DENVER (CO)
Crux
February 21, 2018
John L. Allen Jr.
Rome – Now that Pope Francis has said out loud what many have long suspected, which is that Blessed Pope Paul VI will be declared a saint within the year, it’s worth asking what the current pontiff seems to have picked up from his recent predecessors.
In all honesty, it’s possible to see pieces of each of the previous five popes in Francis.
From John XXII, Francis gets a maverick streak, and a determination to shake up a Church that both popes saw as being excessively closed on itself. From John Paul I, Francis picks up the smile and a populist touch. He’s got John Paul II’s charisma and command of the stage, as well as his relentless drive to make the social and political message of the Church relevant in the here-and-now. And from Benedict, Francis carries forward the root conviction that it’s time to focus on what the Church says “yes” to, not those things to which it says “no.”
That leaves the question of what Francis’s inheritance from Paul VI is, and perhaps the best one-word answer is “bishops” – like Paul VI in his time, Francis seems to want a cohort of pastorally-minded, center-left prelates to steer the Church in a direction perceived as more dialogical and less rigid.
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