EDITORIAL - Humble servant

He eschewed the limelight and opulent Church quarters, took the public bus in Buenos Aires and cooked his own meals. On his way to Rome to attend the papal conclave, Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio flew coach. When the conclave finally selected the successor of Benedict XVI, the Argentine archbishop picked an apt name as the new head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics: Francis, reminding the faithful of Francis of Assisi, best remembered for his vow of poverty.

At 76, and with one lung missing due to an infection in his youth, there are concerns that Pope Francis, like his 86-year-old predecessor, will also grapple with health problems as he confronts the challenges faced by the Church. Benedict XVI resigned from what many thought was a job-for-life amid persistent reports of sex abuses committed by Catholic clergy and a corruption scandal in the Vatican.

The cardinals began their papal conclave as the archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $10 million as settlement in a class suit filed by four parishioners against a priest for sexual molestation. Similar settlements have led to the bankruptcy of some dioceses. The sex abuse cases – and coddling of offenders by senior members of the Roman Catholic Church – hounded the eight years of Benedict XVI as pontiff.

Bergoglio, the first pope from Latin America, will also have to deal with unrest among the faithful over Catholic doctrine on matters such as homosexuality, contraception and women’s reproductive health. Unhappiness over Catholic doctrine on these issues, combined with disillusionment over the sex scandals, contributed to falling church attendance in the past decades. Bergoglio, though said to be opposite in temperament from Benedict, reportedly shares his predecessor’s hardline stance on these issues. 

Like Benedict, whose background as a member of the Nazi youth initially drew flak, Bergoglio has been criticized in his country by those who see Church complicity in the human rights atrocities perpetrated during the period of military dictatorship in Argentina. Other stories, however, also point to Bergoglio’s role in saving certain individuals from the abuses of the dictatorship.

Reactions to his selection, however, have been generally positive. His humble lifestyle and his membership in the reform-oriented Society of Jesus are raising hopes that the selection of Pope Francis will bring stability in a Church that is buffeted by gale-force winds of controversy in the modern age.