Scottish Catholic Observer

Imagine the population of Scotland, one half grouped in Glasgow and the other half in a Highland town like Inverness with crowds also arriving from France and Denmark. That was like the situation in Ecuador during the visit of Pope Francis at the beginning of July.

It wasn’t only the local population that flocked to two geographical centres in order to see him, but people also arrived from Peru, Columbia and Venezuela to be present for the Papal visit. It was an event that brought a whole nation to celebrate the greatness of the human being, created in the ‘image and likeness of God,’ as the Bible teaches us, and made people rejoice at the sheer goodness of human life. It made everyone feel good and want to share their happiness with others. What a contrast it was to the two weeks preceding the visit when the country had erupted in marches of protest against government policy—the smallest villages rivaling the bigger cities in manifestations of discontent, each day providing its litany of insults and abusive language. It seemed that the country was ungovernable.

President Rafael Correa had enjoyed eight years of unprecedented levels of popularity, but had—during these years—stamped mercilessly on the country’s political parties of all tendencies whether left, right or middle of the road. He eliminated the politicised teachers union—which had reduced state education to a hopeless farce—labelled the press, bankers and the business community as corrupt and silenced any opposing voices as he ploughed forward with grandiose modernising reforms for the country. The president still has 60 per cent support in the country, but in the two weeks before the Papal visit the

suppressed anger and spleen of the 40 per cent erupted in every village, town and city in the country. For this reason, the president even considered not making any public appearance during the Papal visit, so as not to spoil the welcome that the country wanted to give Pope Francis.

I think that it was Prime Minister Harold Wilson who said that ‘a day is a long time in politics.’ In a day, the social political situation had been transformed and when the Pope came off the plane there was President Correa welcoming him with boyish enthusiasm, generously spreading cheer and good humour. He seemed to be saying, ‘with the Pope present amongst us wrongs can be righted, peace and harmony will be restored in the country.’ From that moment, attention was turned away from the president’s woes to the calm, reassuring voice of the Holy Father. Peace gained ascendency and spread like a warm, comforting perfume throughout the country.

It was a miracle of grace. It was God’s gift to Ecuador through his representative on earth, the saintly Pope Francis. He is not the stately Pope St John Paul II, nor a great orator and he makes no effort to impress himself on his audience. He is full of love and tenderness—qualities rejected by worldly leaders, He does not need to put on a show of concern and humility. His whole being and life is that of humble service and concern for people. He identifies with each one, is concerned about everyone and knows that he has something precious to offer the world and to each one—the love and joy of being sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. This he explains with simplicity and with conviction and gives assurance and confidence to his hearers. That is the amazing gift of grace he offered to the people of Ecuador.

Message of love

What I write might appear very sectarian, directed only to the most convinced Catholics. This is not the case. The Pope’s message was based on a very universal and inclusive principle—that of love. Love is the most essential and fundamental value in human life. Without love, the life of the individual because arid and tedious. Without love, marriage and family become a domestic chamber of excruciating anguish. If we don,t love our community, our country, our world we become selfish, egoistical despoilers of God’s bounty. The world and human society is an expression of God’s love and the human person attains full development and dignity in the measure that he/she expresses and lives a life of love.

In our world, few thinkers could deny this truth, but fewer still—whether thinkers or non-thinkers— practice it. For this reason, we are progressively destroying our planet and creating greater and greater problems for future generations. The contamination of the atmosphere, climate changes, hothouse efect, deforestation, progressive elimination of species—flora and fauna—and so many other  elements that could be mention are symptoms of the human being’s irresponsibility and egoism.

Interactions, homilies and addresses

For the sake of brevity I have conceptualised part of the message the Pope left the country. The Holy Father expressed in the most simple and concrete terms the message of the Gospel. He took the  family as the source of much of his teaching.

Society at large should be structured as one big family, pay greater attention to the weaker and most needy elements.

His words, his gestures and the kind way he reached out to people gave substance to his message. He embraced a granny of eight five years, looked her in the eyes and asked: “What is your secret for keeping so young?” A young girl of four—who was near me—rushed up to tell her mum that something was happening inside her that made her burst into tears of joy when she saw the Pope. The ‘Francis effect’ made people wait hours in the cold and rain of the Highlands and the blistering sun of the coastal plane just to get a glimpse of him.

In his homilies and addresses to the different sectors of society he condemned what has to be condemned, but always showed a better and superior way of living. He was not afraid to refer to the ugly face of neoliberal capitalism in concrete terms nor point out the evil effects of inequality.

“I live in Rome where it is cold during the winter,” the Pope said. “Near the Vatican City an old many died of cold in the streets. It went unnoticed in the newspapers. However, if there is a drop of one point of the stock exchange there is commotion throughout the world. Have we forgotten the Biblical teaching, ‘where is your brother?’ Our economic system has to be transformed and not merely reformed. Inequality, exclusion, and the ungodly situation where 1 per cent have a greater share of the world’s wealth than the other 99 per cent must no longer be tolerated.”

“Money has to serve mankind and not govern mankind,” was his summing up of the situation. God made the world for the benefit of all and we should all work together as brothers and sisters to attend to the needs of all. Our mistake is to have created a world and a society without love and therefore without God.

He reached out to the young. “I do not bring gold nor silver but rather something much more worthwhile —Jesus Christ. Dear youths, do not allow them to rob you of hope. May God free us of from a mundane Church with a veneer of spirituality. Worldliness chokes us and the only cure is to take a breath of the pure air of the Holy Spirit.” There often was punch and humour in his sayings: “Priests are like airplanes —they become noticed when they fall.”

His phrases will surely be eternalised in the  international lexicon of literature and thought, but what would be of greater interest to Pope Francis is to have his teaching lived and practiced by all peoples throughout the world, accepting love and service as the bases of every society