Praying to ‘purify the impure’ for FrancisChurch?
The Eponymous Flower has a recap of the Pope’s flight home from Paraguay where he was asked about the revealing gift he received from Communist dictator and admirer, Evo Morales.
On the return flight to Rome Pope Francis answered a few questions for the accompanying journalists on the plane. The Catholic Church leader was asked also to explain the provocative gift made the Pope of the hammer and sickle with Christ from the Bolivian President Evo Morales. Vatican Radio published the questions and complete answers in the original language.
Aura Vistas Miguel (Portugal Vaticanist): “Holiness, how did you feel when you saw the gift of President Morales with sickle and hammer with Christ? What became of this subject?”
Pope Francis: “I – it is strange – did not know that and did not know that Father Espinal was a sculptor and a poet. I have learned that during these days. I’ve seen it and it was a surprise for me. Secondly: It can qualify as a genre of protest art. For example, there was an exhibition by a brave, creative Argentine sculptor in Buenos Aires a few years ago. There was protest art, and I remember a work that showed a crucified Christ on a bomber coming down. This was a critique of Christianity, which is allied with imperialism, represented as a bomber.
The trip through Latin America has been enlightening for the whole world. Many people have not been able to relate to the way Francis thinks, it’s so entirely radical. But that is the world from which he’s emerged. Being a Latin American Jesuit must be something like spending your entire life at sea.
When questioned about that evil Crucifix, his resentment is right at the surface. His mind goes right to an ‘imperialist’ (American?) bomber. In FrancisUniverse, nothing Catholic can be taken for what it is. It has to be seen in light of some campaign, some ugly battle. Is it possible for Francis to see Christ’s death for what it is? No. It must be attached to the cause.
But Pope Francis must now walk back and reassure. There are ‘many currents’ to liberation theology, see. The sliver condemned by the Church was just one.
First point: So I knew nothing about it; Second point: I qualify it as protest art that can be offensive in some cases. In some cases. Third, for this particular case: Father Espinal was killed in 1980. That was a time when the liberation theology had many different currents, one of them was the Marxist analysis of reality, and Fr. Espinal belonged to this. I knew because I was at that time Rector of the Faculty of Theology and they talked a lot about it, and who their representatives were in the different currents. In the same year the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Father Arrupe, wrote a letter to the whole society about the Marxist analysis of reality in the theology that he stopped a little, saying, No, you can not. These are different things, you can not do that, that’s not right. And four years later, in 1984, the CDF published the first small volume, the first statement of the Liberation Theology, which criticized it.
They didn’t like hammer and sickle crucifixes in those other currents – too much like communism, right? You didn’t like it either.
If Fr. Espinal was part of the ‘bad liberation theology,’ then why did you lay flowers at his grave, praise his ‘martyrdom’ and his fight, accept his twisted cross, lay it at the foot of Our Lady? Is the Pope losing track of all the currents out there? No. It’s just ‘inter-liberation theological’ dialogue.
Dialogue is so important. Without it, you’d never get away with anything rotten.
Then came the second, which was more open to the Christian outlook. I simplify, of course. Let’s take a hermeneutics of that era. Espinal is an enthusiast of this Marxist analysis, as well as theology, for which he used Marxism. Hence comes this. The poems of Espinal belong to this genre of protest, but it was his life, it was his way of thinking, he was a special man with a lot of human genius, and who fought in good faith. As I have done such a hermeneutics, I understand this. For me it was not an insult. But I had to make this hermeneutics, and I say this to you, so that no false opinions arise. This object is with me now, it’s coming with me. You may have heard that President Morales wanted to give me two honors, the highest award of Bolivia and then the Order of Fr. Espinal, a new order. Well, I have never accepted a ceremony that does not suit me. But he did it with a lot of good will and the desire to do me favor. And I thought that that comes from the people of Bolivia – I’ve been praying for it and I thought: If I bring it to the Vatican, where it goes to a museum and no one sees it. So I thought to offer it to the Virgin of Copacabana, the Bolivian Mother, so that it goes to the Sanctuary: The work will be in the Sanctuary of Copacabana, together with the two awards that I received. Christ, however, I take with. Thanks. “
I have never accepted a ceremony that does not suit me? I left the communist crucifix in the Ecuadoran church where it wouldn’t be hidden away?
This pope is all fight. He twists and bends but he doesn’t really give.
