome

In most ways Rome felt less like a pilgrimage site for me than Assisi.

St. Peter’s felt more like a mall than a church, with hordes of people walking through and taking pictures of everything. I, being only a little less touristy, only took pictures of about half of what I saw.

St. Peter’s did not feel like a church, a place of prayer. Yet, there were moments, as when I gazed up and saw streams of light coming through the windows and did experience a sense of transcendence,

or when I saw, at a distance the statue of St. Peter whose foot is worn thin by the touch of pilgrims (though you can’t get near it now.)

While St. Peter’s is “busy” with lots of images and altars to distract, St. Paul’s outside the Walls struck me as beautiful in its sparseness, uncluttered.

St. Paul outside the Walls

But I really loved a few other small churches, including Santa Maria in Trastevere, where the mosaic shows a tender image of Jesus with his right arm around his mother Mary.

 I didn’t expect surprises but in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva near the Pantheon I found the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena under the main altar.

Tomb of St. Catherine of Siena

 Another day I visited the small church of Madonna dei Monte. I had sought out the church because it houses the tomb of St. Benedict Joseph Labré, God’s bum. He lived as a homeless pilgrim in the streets of Rome but after his death was buried in this church.

Tomb of St. Benedict Joseph Labré

 I visited the four major basilicas (St. Peter, St. Paul outside the walls, St. John Lateran, and St. Mary Major), as well as many other churches, but I was moved in the church of San Bartolomeo on an island in the Tiber. I referred to this church in an earlier post, here, because what most struck me there was being surrounded again by the great cloud of witnesses, in this case martyrs of the twentieth century. 

Reliquary of Fr. Jerzy Popielusko, Polish priest

But a highlight was a visit to Subiaco. Look for a future post on my experience there.