As I write Pope Francis is coming to end of his visit to Cuba and the USA. Once again he has shown his great capacity to win over hearts in such disparate cultural settings as these two countries represent. Three phrases of the Holy Father have struck me from his homilies and addresses during the trip.
A “revolution of tenderness”
In the homily of his Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre in Santiago de Cuba (September 22) Pope Francis called for a “revolution of tenderness” – a very novel kind of revolution in a country so long subject to the bitterness of the Marxist kind of revolution. We need, he preached, “to leave our homes as did Mary at the visitation, and to ‘to open our eyes and hearts to others’”. This revolution “comes about through tenderness, through the joy which always becomes closeness and compassion, and leads us to get involved in, and to serve, the life of others”.
How we all need to hear this message in a world so devoid of tenderness. We are almost inured to the stories and images of savage brutality which continue to come out from ISIS held territories. The terrible sufferings of countless thousands of men, women and children fleeing to the borders of Europe from the hopeless situation in the Middle East engineered at least in part by Western powers might likewise leave us cold. And then there is the even more callous, sanitised brutality of the wine sipping, smooth talking salespersons hawking human body parts harvested by Planned Parenthood.
The “culture of waste”
In his Address to the United Nations General Assembly the Holy Father returned to the theme of waste which he has written about in the recent Encyclical Laudato Si:
The misuse and destruction of the environment are also accompanied by a relentless process of exclusion. In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged, either because they are differently abled (handicapped), or because they lack adequate information and technical expertise, or are incapable of decisive political action. Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offence against human rights and the environment. The poorest are those who suffer most from such offences, for three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse of the environment. They are part of today’s widespread and quietly growing “culture of waste”.
The Pope has often repeated that the culture of waste eventually excludes weaker human beings from society and ultimately consigns them to the scrap heap. In this we see that the Pope is an environmentalist first and foremost because he is a (Christian) humanist.
The “school of encounter”
In the homily at Mass in Madison Square Garden the Pope spoke of the “second-class citizens” in the large, busy cities of the world:
But big cities also conceal the faces of all those people who don’t appear to belong, or are second-class citizens. In big cities, beneath the roar of traffic, beneath “the rapid pace of change”, so many faces pass by unnoticed because they have no “right” to be there, no right to be part of the city. They are the foreigners, the children who go without schooling, those deprived of medical insurance, the homeless, the forgotten elderly.
What is needed is that Christ, the Prince of Peace would bring us to learn the lesson of encounter:
He frees us from anonymity, from a life of emptiness and selfishness, and brings us to the school of encounter. He removes us from the fray of competition and self-absorption, and he opens before us the path of peace. That peace which is born of accepting others, that peace which fills our hearts whenever we look upon those in need as our brothers and sisters.
The papacy of Pope Francis has been marked by what might be termed “a charism of mercy”: a special tenderness towards those who have been marginalised in society through poverty, sickness or vulnerability. It is moving to see how he so eloquently but authoritatively brings their plight before the most powerful men and women in the world.