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Pope Francis will lock the word of God in our heart and not let it out

Pope Francis: A Jesuit Who Turns to the Franciscans



For part of my higher education I attended a university run by Jesuits. At that time we told the joke that the only difference between the Jesuits and the Communists was that the Communists locked you OUT of church and the Jesuits locked you IN.
Humor aside, the new Pope Francis, who comes to us from both Argentina and the Jesuits, moves in a world where atheistic communism is still an attractive force. Many believe the state, not the church, is the way to solve the problems associated with poverty. Besides getting half a Jesuit education, I was fortunate to have spent time living and working in Argentina years ago. In spite of its love/hate relationship with the UK, Argentina is far away from the conflicts between East and West that have defined much of the politics of my lifetime. Nevertheless, Argentina remains an offshoot of Western civilization in South America. One of the most interesting things so far about Pope Francis is that the liberal media in the United States can't seem to figure him out. Members of the media don’t understand how someone could be a Jesuit and at the same time be named after St. Francis. They also don’t understand how Argentina can be so much like Europe and so unlike Mexico.

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Beyond that, my friend Mary, who knows more about these things than anyone in the US media, predicted that the Church needed an Italian Pope to restore balance. When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aries became Pope Francis, she remarked that we now have an Italian Pope who's not from Italy. By taking the name Francis, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio also becomes a Jesuit Pope who bends towards the Franciscans. This is evident when Pope Francis says he wants to be the Pope of the poor. We should take him at his word about this. We should remember he is from a country that gave the world Evita Perón. I think Pope Francis means to say he will not be tempted by the glitter of Capitalism or the evils of Marxism. His recent statement in Brazil says his belief in a sentence, a sentence that should make the US bishops who are inclined towards the Marxism of "social justice" take notice. "It is certainly necessary to give bread to the hungry--this is an act of justice. But there is also a deeper hunger, the hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy," Pope Francis said in his native Spanish. In these words Pope Francis defines the role of both Church and state in solving the social problem of poverty. At one and the same time the Pope admonishes the rich to share the gift of their wealth and chastises Marxist and socialist governments for denying men's souls and their free will. Pope Francis has been at it for only about five months. He says he wants to reform the Church's bureaucracy and asks that young people get involved in their local parishes. In these five months, he's beginning to grow on everyone with a sweetness that the dulce de leche from Argentina had when I first tasted it in Rosario, City of the Argentinean Flag. Will Francis be the Pope who will combat the Babylonian Heresy that runs through many congregations? Will Pope Francis show us how to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God's? It is the message of Christianity that salvation is not from the state but from the Cross. Certainly, we need now more than ever the reason and intellect of the Jesuits and the mercy and joy of the Franciscans. Perhaps Pope Francis will lock the word of God in our heart and not let it out.


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Robert Klein Engler -- Bio and Archives

Robert Klein Engler lives in Omaha, Nebraska and sometimes New Orleans. Mr. Engler holds degrees from the University of Illinois in Urbana and The University of Chicago Divinity School. Many of Robert’s poems, stories, and paintings are set in the Crescent City. His long poem, “The Accomplishment of Metaphor and the Necessity of Suffering,” set partially in New Orleans, is published by Headwaters Press, Medusa, New York, 2004. He has received an Illinois Arts Council award for his “Three Poems for Kabbalah.” Link with him at Facebook.com to see examples of his recent work. Some of Mr. Engler’s books are available at amazon.com..


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