In early September Pope Francis has scheduled two busy weeks of travel. He will visit Indonesia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and Singapore. No doubt some Australians will grumble that he passed so close without dropping in to visit us. For the 87 year-old Pope such travel will be arduous. His determination to continue visiting distant lands might well lead us to ask why he gives precedence to this over his other responsibilities as Pope.
This question leads to reflection on the Pope’s place in the Catholic Church. As the Bishop of Rome, he is seen as the successor of St Peter and St Paul who both spent time and were martyred in Rome. In Catholic tradition he shares Peter’s role in the Church of strengthening his brother Bishops in living and spreading their faith in Jesus. This is primarily a pastoral service, a fact easily overlooked in the many controversies about the extent and limits of his powers in the Church.
Over the centuries the strengthening of faith in the local Churches has taken many forms. Bishops of Rome have gathered the Church together in times of dispute about the implications of faith, have helped heal divisions in the Church, have been a centre of communication and of preaching the Gospel, been a sign of unity in the Church, adapted Church law and liturgy to changing circumstances, and have ensured that the prayer and devotional life of the Church reflect the Gospel. Although public attention has focused on their exercise of power, their service through letters, preaching and teaching, holiness of life, and concern for the universal Church as well as for the local church of Rome, has been more significant in confirming the local Churches in faith. The contribution of each pope has reflected his personal gifts and the influence of the culture of his time as well as his office. Like the rest of humanity Popes have also sometimes acted unwisely and rashly.
Travel has only recently entered the Papal armoury. Like most people of their time Bishops of Rome generally travelled only when they were forced to flee to other towns or were dragged there as prisoners. ln the nineteenth century the revolution that created Italy meant that the Pope ceased to be the ruler of his own territory and won some sympathy for being the ‘Prisoner of the Vatican’. Even after they made peace with the new Italian State, Popes stayed home to be with their people in times of depression and war.
Pope John XXIII was the first pope to travel outside Rome for over seventy years. Paul VI then travelled extensively, including to Australia in 1974. Pope John Paul II, however, made travel central to his mission of encouraging the Churches in their faith. He was a commanding presence with a gift for powerful public speaking and for such dramatic gestures as kissing the ground whenever he arrived at an airport. Particularly in nations where Catholics were discriminated against, as was the case in his native Poland, his presence stirred hunger for freedom.
Pope Francis has put an equal emphasis on travel to strengthen his brothers in the faith. He also puts an equal weight on gestures to match his and words in preaching the Gospel. His style has been popular rather than patrician, showing a gift for the common touch. He became famous for travelling simply, for leaving cavalcades to embrace crippled people waiting by the side of the road. And in a nation divided by its attitude to refugees, one of his earliest journeys was to the isle of Lampedusa to mourn the deaths of refugees who had died at sea. He has constantly reached out to people who are marginalised.
Underlying these differences of style, however, is an enduring challenge that faces an international Church. It is to negotiate the tensions between universality and particularity and between the centre and the margins. In any Church the focus of its members is local. It is about the relationship of each individual person with God, spreading out to the relationships in family and in local congregation, and so extending to city, state, nation and finally to world. It is easy for commitment to the local to become parochial, and for Catholics in other nations and their concerns to be seen as a foreign country. Any local Papal intervention can be seen as a bureaucratic impertinence by head office.
'In these most recent travels, as in previous ones, Pope Francis preaches the Gospel through homilies at Masses, but equally through the warmth of his feeling for people who are doing it hard, through his concern for a world marked by discouragement, and through the people with whom he associates.'
It is also easy for people in small local Churches marginalised by their small size or by discrimination against them to see themselves as neglected and marginal, and for people in well-endowed churches to identify their perspectives and priorities with those of the universal Church.
In this world, the visit of the Pope who represents the Universal Church can be powerful in giving it a personal face and in encouraging people who feel marginalised. It allows their gifts and concerns to be recognised outside their own local Church, and for the priorities of the Universal Church also to wear a personal dress. In strengthening faith, the choreography of the papal visit will be as important as the papal words.
Pope Francis has clearly seen the priority of the Church to lie in reaching out to the margins. This calls for Catholics in parishes and dioceses to reach out to people who are marginalised by poverty, illness, flight from persecution. They must also reach out to people on the edges of the Church who belong to other religious groups and none.
These priorities are embodied in his visits. He gives precedence to small Churches in non-Christian and developing nations, seen most recently and spectacularly in his visit to Mongolia with its few thousand Catholics. In this week’s journey he has chosen to visit East Timor and Papua New Guinea, and to nations and cultures in which Catholics are a small minority, such as Indonesia and Singapore. His journeys also reach out to Catholics living in cultures that where Catholics are small minority.
In all his engagements, he encourages the local churches by meeting as an equal the local heads of state and leaders in civil society, by meeting as friends the local Bishops and groups of clergy and catechists, and to celebrate Mass in large gathering of Catholics. He also embodies the priorities of the Church at the margins. In this journey he will meet groups of young people in schools and programs for the poor, groups of people who are elderly, ill and with other disadvantages. In countries where Christians are a minority, he will also meet groups from other religions on their home ground. In Indonesia and East Timor, too, he will gather informally with his fellow Jesuits.
In these most recent travels, as in previous ones, Pope Francis preaches the Gospel through homilies at Masses, but equally through the warmth of his feeling for people who are doing it hard, through his concern for a world marked by discouragement, and through the people with whom he associates. His visits are gestures of encouragement.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.