13 March, 2013, is a date I will not forget. During a doctoral programme I was enrolled in at a Jesuit University on the U.S. West Coast, I was unable to act on what was coming down the grapevine and that white smoke that was seen at the Vatican during the papal election because lab duties and long hours of discussion with my advisor prevented me from getting anywhere close to the television. I got to know later that a Jesuit Archbishop had been elected and had chosen to be known as Francis. I had never heard of Giorgio Bergoglio or seen his name among the papabiles in the news coverage. It was only later that I learnt that he had featured as such during the previous election which set up Benedict XVI. I got to know at dinnertime that South American Jesuits, attending another Jesuit University barely 100 kilometers north, on seeing the results, silently but sullenly filed out of the TV room. After supper I bumped into the recent Provincial of Argentina, doing his sabbatical in the University after laying down office, who said to me, what

I later recorded, “Yes, the Church needs a person like Jorge. He was my novice master and he appeared to be a kind of authoritarian, but over the years, even as Archbishop, he always consulted me and the people.” I was nonplussed by these two divergent reactions from Jesuits of South America to the Pope. His age and lack of background knowledge about him caused no expectations of him to arise in me and, I suppose, in so many others. And

I could not have then imagined the immense estimation he presently enjoys worldwide, not only among Christians but also others. Francis, already a Pope for about four-and-a-half years, completing 80 years on 17 December, 2017, has set me thinking on how could his transformation, that does not fail to constantly inspire me and those I associate with, be explained.

I have observed the gradual growth phenomenon in quite a number of Jesuits I know who belong to the same generation as Bergoglio. Before joining the Society in the late ‘50s and ordained in the late ‘60s, they seem to have sown some wild oats, like Bergoglio who acted as bouncer and a janitor at a local bar to earn some pocket money and used the confessional to sort out problems that come with adolescence. High purpose was always linked to high morality, and in the Novitiate, so they told me, the great exemplar was St. John Berchmans, whose statues were invariably moulded with one hand brandishing the crucifix and the other holding the Rule Book. Early rising with the Te Deum, hour-long meditation, Eucharist, spiritual readings, class work, manualia, meals in silence and often under penitential conditions, games in long pants, brief recreation in small groups, debates, litanies and then night prayers sometimes preceded or followed by strokes of the whip before, finally, the head hit the pillow. The military could scarcely match Jesuit discipline and regimentation. I had some experience of this myself, and my elders tell me I was lucky all because of Vatican II which imperceptibly did away with a lot of silly religious practices, diluted emphasis on scholastic philosophical and theological thinking which before had high premium, replaced do-goodism with social activism and, in short, brought in a lot of fresh air into religious life.

Bergoglio acted with stern authority and did not appreciate the more liberal and confrontational ideas of his Jesuit confreres.

Bergoglio, ordained in 1969, was the beneficiary of all changes in lifestyle and thinking that the Council brought about. He already had a Masters in Chemistry before entering the novitiate, after which he did his juniorate in humanistic studies in Chile, returning to Argentina for Regency, teaching Literature and Rational Psychology, and did Theology, as it was done during my time, without orthodoxy looking over my shoulder and without unorthodoxy having a fad following. The opportunities to travel, like I have, to broaden the mind, were not so much available before the start of the ‘60s. After tertianship in Spain, came a stint as novice master before he was appointed Provincial of Argentina. The period after the Council was influenced, especially in the Society, by Eastern philosophy, Hindu and Buddhist religious thought and practice, and Yoga. The spiritual talks and interviews with Spiritual Directors when I was a scholastic were also fortified by the counselling therapies of such like Freud, B.F. Skinner, Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, Eric Berne, Fritz Perls and Karl Rogers. The conservative reaction to the various modern and post-modern trends that the Church was opened up to after the Council was unable to be a wet blanket on the spirit of the elder Jesuits I referred to, on the scholastics that studied with me and, I suppose, on Giorgio Bergoglio. The healthy climate made us all more pastoral, more human in inter-relationships, more experimental, more socially involved, and freer in thought and expression.

