The Francis Project

The Francis Project
To Transform Souls with Mercy

by Fr. Henry Bonetti, SDB

Fr. Bonetti, an American Salesian, has been a member of the Korean Province since the 1960s, having gone to the East as a newly professed confrere and missionary.  For the last half-decade he has been rector of one of the Salesian houses of study in Manila, which serves Salesians in formation from all over the Far East.  He sent me this reflection two weeks ago, hesitant about possibly publishing it.  I offered to blog it, and finally I’m doing so.  I have lightly edited his text for style, inserted some bracketed words for clarity, and put a title and subtitle on it.

Inspired by Pope Francis’s example, we have just completed a life-size “smelling-of-sheep” Good Shepherd on the Cross for our seminary chapel. Christ has a sheep around his neck. A local artist carved it using a medieval German cross as an example.

(Avalon Gallery)

Pope Francis is now in the midst of a problem with some of his conservative colleagues over points of doctrine. Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, once said, “I know a bishop who said, ‘I don’t have time for all this mysticism. I have a church to run.’ And he [the bishop] was a good man.” Some good people never get it. The theology experts who have signed a letter pointing out [perceived] errors in doctrine, I’m sure are good men and more learned than I. But they don’t seem to understand Pope Francis.

He is a mystic, a Jesuit religious, a spiritual guide, a visionary, a prophet. Like Mary the mystic, he can ponder in the biblical sense and hold in tension two seemingly contradictory statements in one whole.

Another way of looking at it: St. John Paul II was a philosopher, Pope Benedict is a theologian, Pope Francis is a spiritual guide. He helps people discern. Mercy and transformation are two words that best sum him up, whereas faith and truth would sum up [the two] former popes. Meister Eckhart, a mystic of the Middle Ages, says that the word that best describes God is neither truth nor love but mercy. Thomas Merton, Catherine of Siena, and Julian of Norwich say the same thing.  Pope Francis wants to bring the Church from [being] a Church of morality with constant “NOs” to a Church of discernment with constant “YESes.”

Francis, the prophet, is trying to get us back to the Church’s prophetic spirituality. Prophetic spirituality is about producing difference. It dances between the customary and the new, between the possible future and the given past or present. Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same things over [and over] and expecting different results.

Then, too, looking at Pope Francis from the point of view of the Fathers of the Church, he is not Tertullian (a lawyer), nor is he Origen (a seeker of truth). He is St. Irenaeus (a pastor). He works for transformation with mercy. Pope Francis is talking about a totally different order of reality than the letter-signers. He belongs in no camp, neither Tertullian’s camp of law nor Origen’s camp of truth. Yet he is not outside either camp. Even if he answered the letter, I [believe] the senders would not understand the answer. He transcends both camps while keeping his feet on the ground. And that is why some church officials have a hard time understanding where he wants to take us and what his transformation is all about.

The new students of theology do not study laws and dogmas they study a Person, Jesus Christ. The goal is ultimately to fall in love with Him and obtain what St. John Paul II spoke of as “intelligence of the heart.” And that changes everything we do in life. Our goal is first to make the Church attractive, and later to learn practice and law.  

Engaging Pope Francis in “fraternal dialogue” means to me only that [those theologians] have failed to grasp the true nature of Francis’s mystical path, his prophetic vocation, and his world-transforming service. To understand Pope Francis, one has to believe Jesuit theologian Fr. Karl Rahner’s comment that the whole Church must become mystic, or else it will cease to exist.

Good Shepherd image from the Roman catacombs

When I was first training seminarians, the goal of formation was to become a “JP II priest.” Now the goal is to become a PF I (Pope Francis) priest. As one who is in charge of forming seminarians for the 21st century, I wish to form them into Pope Francis’s shepherds, smelling of sheep. The reform is irreversible. The alternative makes me shudder.