Francis presided over a consistory on Saturday, the event in which a pope creates new cardinals, surrounded by almost 200 other cardinals as well as his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. (It was the first time new cardinals have been created in the presence of two popes.) The 19 new princes of the church included churchmen from Haiti, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast, all three among the world’s most desperate societies.
In Haiti, the pope bypassed the leaders of the country’s two archdioceses, who according to the usual logic would have had better claim to the honor, in order to tap the bishop of a small diocese in the country’s southwest, a man who was himself born into a poor family.
In effect, Francis seemed to want his first consistory to embrace the “periphery” in every possible sense.
Amid all the hooplah over the new pope and all the wildly divergent takes that people have on him, this is a helpful and illuminating report. It strikes the right note. Pope Francis I, like St. Francis of Assisi himself, is indeed a lover of the poor, and an imitator of Christ, who himself became poor that we might become rich.
In a world that is scandalously plagued by massive poverty, so that literally billions of people live in desperate neediness and are virtually powerless to change their harsh circumstances, we can all rejoice, whether Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, or non-Christians, that the most prominent and influential Christian in the world is a friend of the poor, and a champion of their cause who understands their plight. May this humble “Pope of the Poor” be blessed with long life and a fruitful ministry.
David Handy+