the tradition of the Church. Both have opened doors to the future. John XXIII opened the door to the [Second Vatican] Council, which continues to inspire us today and which has not been put entirely into practice. A council, in order to be put into practice, takes about one hundred years, which means that we are halfway along the way. John Paul II took up his suitcase and traveled around the world. A missionary, he set forth to proclaim. He was a missionary. They are two great men from the Church today. For this reason, it will be a pleasure for me to see the Church proclaim them saints on the same day and in the same ceremony. [The two popes were canonized on April 27, 2014.]
It is highly symbolic, which I, too, consider very important. Holy Father, when you arrived in Rio de Janeiro, a lot of mistakes were made in terms of security. Your car was in the middle of the crowd. Were you afraid? What was your feeling at that moment?
I wasn’t afraid. I’m a little reckless, but I’m not afraid. I know that no one dies before his time. When my time comes, what God wills, will be. Before we left, we went to see the popemobile that was going to be sent there. It had so many windows! If you’re going to see someone you love so much, some good friends with whom you want to be in touch, are you going to visit them in a glass case? No! I couldn’t go to see people with such big hearts in a glass case. When I go out on the streets in the car, I roll down the window so I can put my hand out to greet people. It’s all or nothing. Either a person makes the journey and communicates with the people like it should be done, or doesn’t make it at all. Halfhearted communication doesn’t do any good.
I’m grateful—and on this point I want to be very clear—for the Vatican security personnel, for the way in which they prepared my visit, for the zeal that they demonstrated. And I am also grateful for the security personnel in Brazil. I am very grateful to them because even here they have been taking great care of me, and they did not want anything unpleasant to happen to me. It can happen; someone can take a shot at me. It can happen. Both security forces worked very well. But both realize that I am undisciplined in this regard. I don’t do it because I want to be some kind of enfant terrible. I simply do it because I have come to visit the people, and I want to treat them like people. I want to touch them.
Your good friend, the Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, has spoken on several occasions of your concern for the loss of so many of the faithful here on this continent, especially in Brazil, who are joining other denominations, mainly evangelical ones. I ask you, therefore, why this happens, and what can be done?
I don’t know the causes or the percentages. I heard a lot about this issue—this concern for the people who are leaving—during two synods of bishops, for sure during the synod in 2001 and then in another synod. I do not know enough about life in Brazil to give an answer. I believe that Cardinal Hummes was one of those who spoke about it, but I’m not sure of that. If you say he has spoken about it, it’s because you know.
I can’t explain it. There is one thing I can imagine. For me it is essential that the Church be close to the people. The Church is mother, and neither you nor I know of any mother who mothers from a distance by letter. A mother gives affection, touches, [and] kisses, and loves. When the Church, occupied in a thousand different ways, neglects this feeling of closeness, it forgets about it and communicates only through documents. It’s like a mother communicating with her son by letter from a distance. I do not know if this has happened in Brazil. I don’t know. But I do know that this is exactly what happened in some places in Argentina: a lack of closeness, of priests. There is a shortage of priests, so you are left with a country without enough priests. People are seeking; they need the Gospel.
A priest told me that he had gone as a missionary to a city in the south of Argentina, where there hadn’t been a priest for almost twenty years. Obviously, people went to listen to this priest because they experienced the need to hear God’s word. When he got there, a very well-educated lady told him: “I am angry with the Church since she abandoned us. Now I go to Sunday worship services to listen to the pastor, because he is the one who has been feeding our faith all this time.” Closeness is lacking. They talked about this, the priest heard her out, and when they were about to say goodbye, she said to him: “Father, wait a moment. Come here.” She took him to a closet. She opened the closet and inside was the image of the Virgin Mary. She said, “Father, I keep it hidden so that my pastor doesn’t see it.”
That woman went regularly to that pastor and respected him. He spoke to her about God and she listened and accepted what he had to say, because she didn’t have anyone else to minister to her. She kept her roots hidden in a closet. Yet, she still had them. This phenomenon is perhaps more widespread. Such a story often shows me the tragedy of such a flight, of such a change. Closeness is lacking. Going back to my earlier image, a mother does this with her son: she cares for him, kisses him, caresses him, and feeds him—but not from a distance.
We must be close, isn’t that so? Much closer!
Closeness is one of the pastoral models for the Church today. I want a Church that is close by.
When you were elected in the conclave, the Roman Curia was the target of criticism, even criticism from various cardinals. And the feeling I perceived, at least from one cardinal, with whom I spoke, was of change. Was my feeling correct?
I’ll digress for a moment. When I was elected, my friend, Cardinal Hummes, was next to me, because according to the order of precedence we were one behind the other. He said something to me that was very helpful: “Do not forget the poor.” How beautiful! The Roman Curia has always been criticized, at times more and at times less. The Curia is ripe for criticism, given the fact that it has to resolve so many things, some which people like and others that they do not like. Some of their procedures [are] carried out well, while others are poorly implemented, as is the case with every organization.
I would say this. There are a lot of saints in the Roman Curia—saintly cardinals, saintly bishops, priests, religious, lay-people, and people of God who love the Church. This is what people don’t see. A tree that falls in a forest where there is a lot of growth makes a lot more noise than the trees that are growing! The noise from these scandals is louder. Currently, we are dealing with one: the scandal of a bishop who has transferred ten million or twenty million dollars. This man isn’t doing the Church a favor, is he? We have to admit that this man has acted badly, and the Church must give him the punishment he deserves because he did act badly. There are such cases.
Before the conclave, the so-called general congregations took place. The cardinals had a week of meetings. There, we talked clearly about these problems. We discussed everything since we were there alone to see what was really going on and to trace the portrait of the future pope. Serious problems emerged, some of which are rooted in part in everything you already know, such as Vatileaks. There were problems with scandals. But there also continue to be saints, those men who have given and continue to give their lives for the Church in a silent way yet with apostolic zeal.
There was also talk of certain functional reforms that needed to be carried out. It’s true. The new pope was asked to form a commission of outsiders to study the organizational problems of the Roman Curia. A month after my election, I appointed such a commission of eight cardinals, one from every continent—with two for America, one for the North and one for the South—as well as a coordinator, who is also from Latin America, and a secretary who is Italian.
The commission has begun its work, listening to the opinions of the bishops, to the bishops’ conferences, in order to become familiar with how these reforms should appear within the dynamic of collegiality. A lot of documents have already arrived which we obtained from the members of this commission, which are currently being circulated. We will have our first official meeting from October 1-3 [in 2013]. There, we will examine some different models. I don’t think anything definitive will result at that time because curial reform is a very serious matter. I will see the proposals.
