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ROME – Five days after announcing a historic agreement with China on the appointment of bishops, Pope Francis on Wednesday issued a letter to Chinese Catholics. The essential of this comes down to: "Trust me".
Specifically, Francis asked about 13 million Catholics in China to "place your trust even more firmly in the Lord of history and in the discernment of the Church in his will." The idea is to ask for faith despite the uncertainties of Chinese Catholics, especially those of the "clandestine" church, which has been stubborn in its opposition to the communist government out of loyalty to Rome and now has Impression that the carpet has been removed.
One of the main reasons why the pope must appeal to trust is that even if an agreement has been announced, few details about what it contains are known. It is therefore impossible to say exactly at this stage what freedom of movement the pope sacrificed to bring the Chinese authorities to sign on the dotted line or what might be the implications for the future of faith in China.
In some respects, the situation is not entirely different from the approach that Francis adopted a month ago by the Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former ambassador of the Pope in the United States, whom Francis knew of accusations of sexual misconduct against his ex-cardinal. Theodore McCarrick in 2013 and did not act.
When these charges were laid for the first time, Francis refused to address them and did so mainly on Monday night at a new conference aboard his plane, after a four-day trip to the Baltic states .
Francis refused to answer any questions that were not specifically related to the trip, although he did make some reflections on the scandals related to clerical abuse, arguing in particular that the Pennsylvania grand jury report issued in the mid-1960s August shows progress in combating child abuse, as the number of cases in recent years is considerably lower than in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
However, the pope did not say a word about Viganò's allegations, and did not answer the obvious question that the journalists on the plane really wanted to ask: will he order the disclosure of the archives of the McCarrick lawsuit? I knew it?
In other words, the pope also asks people to trust him.
In some ways, it's an understandable request. From the beginning of his papacy, Francis has proven to be a friend of the victims, the oppressed and oppressed peoples all over the world and to have a bitter pastoral heart for those who are pushed to the periphery of life. It is therefore perhaps not unreasonable that he thinks he can count on some benefit from the doubt.
The problem he faces, however, is twofold.
First of all, Francis suffers from a lack of institutional trust that did not start with him, but he inherited it and that's part of his reality. Clandestine Catholics in China often feel that the Vatican has betrayed them many times since the time of Paul VI, while survivors of violence have long experience of the declarations of resolution of Church leaders.
In addition, the two constituencies feel a little ambivalent about Francis himself these days, wondering if, despite the new tone, the underlying music of the Church does not really changed as much.
In other words, Francis is dealing with two groups for which a plea of "self-confidence" from any church leader, even him, is particularly difficult to swallow .
More fundamentally, as they say, trust is a two-way street. If Francis or any leader wants the public's trust, they must be ready to take the necessary steps from time to time.
If Francis is looking for a place to start now, he might consider transparency – a word that has been frequently invoked as the goal of his reforms, but a practice that sometimes seems more respected in violation than compliance in his eyes.
If Francis wants the confidence of Chinese Catholics, he might consider telling them exactly what they are asked to trust – in other words, the contents of the new agreement signed by the Supreme Pontiff with the Chinese government.
Once the Catholics know how the agreement is structured, what has been given and what has been maintained, they may be more inclined to refuse the judgment until they see how it is going on. ground.
Similarly for survivors of abuse, they saw Francis commit to getting to the bottom of what was wrong in cases like McCarrick's, and having enough confidence in the Catholic base claiming that cleansing would not destroy his faith stay, they might be willing to give the pope a little more room for maneuver as he tries to find a way forward.
In other words, transparency is not simply a "best practice" to avoid and remedy scandals, although it certainly is. It is also a deposit on trust – a payment that can not be made once, but regularly, such as gas and water, otherwise the service is disabled.
Both for China and for sexual abuse, this payment can be expensive for Francis and his Vatican team, but the experience can prove that doing is no longer a luxury but a necessity.
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