New balance

Marking the first year as pope is an “arbitrary measure for a 2,000-year old institution that thinks in terms of centuries,” notes the Guardian newspaper. That provides context for Pope Francis, who’ll complete  his first year as  ponitff March 13.

The man, who  booked an Argentina return flight after the 2014 papal conclave, amazed people since. “Wear it if you wish, Monsignor”, he said, waving away a new pope’s cloak… “The carnival is over”. Clad in a plain cassock, he asked blessings  first from  startled crowds in Piazza San Pietro.

He shunned papal apartments, kept his spare Casa Santa Marta lodging and shares meals with guests. Pius XII  ate alone most time during  his 1939 to  1958  papacy. “We went down for coffee break,´ recalls Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Texas. “I turn around, and it’s the  pope! He’s in line to get coffee himself.  No flunkies surround him… It  was stunning.”

He wanted to shake up the church. “And we’ve all been shaking since, even in ultra-sceptical Western Europe”, wrote the UK Telegraph.  His words  “carry moral force because he lives them out every day before our eyes…”

“Ministers of the gospel must warm the hearts of people  as they walk through the dark night,” he said in a  La Civiltà Cattolica interview. They dialogue  without getting lost. People want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats “He’s upset  ( all  ) sacred applecarts, as Jesus once did.”

But changing the storyline is different from changing the story. Two millennia teach the Vatican never willingly reformed itself. “It had to be led.”  And  ultra-righters  calculate  how long a 77-year-old, with part of a lung missing,  will “endure before arrival of another new broom, hopefully more to their liking.”

Francis has not accommodated them. He overhauled the Vatican’s financial system late February, the Financial Times reports. He set up a central bank  then handpicked  Cardinal  George Pell of  Sydney to head a new secretariat for the economy.  Staffed by eight clerics and seven lay experts, it   oversees all  economic and administrative activities within the Holy See and Vatican City State.

Francis is to name an auditor with oversight powers. The church must manage assets in the “light of its mission to evangelize, with particular concern for the most needy”, he stressed.

“Vatican finances were out of control”, observed  Carlo Marroni, who covers the Vatican for Il Sole 24.  “Each department acted as an individual center of power. “The real break with the past is that the pope created new figures, with powers of intervention and who report directly to him.”

Sure, Francis embraces simplicity, writes John Allen in the Boston Globe. “But he’s hardly a simple man.” In fact, he is also “an extraordinarily crafty politician”.

He addressed a festering  complaint by cardinals that they could never get a straight answer from the Vatican about finances. “A no-nonsense guy, Pell is  not likely to be cowed by Vatican mandarins who resent  intrusion on their prerogatives.”

Francis appointments bypassed Italians. Historically, Vatican has been “heavily conditioned by an Italian ethos. Forms of corruption were not  even perceived that way.

Rigging competitive bidding or lending a veneer of legitimacy to money transfers on behalf of fat-cat benefactors, are seen as “keeping things in the family.”

Francis and Pell see  eye to eye on transparency and accountability. On doctrinal matters Pell is  a staunch conservative,  If he took over Congregation for Bishops, as rumored years back, “it’s entirely possible Francis might today be contemplating how to get rid of him today,” Allen adds.

“In one fell swoop, Francis gave  himself a chance to name a new leader for the  Australian church  and also  a capable ally in a spot where he’s  qualified to get things done.”

Has  Francis message seeped into  the Philippines, a  country of 96.7 million  where  76.1 million are  Catholics?

Until recently, many Catholic bishops  here  focused time  and effort in attacking  the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012. So did conservative prelates elsewhere.

. “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and contraceptives.” Francis said earlier.  “This is not possible. We have to talk about them in a context… and  find a new balance.  Otherwise, the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the  fragrance of the Gospel.”

Recalling  the bitter debate over the law, the newly-elected Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines  president Archbishop Socrates Villegas said: “We church leaders did not listen enough to the other side… We  polarized the church. We polarized the country.”

Debates then  “reached the point when  arguments became  ugly, personal, not using reason anymore. We were using our emotions “Even if  (proponents of  law ) were saying things contrary to church teachings, we should never be lacking in charity.”

The task ahead is to march with the same cadence as Pope Francis. Did  Filipino prelates signal  that  “new balance”  in their latest conference statement: “To Bring Glad Tidings to the Poor?”

Here, the richest 10 percent of the population earns 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent.  It declares: We need to understand poverty as a “scandal” that all sectors perpetuate… our responsibility for it in our individual lives and shared cultures. Jesus’ call to love one another compels Christians to work for healing of all.”

Like Christians the world over, Francis bowed to receive the ashes on his forehead Wednesday. “We are creatures,” he said. “We are not God.” Time magazine adds:  “His attitude of mercy for all is the new tone for the world’s largest church.”