Pope Francis poses for a selfie with a migrant during his visit to the Castelnuovo di Porto refugee centre near Rome
"Pope Francis Links"
In the kind of gesture that has cemented Pope Francis’s status as a transformational leader of the Catholic Church, the 79-year old Argentine pontiff last week celebrated Maundy Thursday in Castelnuovo di Porto, 20 miles north of Rome, which hosts nearly 900 asylum seekers at one of Italy’s biggest migrant reception centres.
On the day when Catholic priests re-enact Jesus’s washing of his 12 Apostles’ feet, ahead of the Last Supper. Pope Francis gave the ritual a twist by also washing the feet of non-Christians and women, and used the ceremony to repeat his message that hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into Europe must be welcomed, not shunned.More
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Four Nigerian Catholics, three Eritrean Coptic Christians, three Muslims from Mali, Syria and Pakistan, a Hindu man from India, and one Italian worker at the facility, all had their feet delicately washed, dried and kissed by the Pope. Some cried, overcome with emotion.
“We have different cultures and religions, but we are brothers and we want to live in peace,” the Pope said.
The visit to Castelnuovo may have been bittersweet for Francis. Around him there are reminders that for all his moral suasion — a recent Gallup poll showed him to be more popular than any of the world’s political leaders — his powers are limited, and his calls for tolerance and dialogue are mostly going unheeded.
Francis has by no means been a diplomatic failure. Earlier this month, Barack Obama landed in Cuba for the first US presidential visit since 1928, after a deal with Raúl Castro that was brokered by the Vatican. The pontiff also helped encourage the Iranian nuclear agreement and the global climate change pact.
But European countries seem as intent as ever on keeping refugees out, while Donald Trump, who wants to build a fence on the Mexican border, is still leading the Republican presidential nomination race.
This week’s deadly terrorist attacks, from Brussels to Lahore, offered evidence that hatred, often in the name of religion, remains rampant.
The Pope is also struggling to produce results in his internal reforms, partly because of staunch resistance from conservative clerics, and partly, critics say, because of his own weaknesses. “If — God forbid — [he] were to suddenly die, there is hardly anything he’s done so far that a successor with a restorationist agenda could not undo, even without too much effort or controversy,” Robert Mickens, editor-in-chief of Global Pulse, a Catholic website, wrote in a column this month.
The Pope is expected to refresh pastoral guidelines to allow, in certain cases, the divorced and remarried to receive communion, which has been banned until now. But after a fraught debate among Catholic bishops he is highly unlikely to change official church doctrine on the matter.
The pontiff has also pressed ahead with reform of the church’s finances — mostly notably the clean-up of the Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, which had been associated with money laundering and organised crime. He has even moved to bring more transparency to the funding of sainthood bids, which can cost up to €500,000 each. But in other areas of the church’s economy, such as the Vatican’s vast real estate holdings, there is still plenty of murk.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis is emerging from the bruising episode of seeing his top aide on the Vatican’s finances, Australian Cardinal George Pell, face questions from a royal commission on his role in the cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests as far back as the 1970s.
Cardinal Pell has denied allegations that he was complicit or aware of any cover-up, and told reporters he has the “full backing” of the Pope. To critics, this has shown Francis to be tone-deaf on an issue that has tarnished the image of the Church, and is extremely important to Catholics.
Last year at this time, the Pope had warned that his time in office would be “brief”, perhaps lasting “four or five years”, and suggesting he may take his cue from Benedict XVI and step down before his death. It may well be dawning on Francis that he might have to stick around a lot longer if he wants his legacy of change to be as sweeping as he hopes.
james.politi@ft.com
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