It was the prevalent culture in the Society that created the basic structure for Bergoglio to operate in, and it explains much of his lifestyle. To my mind, any of the elder Jesuits that spanned the pre- and post-Council eras could make a very good Pope, even though, like Pope Francis, they would not be sufficiently avant garde to many. I would not be surprised that like him they would absolutely retain clerical celibacy, not entertain women’s priesthood, prohibit contraception and abortion, and not be too enthusiastic about liberation theology. But their traditionalism, like his, would be unconventional, in that they too would grant absolution during the Holy Year to any who confessed to abortion, and permit the partaking of the Eucharist by divorced Catholics. I can easily imagine them write great encyclicals like Gaudium Evangelii, Laudato Si, Amoris Laetitia, facing with equanimity the rage of conservative laity and bishops against the doctrines developed and instructions laid down in them, utter the iconic “who am I to judge” when an opinion on homosexuals was implicitly demanded, allow washing of the feet of women on Holy Thursday, pick on only Muslim refugee families from Lampedusa and bring them to Rome for resettlement, disdain the trappings and ornamentations of office, carry his own bags and live in a common guesthouse rather than in the palatial Papal apartments. The Black Popes I have lived under could easily and comfortably fit into any slippers or black shoes of the White Popes. We have to thank the Jesuit Fourth Vow that there is no likelihood of this ever happening!

But there can or could be only one Pope Francis, his unparalleled uniqueness, especially because of one period of his life during which he must have experienced, what I would call, a lengthy “dark night of the soul.” He was a Provincial during Argentina’s Dirty War, its atrocities under the military regime too well documented, and the role of the clergy and episcopacy receiving judgments of either great praise or opprobrium. He was caught up in the inevitable intrigues that resulted when, on any major Argentinean issue, the Vatican and the local hierarchy, political and military leaders, hothead activists of both the right and the left, and the Jesuits’ own hubris were all involved. There is no final verdict whether he acted with integrity and fearlessness or gave in to connivance and compromise, though unintended, with the military. One thing is sure: he acted with stern authority and did not appreciate the more liberal and confrontational ideas of his Jesuit confreres.

At the GC 32, he had objected to the Decree 4 on grounds that it would turn Jesuits into mere ideologues and activists. There was understandably a sigh of relief when his term as Provincial came to an end, and this was the beginning of what, to me, was the real testing of the man. He was made the Rector of the Philosophate-Theologate of the Province, but the general mood in it that agitated for social analysis and social justice made Fr. Kolvenbach remove him from office in 1986. He was packed off to Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt to complete his doctorate in Theology and then sent to Cordoba, far from the capital, because his insistence on direct pastoral work and devotional practices by the scholastics was contrary to the general trends of the time that required motivations and decisions to be guided by social justice and sociological analysis. During what was ‘a time of great interior crisis’, as he was to divulge later as Pope, he engaged in spiritual ministrations, advancing Marian devotions, visiting shanty towns, seeking help from a Jewish lady psychiatrist and, surely, reflecting on bewildering experiences of the recent past and, above all, confronting himself. I wonder how he stomached the hurt as a persona non grata to the Jesuits, not allowed to say public Masses in a Jesuit Church, only hearing confessions there, not allowed to make telephone calls without permission; and even when made Auxiliary Bishop and later Archbishop, not welcome in Jesuit residences in Argentina and even in Rome.

But it was in Cordoba that he had time to look out of the window, go for long walks along its streets, meet with various types of people, and feel the reality of the shanty towns. And he had much time to look inward. These are some of the personal confessions he later came to make: “I found myself provincial when I was still very young. I was only 36 years old. That was crazy… I confess that, because of my disposition, the first answer that comes to me is usually wrong…[I made] hundreds of errors….I had to deal with difficult situations, and I made my decisions abruptly and by myself. My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultra-conservative.” These are not confessions so much as expressions of humility. And humility is not debasing oneself but is, just going by the etymology of the word, being grounded in the reality of one’s true self. He emerged from his testing time without any self-pity. Pankaj Mishra, in his recent Age of Anger which has been very well received, asks who is “the most convincing and influential public intellectual today”? I was not at all surprised by his answer, “Pope Francis.”

The author is Associate Professor and Administrator, Xavier Institute of Engineering, Mumbai, and Province Coordinator for Higher Education.
johnrose@xavierengg.com