Francis's lasting reform
BarcelonaJohn XXIII abandoned the sella gestatoria. Paul VI no longer wore the tiara. John Paul II took the papacy around the world. And Benedict XVI normalized the possibility of a Pope resigning. Possibly some readers no longer know what the sella gestatoria or a tiara-shaped crown is, nor do they imagine a sovereign among pages and wearing a crown when they think of the Pope of Rome. Nor will they be surprised to see a Pope who frequently organizes trips outside the Vatican and who gathers masses on five continents. What we have normalized has not always been normal within the Church. But it hasn't happened overnight. Each Pope has taken his own steps. And what has been considered normal since his pontificate has truly been reform.
Thus, we still need time to see whether Francis's pontificate has been one of reform or parenthesis. But his intention is clear: reform. And not just any reform, but the kind that remained pending implementation after the Second Vatican Council.
From 1963 to 1965, a grand universal assembly of bishops was held that established the roadmap of the Catholic Church toward reconciliation with modernity. In the more than half a century since the Second Vatican Council, fundamental reform has often been postponed. First, because of the tensions it generated within a millennia-old structure. The specter of division and schism held some Popes back from implementing it. The fear of being absorbed by a prevailing relativism led other Popes to focus on strengthening identity: they closed some doors and windows that the Second Vatican Council had opened and that they considered had generated too much of a draft.
To assess Pope Francis' legacy, we cannot ignore these two contexts: what Francis's reform is and how he implements it.
The reform of Vatican II
Those of us born after the 1960s have still been able to meet those who experienced the hopes of everything Vatican II generated. It shaped their ecclesial experience. And we have been able to see how Francis has awakened the longed-for reform written at that time. In the letter and above all in the spirit of change, of listening to the world, and of openness that is so often demanded of the Church. Those who think this is Francis's reform, that of a progressive Pope with a sense of humor, are mistaken. Francis's reform is that of Vatican II. This is what gives it the greatest chance of lasting success, not the successes or mistakes Jorge Mario Bergoglio has made.
And those who want to assess the reform promoted by Francis by simply monitoring the milestones achieved and the remaining steps will be mistaken. The glass can always be seen as half full or half empty depending on expectations. From the outside, Francis certainly wanted to change things in the Church. Whether it's the emphasis on the commitment to combat inequality and injustice, the role of women, the ecological Pope or the Pope of the peripheries, a more open response to sexual diversity, or... But more than changing specific things, the message that Francis has sent internally has been to change the people who make up the Church: he has left in the Church: that ostentation and luxury do not appear in the Gospel, that the Church is not only the hierarchy, or that the power of the Church is not at the service of one or the other, but at the service of justice and peace. All of this is what will be most difficult to reverse.
Perhaps a Pope will come who is less sympathetic to journalists or less daring in the steps he takes. But just as he cannot return the tiara, the gestational chair, or a Pope who wants to remain locked up in the Vatican, Francis' legacy will endure if he has achieved a change in tolerable attitudes within the Church and in what are reprehensible attitudes. To give a graphic example: if the Pope wears old shoes, there's little ecclesiastical career for lovers of luxury and ostentation.
It's hard to be bitter that the new change of Pope comes at the worst possible time to ensure the continuity of reforms. Winds of regression are blowing everywhere, and they're also present in the Church. Authoritarian and restorationist international currents are increasingly strong, capable, and willing to influence mentalities and all social and institutional sectors. Surely, Francis's pontificate needed a final push to consolidate itself. And, in the same way, it's true that there's no other institution like the Church with experience in swimming against the current and, at the same time, adapting to whatever is convenient to perpetuate its message.