Pope Francis is marking the 12th anniversary of his election on Thursday, from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, where he has been since mid-February. The pontiff’s recovery from double pneumonia—complicated by chronic respiratory disease and the partial removal of one lung decades ago—is proceeding slowly and has seen a couple of setbacks already.
The fact is, however, that nobody expected him to be here at all.
The election of a 76-year-old cardinal from Buenos Aires—Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as he was then known to the world—was a big surprise, and only five other popes have reached the age of 88.
Journalists scoured their lists to find him when he was announced, before being shocked that he chose “Francis” as the name by which he should be known as pope. On the night of his election in 2013, Francis noted that his “brother Cardinals have gone to the ends of the earth to get one… but here we are.”
After a dozen years in the leadership of the global Church, it is good to look at what Francis said at the beginning of his pontificate.
“We can walk as much as we want,” Pope Francis told the cardinals gathered for Mass the day after his election, “we can build many things, but if we do not profess Jesus Christ, things go wrong.”
“We may become a charitable NGO,” Francis famously said on that occasion, “but not the Church, the Bride of the Lord.”
He spoke to the cardinals about Peter, who denied the necessity of Our Lord’s death and resurrection immediately after proclaiming Jesus as the Christ, “the Son of the Living God.” .
“I will follow you,” Pope Francis imagined Peter saying, “but let us not speak of the Cross. That has nothing to do with it. I will follow you on other terms, but without the Cross.”
“When we journey without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, when we profess Christ without the Cross,” Pope Francis said, “we are not disciples of the Lord, we are worldly: We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord.”
“My wish,” Pope Francis said, “is that all of us, after these days of grace, will have the courage, yes, the courage, to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Lord’s Cross; to build the Church on the Lord’s blood which was poured out on the Cross; and to profess the one glory: Christ crucified. And in this way, the Church will go forward.”
With the now 88-year-old Pope Francis in hospital, it is also good to recall what he said to the cardinals in a speech he gave on the third day of his reign, when he noted the role of the elderly in the Church.
“Old age is – as I like to say – the seat of life’s wisdom. The old have acquired the wisdom that comes from having journeyed through life, like the old man Simeon, the old prophetess Anna in the Temple. And that wisdom enabled them to recognize Jesus,” he said.
“Let us pass on this wisdom to the young: like good wine that improves with age, let us give life’s wisdom to the young. I am reminded of a German poet who said of old age: Es is ruhig, das Alter, und fromm: it is a time of tranquility and prayer,” Francis said, nearly 12 years ago.
He called on the old to pass their wisdom to the young.
“You will now return to your respective sees to continue your ministry, enriched by the experience of these days, so full of faith and ecclesial communion. This unique and incomparable experience has enabled us to grasp deeply all the beauty of the Church, which is a glimpse of the radiance of the risen Christ: One day we will gaze upon that beautiful face of the risen Christ!” Francis said.
Although often questioned by conservative critics about some of what he has said – in a more tolerant attitude towards homosexuals, on interreligious marriage, and being more kind to progressive populists than he is to conservative populists – in many ways, Francis has from the beginning been almost radically conservative in many ways.
He has probably warned against Satan more publicly than any recent pontiff. That started on Day One, too. “When we do not profess Jesus Christ, we profess the worldliness of the devil, a demonic worldliness,” Pope Francis said to the cardinals at Mass the day after his election.
“Anyone who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil,” Pope Francis also told the cardinals at that post-election Mass of thanksgiving, quoting — with attribution — the great 19th century French Catholic man of letters, Léon Bloy.
Pope Francis has frequently drawn on literary sources in his writings, homilies, speeches, and off-the-cuff remarks, but the novel he has cited the most is Lord of the World, a dystopian fantasy novel by the English convert, Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson.
Written in 1907 and published the year before WWI broke out, Lord of the World tells a chilling story about the rise of the Antichrist and the end of the world. Benson created a post-religious society in which Christians faced persecution, and a world with weapons of mass destruction dropped by aircraft.
In Benson’s world, euthanasia was the common practice. Church leaders insisted that Christians never use violence to defend against the persecution they faced. Prayer — especially the Rosary — was their only effective weapon.
In the first year of his pontificate, Francis said the book was written “almost as though it were a prophecy, as though he envisioned what would happen.”
Whatever one thinks of Pope Francis’s governance of the Church — and his record of leadership is as amenable to criticism as any other leader’s acts — it is impossible to contest that observation or gainsay that sentiment. When reviewing the papacy as it enters its 13th year, it may be best to consider the pope’s actions in light of what was on his mind when he took up the office.
It is also good to remember that Lord of the World ended as the anti-Christian forces attacked the last Christians praying at the end of time.
The last words of the novel were: “Then this world passed, and the glory of it.”
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome
