The same thing might be said about and by Pope Francis, that many try to sum him up by inferences based on various things he\u2019s done: travels, gestures, homilies, discourses, messages, letters, appointments, apostolic constitutions, encyclicals, exhortations, motu proprios, chirographs, and more.<\/p>\n
How do we, however, best understand him from the inside?<\/p>\n
The best key with which to do that is his understanding of God\u2019s mercy.<\/p>\n
At the very moment his pontificate began, when he accepted the election of his brother cardinals ten years ago, he did not say merely \u201cAccepto,\u201d which is the way Popes normally assent to their election. As he stated in the first of what have become many interviews, he told Fr. Antonio Spadaro he replied in Latin, \u201cI am a sinner, but having trusted in the mercy and infinite patience of our Lord Jesus Christ and in a spirit of penance, I accept.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Spadaro asked him in the same interview, \u201cWho is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?,\u201d the Holy Father replied, \u201cI am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon\u201d with mercy. He added, \u201cI always felt my motto, Miserando atque Eligendo<\/em>, was very true for me,\u201d that the Lord, looking upon him with merciful love, chose him first to be a priest and religious, then a bishop, and finally the successor of St. Peter.<\/p>\n On Sept. 21, 1953, everything in his life changed. He stopped into his parish church and saw a priest he didn\u2019t know, Fr. Carlos Duarte Ibarra, and, without much forethought, asked him to hear his confession. He exited the confessional five minutes later, intending no longer to become a chemist but a priest. He recognized that God had been waiting for him in the confessional to fill him with his mercy and that, miserando atque eligendo<\/em>, was choosing him to be a minister of that mercy to others.<\/p>\n That conviction has been the principal leitmotif<\/em> of his Christian life, priesthood and papacy.<\/p>\n In a 2010 book length interview, El Jesuita<\/em>, Cardinal Bergoglio said that an authentically Christian discipleship begins with our recognition that we\u2019re sinners in need of salvation and the concomitant experience that that Savior looks on us with merciful love.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me,\u201d he said, \u201cfeeling oneself a sinner is one of the most beautiful things that can happen, if it leads to its ultimate consequences. \u2026 When a person becomes conscious that he is a sinner and is saved by Jesus, \u2026 he discovers the greatest thing in life, that there is someone who loves him profoundly, who gave his life for him.\u201d<\/p>\n He lamented that many Catholics have sadly not had this fundamental Christian experience. \u201cThere are people who believe the right things, who have received catechesis and accepted the Christian faith in some way, but who do not have the experience of having been saved \u2026\u00a0and who therefore lack the experience of who they are. I believe that only we great sinners have this grace.\u201d After his election, he added, \u201cOnly the one who has been touched and caressed by the tenderness of his mercy really knows the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n On the first of his papacy, he sought to open up both the Church and the world to this grace. In his homily at the Vatican\u2019s parish church of St. Anne and in his meditation from his study window before a crowd of 300,000, he stressed what he discovered back on September 21, 1953, saying, \u201cThe Lord never tires of forgiving: never! It is we who tire of asking for his forgiveness. Let us ask for the grace never to tire of asking for forgiveness, because God never tires of giving his forgiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n He has said the \u201cwhole Gospel, all of Christianity,\u201d is contained in the joy God has in forgiving us. The \u201cmost profound mission of Jesus,\u201d he stated, \u201cis the redemption of all of us sinners.\u201d God\u2019s \u201cname\u201d and \u201cidentity card\u201d are mercy. Mercy is God\u2019s \u201cmost powerful message.\u201d It is \u201cthe very foundation of the Church\u2019s life\u201d and her \u201cprimary task.\u201d It is \u201cthe true force that can save man and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of these convictions, he convoked a Jubilee of Mercy in 2015-2016 to help the Church to \u201crediscover the meaning of the mission entrusted to her by the Lord on the day of Easter: to be a sign and an instrument of the Father\u2019s mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n For the Jubilee, he wrote two documents, The Face of Mercy<\/em> and Mercy and Misery<\/em>, which are both beautiful summaries of the centrality of divine mercy in the life and mission of the Church. During the Jubilee, he instituted the Missionaries of Mercy, originally about 1,100 of the 410,000 priests in the world, to be \u201cpersuasive preachers of mercy,\u201d and \u201cliving signs of the Father\u2019s readiness to welcome those in search of his forgiveness\u201d through their dedication to hearing confessions. He gave them special faculties in the confessional to be able to remit the censures and heal the sins that are normally reserved only to the Holy See. At the end of the Jubilee, he extended the faculties of willing Missionaries indefinitely, and in the new apostolic constitution for the Church published last June, he made the Missionaries of the Mercy a permanent part of the structure of the Church.<\/p>\n \u00a0Throughout his papacy, he has given greater attention to those in greatest need of God\u2019s mercy, to those on the \u201cexistential peripheries,\u201d to the one lost sheep, than to the 99 still in the fold. He sees this in imitation of the Lord, who \u201chas a certain weakness of love for those who are furthest away, who are lost. He goes in search of them.\u201d<\/p>\n That preference has occasionally been a source of frustration to the 99, who can sometimes be left feeling confused or neglected by a Pope who prioritizes meeting with non-Catholic reporters, fallen away Catholics, critics of the Church, LGBT activists, pro-abortion politicians, tarred ecclesiastical figures, and others rather than some Cardinals or bishops who have requested appointments. The 99 can complain, to use one of Pope Francis\u2019 most famous quips, that he has the \u201csmell\u201d of the lost and black sheep but not of those who are striving to follow the Good Shepherd\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n Pope Francis, however, is clearly convinced that in doing so, he is following the lead of the One for whom he is earthly vicar. He sees this prioritization as a means of engagement with prodigal sons and daughters. \u201cLet us always remember,\u201d he wrote during the Jubilee, \u201cthat God rejoices more when one sinner returns to the fold than when ninety-nine righteous people have no need of repentance.\u201d<\/p>\n This focus on the lost sheep, however, does not mean that he is unaware of, or somehow blesses, their sins. He has regularly made a distinction between what he calls \u201csinners\u201d and the \u201ccorrupt.\u201d Sinner are those who recognize they\u2019ve fallen and need God\u2019s forgiveness; the \u201ccorrupt\u201d are those who have become so hardened in their sin that they do not repent and treat vice as virtue. He has repeatedly and fiercely called the corrupt to conversion precisely so that they might receive mercy.<\/p>\n \u201cMercy exists,\u201d he has written, \u201cbut \u2026 if you don\u2019t recognize yourself as a sinner, it means you don\u2019t want to receive it.\u201d\u00a0When asked, for example, about his famous words, \u201cWho am I to judge?,\u201d made in response to a question to a priest caught in a same-sex sexual scandal, he later clarified, \u201cI prefer that [practicing] homosexuals come to confession, stay close to the Lord, and that we all pray together.\u201d<\/p>\n He has sought throughout his papacy to make mercy \u201ca verb,\u201d by receiving and sharing it. He has, like St. John Paul II before him, prioritized hearing confessions. He has often said how much he longs \u201cto be able to walk into a church and sit down in a confessional again!,\u201d because he regards the priesthood as a call to be \u201cministers of mercy above all.\u201d He has regularly appealed to the Catholic faithful to come to confession and not to be afraid.<\/p>\n He has said that the Church is \u201ccalled above all to be a credible witness to mercy, professing it and living it as the core of the revelation of Jesus Christ.\u201d He has sought to be that type of credible witness throughout his priestly life and papacy.<\/p>\n
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