Religion in restoration
Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash
Pastoral Conversation Started by Francis Must Continue with Leo
St. Francis of Assisi famously heard the voice of God telling him to restore the Church. He, of course, started picking up bricks and began to fix the physical church of San Damiano in Assisi. He later realized that God was calling him to rebuild the institutional Church. By all accounts, Francis had Leo of Assisi as a close adviser and friend in this work. Brother Leo became the Saint’s secretary and confessor, and a companion on the road. Francis famously wrote Brother Leo a letter giving him a word of encouragement entitled “Frate Pecorello di Dio,” little brother sheep of God. Brother Leo received that famous biblical blessing from Francis with an additional inscription: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord let His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace. May the Lord bless you, Brother Leo!” He was close to Francis near the saint’s death, and by all accounts, sang him the “Canticle of the Sun” on his deathbed.
Eight centuries later, Pope Leo XIV follows Pope Francis at a time when the Catholic Church continues to need rebuilding.
Pope Francis began the restoration of the Church in the 21st century. His message was simple: the Church must be poor and act as a field hospital tending to the wounds of the most vulnerable. He set this tone at the outset, using his first papal trip to highlight the plight of migrants and climate refugees. Although much of the Church’s teaching didn’t change, he transformed the way we were called to be Church, calling us to a pastoral conversion in the way we treat one another. Francis called us to renew our call to care for the poor and care for creation. He truly was the people’s pope. His famous encyclical "on care for our common home," Laudato Si, used the global ecological crisis to make this point in a creative and deeply theological way.
Laudato Si’ was not a green encyclical, but a social one. He called us to be stewards of creation, to view creation as a gift that demands responsibility and accountability. In a world that emphasizes a globalization of the technocratic paradigm and anthropocentrism, he called the world to be and feel interconnected. Francis challenged us to think of integrated approaches and solutions to climate change and famously wrote, “There can be no (integral) ecology without an adequate anthropology.”
Laudato Si’ put the scientific reality of climate change in conversation with the teologia del pueblo, the theology of the people. This theological framework was established by Argentinian theologian Lucio Gera, whose disciples included Pope Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The theology of the people is rooted in the experience of social Catholicism and Christian labor movements in Latin America. It focuses on the experience of faith and looks to understand the popular cultural religiosity from their perspective, particularly among the most vulnerable populations. This theological school shaped Pope Francis’ thinking and writing, and has now shaped Church teaching on the environment for generations to come.
Creating a Culture of Encounter
In many ways, the Synod on Synodality was showing the global Church a theology of the people that called forth social fraternity and solidarity. Francis highlighted the work of popular movements — the social poets — whose creativity and imagination can advance our resilience. In doing so, he highlighted this People’s Theology during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he called for a transformation in the way we view land, labor and people’s homes. Francis spoke often about the dignity of the people to illustrate this unity that can and should exist within a diversity of people.
This demonstrates in a very concrete way his call to create a culture of encounter, where we discern and journey together, accompanying one another toward the creation of a better future. This also highlighted his Jesuit way of proceeding. It is not simply about the solution, but about the process by which we solve environmental degradation and social injustices. He invited all of us to think about our role in advancing ecological spirituality, education, and economics. He challenged us to be full participants in our community to advance integral human development. He transformed the ways in which faith-based institutions view their role in advancing integral ecology. He called us to hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. And we responded.
After this global discernment process, the world is now more fully aware that environmental degradation impacts the most vulnerable populations among us — the poor and the Indigenous communities. His papacy brought to the forefront the greatest humanitarian existential crisis of the 21st century — migration and climate refugees. Francis would go on to make this humanitarian crisis a central focus of his pontificate and calling us to welcome, promote, protect, and integrate all peoples, particularly those on the margins and the peripheries of society. He saw this humanitarian crisis as an opportunity to realize a culture of encounter, a culture that truly embodies our interconnectedness as human beings on this Earth, and more importantly, as un pueblo, el Pueblo de Dios. This, he said, is also a way to combat nationalist populist regimes. How prophetic his words were throughout his papacy.
A group of Loyola University Maryland students and employees will visit Rome in August for a pilgrimage during this Jubilee Year of Hope. We will visit Francis’ Borgo Laudato Si project at Castel Gandolfo Pontifical Villas’ gardens. We will pray at the tomb of Pope Francis. And we will greet his successor during a Wednesday Papal Audience. It will be a sign that we, the People of God, will also continue his legacy and work to restore our Church in the world.
And now we have Pope Leo XIV. A U.S.-born American who spent almost three decades in the Global South. Originally from Chicago via New Orleans creole and European heritage; to Chiclayo, Peru; to the Vatican. What this means for American Catholics is still to be determined. However, he took the name of Leo, signaling his interest in promoting the best-kept secret in Catholicism — our social doctrine. Pope Leo XIII famously responded to the industrial revolution with his encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), on the dignity of work and workers’ rights. Today, Pope Leo XIV continuously calls for an end to violence in so many parts of the world. He, too, will continue the legacy of Pope Francis, bringing us together, calling us to be one in Christ, to unify not only the Church but our broken world. “May the Lord bless you, (Pope) Brother Leo!”
Milton Javier Bravo, PhD
Vice President for Mission and Identity
Loyola University Maryland