The world’s next great leader may be named Francis.
He is a man of the people. He rides the bus, dresses in ordinary priest robes, lives in an austere apartment with a roommate and is the first modern pope to hail from Latin America. The last point is especially salient because Latin America is home to 400 million Catholics, or 40 percent of the entire faith — the largest proportion by far.
In all respects, he is the ideal candidate, especially for an organization under fire for sex scandals, a central bank scandal, out-of-touch social policies and a bloated structure. Because he has little to no experience with the Vatican, he also represents a fresh face that breaks away from all those negative allegations, and, coupled with his common-man image, he could reenergize the fundamental constituencies that support the organization. The selection of God’s highest mortal messenger reeks of politics.
Does the Catholic Church care about poll numbers? Should all religions care about their poll numbers?
It is no coincidence that if you were to chart out all of the religions that humans have practiced, starting with the founding religion of the first humans, it would have striking resemblance to what biologists call a tree of life. Our religions all presumably started in Africa with our first ancestor and then they quickly adapted to fill different niches. Some just died out. Others thrived and conquered other environments. Just like animals or political parties or businesses, religions must adapt to a changing environment or they will die off.
We practice religion for understanding. From that understanding, we better ourselves. Researchers have found that being religious gives people more self-esteem, improved psychological strength and increased happiness, though they also found that only people who live in communities that share the same beliefs reap these benefits. In other words, the two fundamental parts of any religion are its message and its community.
When a religion muddles its message with scandals and doesn’t adapt to the modernizing beliefs of its followers, it begins shrinking and losing its community. These followers begin to doubt their church and dislike how it represents their beliefs. They slowly move on to seek other sources of understanding. This leads others in the community to nurse doubts.
The community begins to splinter and the benefits of religion are lost. Fifty years ago, the average country in Latin America was 90 percent Catholic. Now, many of those countries are less than 50 percent Catholic. Intelligently, the Catholic Church saw this negative cycle beginning, and they designed an entirely new face for their religion: the austere, more liberal and, most importantly, southern man of the people. They are beginning to adapt to the times.
A recent quote from a Wall Street Journal article sums up the decision very well. “‘No other region is as important to the future of the church, or could use an intervention, as much as Latin America,” Andrew Chesnut, who has authored multiple books on Latin America’s Christian culture, told the Journal. “This is a recognition that that future of the church lies in the global south.”
That is not to say the Church is completely out of the rough. Pope Francis needs to make some serious changes to the Vatican and its global message. He must acknowledge and personally deal with the scandals the church has generally ignored or denied, starting with the sexual assault allegations and the central bank scandal. He must change the personnel who have allowed the Church’s image to be tarnished as they stand atop the church hierarchy. And most important, he must cut through all doves, gilded robes and historical baggage to reaffirm why people should practice his religion.
If this religion is going to survive, the Catholic message and the Catholic leadership must evolve.
All of these solutions will require political prowess that rivals any of history’s great leaders, but from what little I have learned in the past few days, Pope Francis has the makings of someone who could save the Church. Now he has to be that man.
I hope Bob Dylan was right:
“For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.”
Nico Enriquez ’16 is an independent voter in religion and politics. He can be reached at nenriquez3@gmail.com.
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