COMMENTARY: The Holy Father’s recent nod to the late Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe, the controversial Father General of his religious order during that tumultuous time, suggests the formative influence of long-ago events
During his foreign travels, meetings between Pope Francis and local members of his Jesuit order have provided telling clues about the orientation of his papacy — including during his recent visit to Singapore.
The Holy Father’s comments there hinted at an ongoing papal desire to revisit the inflammatory Church debates of the 1970s and 1980s that seemed to have been settled during the preceding pontificates of Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
We do not yet have the complete transcript of Pope Francis’ meeting with the Jesuits of Singapore, but we know — from a Vatican News report that includes a testimony by Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro — the Pope spoke of two Jesuits: Pedro Arrupe, who led the Society of Jesus in the turbulent years after the Second Vatican Council, and Matteo Ricci, the late 16th and early 17th-century missionary to China. Both figures are much beloved and still highly controversial.
Father Arrupe’s tenure as “Black Pope”— the unofficial moniker given to the head of the Jesuits, officially styled Father General — was turbulent and polarizing. John Paul II briefly put the Jesuits into a sort of ecclesiastical receivership when Father Arrupe was still nominally head of the order. As General, Father Arrupe also earlier worried Pope St. Paul VI due to his progressive drift in leading the Society of Jesus.
There are two schools of thought regarding the relationship between Pope Francis and Father Arrupe.
The first one says that Pope Francis fully grasped the reality of being pope only when he decided, at the beginning of his pontificate, to pay homage to the tomb of Father Arrupe. Because during his tenure as Father General, Arrupe did not like Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the then-provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina, and the future pope did not like Arrupe. After all, Bergoglio, after his mandate as provincial, was exiled to Cordoba, then sent to study for a doctorate in Germany that he never completed, and then was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires not on the Jesuit ticket but on the proposal of Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, an orthodox prelate deeply opposed to Father Arrupe’s line.
The second school of thought instead says that Father Pedro Arrupe was the mentor and teacher of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He did so by developing the idea of the theology of the people as a more orthodox alternative to liberation theology and by the themes he chose to address in the 32nd General Congregation — the highest governing body of the Society of Jesus — in 1974, which Pope Francis has often cited.
That Congregation established the beginning of a new chapter in Jesuit history: The approved decrees speak of immigration, social justice, new family pastoral care, dialogue with atheists, breaking down all barriers with other religions, inculturation and care for the environment.
These are all themes that Pope Francis has made his own and which are today at the center of his pontificate. This leads one to think that Francis — who was among the 237 delegates of that Congregation — is actually inspired to his core by Arrupe’s example and leadership.
With this history in mind, one may see the Francis pontificate as a return to the debates of the 1970s and 1980s.
The debate between progressives and conservatives that dominated those decades reached resolution under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in part by opposition and in part by assumption.
John Paul II was a fearless thinker and a philosophical genius who made both popular piety and “creative orthodoxy” the hallmarks of a thinking pontificate that found a way to harness the energies unleashed by the Council and direct them to orthodox channels. Benedict XVI — who had more to do with keeping John Paul II’s official pronouncements within the bounds of established teaching than he ever let on — was also the first to be called “The Green Pope” for his ecological commitment, and centered all his work before and after becoming pope on truth and the unity of the Church.
After Benedict XVI’s pontificate, Francis took up the idea that we had to go back. Events such as Vatican II’s “Pact of the Catacombs” resurfaced, the reception of the Council became a crucial issue again, and the openings undertaken under John Paul II and Benedict toward the more traditional Catholic world were erased or neutered.
Is Pope Francis’ pontificate therefore one of restoration?
If one considers the details, one must ask that question. From the look to the past with the will to rewrite history, from the points of reference all anchored in the Church of the 1970s and from the presence of “remediation cardinals” in practically every consistory convened so far — there is an attempt by the Pope to recover past history or to apologize for alleged exclusions for political reasons.
The point is not, in the end, about whether Pope Francis looks at Arrupe as a friend or an enemy, whether he is part of the Jesuits’ recent history or outside of it. The point is that the Pope has us looking back, and hence unable to see the challenges before us today.