I know the new Pope will not fail on the things that the Pope cannot fail on (abortion, same sex “marriage” and so on), but I do question the need for everyone to praise him so thoroughly.
I dislike that he has abandoned the red cape (I forgot how its name is spelled), and his focus on poverty. I understand the corporal works of mercy, but we do not need St. Francis of Assisi in the Papacy now, we need a tough administrator who will clean house in the Vatican and around the world! There is a reason why St. Francis was canonized a saint never made Pope (or Cardinal, or even bishop) - his strengths were not that of a Pope!
Other Popes have realized this, and not taking the Papal name Francis is just the tip of the iceberg. The Pope is not a philanthropist!
I have seen indications that he thinks internal conversion of heart is part and parcel of caring for the poor. As such, I would hope that he will expect his clergy to humbly do the work and the penance of cleaning house to get rid of “filth” in the Church. I think he will hold his people accountable. It will not be business as usual.
I do think, though, that we should not expect him to pay attention to America and our issues all the time, though. He may be more aware of, and focused on, cleaning up problems in South America, especially where clergy has been Marxist-influenced. He already has experience with that.
Dear friend, I have a special devotion to St. Francis of Assisi. Most people associate the saint with poverty and preaching to the animals. To understand why the newly elected pontiff chose St. Francis, it is good to take a quick look at the early life of St. Francis.
Francis enjoyed a very rich easy life growing up because of his father's wealth and the permissiveness of the times. He was constantly happy, charming, and a born leader. As he grew up, Francis became the leader of a crowd of young people who spent their nights in wild parties. He attracted to himself a whole retinue of young people addicted to evil and accustomed to vice." Francis himself said, "I lived in sin" during that time. Listening to wandering troubadours, he fell in love with France. Despite his dreaming, Francis was also good at business. But Francis wanted more..more than wealth. But not holiness! Francis wanted to be a noble, a knight.
Finally a call for knights for the Fourth Crusade gave him a chance for his dream. But before he left Francis had to have a suit of armor and a horse -- no problem for the son of a wealthy father. And not just any suit of armor would do but one decorated with gold with a magnificent cloak. But Francis never got farther than one day's ride from Assisi. There he had a dream in which God told him he had it all wrong and told him to return home. The boy who wanted nothing more than to be liked was humiliated, laughed at, called a coward by the village and raged at by his father for the money wasted on armor.
Francis started to spend more time in prayer. He went off to a cave and wept for his sins. Sometimes God's grace overwhelmed him with joy. One day while riding through the countryside, Francis, the man who loved beauty, who was so picky about food, who hated deformity, came face to face with a leper. Repelled by the appearance and the smell of the leper, Francis nevertheless jumped down from his horse and kissed the hand of the leper. When his kiss of peace was returned, Francis was filled with joy. As he rode off, he turned around for a last wave, and saw that the leper had disappeared. He always looked upon it as a test from God...that he had passed.
His search for conversion led him to the ancient church at San Damiano. While he was praying there, he heard Christ on the crucifix speak to him, "Francis, repair my church." Francis assumed this meant church with a small c -- the crumbling building he was in. Acting again in his impetuous way, he took fabric from his father's shop and sold it to get money to repair the church. His father saw this as an act of theft -- and put together with Francis' cowardice, waste of money, and his growing disinterest in money made Francis seem more like a madman than his son. Pietro dragged Francis before the bishop and in front of the whole town demanded that Francis return the money and renounce all rights as his heir.
The bishop was very kind to Francis; he told him to return the money and said God would provide. That was all Francis needed to hear. He not only gave back the money but stripped off all his clothes -- the clothes his father had given him -- until he was wearing only a hair shirt. In front of the crowd that had gathered he said, "Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father. From now on I can say with complete freedom, 'Our Father who art in heaven.'" Wearing nothing but castoff rags, he went off into the freezing woods -- singing. And when robbers beat him later and took his clothes, he climbed out of the ditch and went off singing again. From then on Francis had nothing...and everything.
Francis went back to what he considered God's call. He begged for stones and rebuilt the San Damiano church with his own hands, not realizing that it was the Church with a capital C that God wanted repaired. Scandal and avarice were working on the Church from the inside while outside heresies flourished by appealing to those longing for something different or adventurous.
Soon Francis started to preach. Francis was not a reformer; he preached about returning to God and obedience to the Church. Francis must have known about the decay in the Church, but he always showed the Church and its people his utmost respect. When someone told him of a priest living openly with a woman and asked him if that meant the Mass was polluted, Francis went to the priest, knelt before him, and kissed his hands -- because those hands had held God.
Francis did not try to abolish poverty, he tried to make it holy. Francis was a man of action. His simplicity of life extended to ideas and deeds. If there was a simple way, no matter how impossible it seemed, Francis would take it. So when Francis wanted approval for his brotherhood, he went straight to Rome to see Pope Innocent III. You can imagine what the pope thought when this beggar approached him! As a matter of fact he threw Francis out. But when he had a dream that this tiny man in rags held up the tilting Lateran basilica, he quickly called Francis back and gave him permission to preach. So, our rallying cry to our new Holy Father should be:
I wonder if the public has designated Saint Francis of Assisi as the new Pope’s spiritual model without knowing there was another Saint Francis- of Xavier. Reviewing info on St Francis Xavier I see a very close Southern Hemisphere church person much like I see in Pope Francis. Perhaps someone has a more declared reason/purpose for Pope Francis’s choice.