John Allen: “Mercy is the spiritual bedrock of this papacy”

Crux has just published the introduction to a new book by John Allen, “The Francis Miracle.”

One compelling detail describes the pope’s May 2013 visit to a parish on the northern outskirts of Rome:

The pontiff was scheduled to arrive at 9:30 a.m., but the pastor, a balding, amiable Romanian immigrant named Fr. Benoni Ambarus, heard the rotor wash of the papal chopper almost a half hour before the appointed time. When the pontiff emerged from the helicopter, he pulled Ambarus aside and explained the reason for the early start.

“I know I’m supposed to meet the parish children and say mass,” the pope said. “But would it be OK if I also hear some confessions?”

Confession is the Catholic sacrament in which a believer confesses his or her sins confidentially to a priest and then receives God’s forgiveness. It’s an important part of the daily ministry carried out by priests all over the world, but it had never before been on the agenda when a pope visited a Roman parish. Neither Ambarus nor Vatican organizers had made any provision for it in the day’s schedule, but Ambarus nevertheless grabbed eight people at random and brusquely told them they’d be going to confession. (Ambarus later explained that some of those parishioners protested that they didn’t want to lose their spot in line to see the pope. “Trust me,” he told them, “you’re going to see him.”)

After the fact, an Argentine priest who worked for Bergoglio in Buenos Aires and who’s now one of his closest aides in the Vatican was asked why his boss decided to add confessions to his schedule, which has since become a staple of Francis’s parish visits. “It’s important to him,” the priest replied. “He wanted the world to see him making a point of celebrating the Church’s premier rite of mercy.”

Mercy is a traditional virtue, not just in Christianity but most human cultures. It has always been on the books in official Christian teaching and is understood to be the natural complement to judgment. As a minister of the Christian gospel, Francis understands that he has to pronounce both God’s judgment and God’s mercy on a fallen world, because one without the other would be a falsification. His calculation, however, appears to be that the world has heard the Church’s judgment with crystal clarity, so now it’s time to witness its mercy.

Francis’s commitment to mercy is found in his papal motto, translated loosely as “choosing through the eyes of mercy.” In his first Sunday homily as pope, delivered at the Vatican’s parish church of St. Anne, he said that “in my opinion, the strongest message of the Lord is mercy.”

In all the ways that matter, mercy is the spiritual bedrock of this papacy.

Read it all. Fascinating stuff.