The Pope and Pandora's Box

JOURNALIST Elisabetta Piqué was reporting for Argentina’s La Nacion from a conflict zone in Gaza when her phone rang. On the line was her friend, Padre Jorge. He knew Piqué, a war correspondent, was somewhere bombs were falling. He wanted to pray with her.

Piqué had known Argentina’s Catholic Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio since 2001. “He knew me first as a war correspondent,” Piqué told me when we met on a warm October afternoon in the courtyard of Hotel Helix in Washington, D.C. An affectionate friendship developed. Bergoglio even baptized her two children. Her new book, Pope Francis: Life and Revolution, investigates the history, passions, mistakes, humility, courage, and spiritual maturity of the man her friend has become.

In the rush to publish biographies of the new pope, some (see Paul Vallely’s Pope Francis: Untying the Knots) tout Bergoglio’s conversion from careful, benevolent, autocrat to radical, somewhat careless, lover of the poor. Piqué categorically challenges this portrayal. “He is a person who has been consistent all his life,” she says, “not somebody that suddenly became like that now. The theories that he had a conversion are totally nonsense and without any basis. He was always a sensitive person toward suffering.”

Piqué is also quick to note that hers is an unauthorized biography. “I never wanted to involve him because there are chapters where I say things that maybe it’s better that he’s not involved with. I speak about his clashes with some sectors [of the Jesuits] and also the Vatican. He didn’t read before it was published.”

In fact, Piqué’s first-person voice and investigative acumen (along with a crackerjack team of researcher-journalists— “all women, of course,” Piqué notes with a smile) make Life and Revolution read like a fast-paced novel. She covers the difficult years when Bergoglio was exiled by his Jesuit superiors; the complicated subterfuge required during Argentina’s horrific Dirty War; other cardinals accusing Bergoglio “of not defending doctrine, of making pastoral gestures that are too daring.”

“I get very crazy when people say, ‘Ah, they are just gestures,’” says Piqué. “No! They are not gestures; these are facts,” referring to his reform of the Roman curia, transparency in the Vatican bank, and prosecution of child molesters. “Here we have someone who is changing things, who is changing the history of the church. He had a mandate from the conclave to clean things up—so he’s doing a cleanup of all these scandals.”

However, some, like U.S. Cardinal Burke, corral money and political power to advance an opposition against Pope Francis’ leadership. Others disparage him as not a “real intellectual,” ignoring his Jesuit education and that he taught psychology, literature, and theology. Even friends caution him against opening Pandora’s box by encouraging discussion on gay and lesbian Catholics, heterosexuals who are divorced or remarried, contraception, and more.

“We have a pope that walked the streets, that got mud in his shoes,” says Pique, “and he knows perfectly well that the family is in crisis.

“After the synod on the family, I did an interview with Victor Manuel Fernandez, an archbishop and theologian who is very close to Pope Francis. I asked him about the critics who are worried about Pandora’s box. He told me, ‘If we don’t open Pandora’s box, what is one to do but hide the dirt under the carpet, stick your head in a hole like ostriches, move ourselves increasingly further from the sensibilities of our people, just to be happy because a small group applauds and congratulates us?’ I was very moved by this.”

The final chapter of Life and Revolution lays out Francis’ direction: greater collegiality, dismantling clericalism, and elevating the role of women and laypeople in church leadership. The church must allow the Holy Spirit to transform the proclamation of good news away from doctrinal transmission into a more missionary mode, focused on essentials. “We have to find a new balance,” Pope Francis said, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards.” When Pandora’s box was opened, many ills flew out—but one thing was left at the bottom: the spirit called hope.