A few days ago we said that the key words of the next Conclave would be “continuity” or “restoration”. It seems that the Holy Spirit has preferred continuity. The electors closed in the Conclave: that audience coming from 66 different countries, belonging to all the continents, that worldwide, universal, global representation never seen in history, which has become a concrete hand to implement (for those who believe) the divine plan through the intercession of the Holy Spirit, that audience of wise electors (for us who are more prosaic) has chosen to send among us as the moral leader of the entire world, and spiritual for believers and also for all of us who are not believers, a man who embodies that continuity, who after the death of the revolutionary Francis, could carry forward his innovative plan, this time placing such a plan away from those who considered that Pope “come from the end of the world” someone who acted “through coups”.
First of all, he promises for a “continuity” the name chosen, that name that we evoked in our article as a pope “from whom arose in society that political movement that would later lead to the growth in various countries of popular parties of Christian and democratic inspiration, attentive to that social dimension of the alignments that today lead Europe in opposition to the socialist and right-wing movements”, that is, that Leo XIII, born Gioacchino Pecci, who in 1891 with the encyclical Rerum Novarum began the social doctrine of the Church. Well, can a pope with this name be deaf to the requests of the last, the disinherited, those who died without work or from overwork? I don’t think so, on the contrary he will take up and deepen this theme.
Second, he promises for a “continuity” his repeated reference to peace: that peace that invoked by the risen Prince of Peace, was always invoked by Pope Francis in this season of wars. And it rises again today and more powerfully through the call of Leo XIV. A peace that must not only be such, but must be better specified so that those who deal with the instruments that oppose peace can understand it well: it must be a “disarmed” and “disarming” peace. That is, a peace different from the Tacitean “desert”, that place conquered by the invaders who “make the land a desert and then call it peace”. Just to give an almost current example, a peace different from the Ukrainian cities conquered by the Russians, such as Mariupol turned into a carpet of rubble, where the Russian conquering fury claimed to have brought “peace” to the once truly peaceful Ukrainian provinces. Or, a peace different from the desolate, crushed and flattened land of Gaza where the real estate developer Trump, after having endorsed so much destruction by the Israeli army, thinks he can build a “peaceful” luxury resort on the human and architectural skeletons of the once citizens, now deported Palestinians. On the contrary, an unarmed peace is a peace that is offered, freely, not that is conquered at the price of the blood of others, for one’s own use and consumption, not with a smile but with a sneer on the lips.
Furthermore, that peace must also be “disarming”, that is, it must induce those who are equipped with weapons and an aptitude for offense, to strip themselves of every aggressive intent and instrument to embrace their brother in humanity as a brother. A peace that seeks a perspective, a constructive, lasting brotherhood based on the loving and disinterested acceptance of the other.
Another element that gives hope for continuity is the fact that this pope is an Augustinian, an Augustinian capable of explaining Saint Augustine especially to those who quote Saint Augustine inappropriately, such as the vice president of the United States J. D. Vance, who, thinking he had understood the concept of Ordo Amoris, thought that there could really be an order to which disinterested love for one’s neighbor should be directed, establishing a hierarchy of priorities in human relationships: first the family, then others, denying that attention to the least that was so dear to Christ and Pope Francis. Well, we are sure, or at least we are counting on it: at the first opportunity Leo XIV will be able to repeat the teaching to the unwary neophyte vice president and put him back on the right path.
On the other hand, what is on the horizon? As soon as Leo XIV was elected, the President of the United States rushed to congratulate this “American” Pope, but not American in the sense of Trump’s elementary vocabulary, this Leo XIV was born in Chicago in the United States, which is in the northern part of the American continent, but he spent a large part of his ecclesiastical mission in Peruvian America. Peru is part of a world from which that population that Trump accused of “eating domestic cats”, that population of “parasites”, or whatever he dared to insult them, emigrates. He and the other greats of the Earth will have to deal with this pope. And it would be good for them to immediately start studying, to find a strategy, because the moral strength that this pope, through the vote, has received from the assembly of cardinals from all over the world, the strength of the attention and popular favor that his election has aroused, will be a force with which they will have to deal.
An era has ended, a new era begins. The people in St. Peter’s Square last night, the whole world following from home (I personally had evidence that even in far-off Kazakhstan people were glued to the television to follow the event. Who knows where else?), all these people rejoiced, you could see it in their eyes. They were not faced with the proclamation of a president or a ruler who might have supporters and detractors, who might not represent all of them, or all of their factions. The unanimous favor of the people was instead easily perceptible: they saw in him someone who would simply love them, working to address and solve their ills and those of the world in a thaumaturgical way, without asking them for anything in return. We will see in the future if these expectations will be respected.
Annunci
