Pope Francis celebrates a homeless man's 50th

20 November 2014

Last week Bishop Konrad Krajewski, the Papal almoner, installed showers for people who are homeless, in St Peter’s Square. The move followed his meeting a homeless man, discovering it was his fiftieth birthday and inviting him to dinner in a local restaurant, only for the man to decline on the grounds he smelled.

The gesture was seen to have Pope Francis’ finger prints all over it. It also illuminates the differences of perspective many have noted between the Pope and other church leaders, such as Cardinals Pell and Burke and Archbishop Chaput.

People have variously named the opposing approaches as liberal and conservative, pastoral and doctrinal, democratic and authoritarian. These labels have their uses but also their limitations. They are evaluative rather than explanatory: rigid conservative is contrasted with flexible liberal, or principled doctrinal with wishy washy, compromising pastoral. The terms better describe the self-positioning of their users than the positions of their targets.

They also suggest that the roots of difference lie in theory or in personality. I believe they lie rather in the different imaginative worlds that Pope Francis and those who differ from him inhabit. When Pope Francis looks at the human world he focuses on human beings as concrete and human, not as abstract nor as members of particular religious or other groups. God loves and respects each human being, and so invites Catholics to go out to all people and to welcome them because they share a common humanity and are each precious to God.

Because he sees human beings concretely, Pope Francis is affronted when he sees them treated without respect for their dignity, and asks why this happens. He finds the answer in the greed and the imbalance of power and wealth that distort society. So he consistently attacks the idolatry of economic theories that enable people to make the impoverishment of the poor an unfortunate but unavoidable economic fact rather than the result of human decisions.

Pope Francis calls on Catholics to go outside the comfortably Catholic world to be with people with whom they share a common humanity. In this they follow Jesus who sought to win people. He did not judge people but engaged with them, and through the encounter opened to them the freedom and joy of the Gospel. The building of showers for homeless people in St Peter’s Square embodies perfectly this project.

The changes that the Pope wishes

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Pope Francis celebrates a homeless man's 50th

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