When you elect a Pope from the Global South

When you elect a Pope from the Global South February 25, 2014

which is, by the way, where the Church is experiencing explosive growth, the North has to get used to the reality that the Holy Spirit is extremely busy there and may not be fascinated with our trivial obsessions with wealth, sex, and power. One searches in vain in the ante-Nicene Fathers for gossip about the Roman court and the palace intrigues of the Barracks emperors. Caesar shows up in the gospel as a minor supporting character. The main characters are the dregs of society. It is no accident that when God chooses his Chosen People, they turn out to be underdogs and when God sends his Son, he winds up, not as a political winner, but as a crucified slave. The major players in this world are not who we think. It is the vanishingly insignificant (in the eye’s of the world) that Heaven has it’s eye on. We may well be the bit players and it may well be that our contribution to the play will rest on just a couple of crucial gesture or lines such as dropping a few coins in the Temple treasury or asking “Shall I crucify your king?”


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