Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis

There’s always been a tendency within the Church, and within society, to appropriate religious figures to promote a variety of agendas. Jesus of Nazareth is a good example of someone routinely invoked to be whatever we want him to be—and endorse whatever we want him to endorse—to the point where who he really is, and what he really endorses, gets obscured. This makes the Church’s task that much harder, as if it isn’t hard enough already.

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) is another religious figure regularly pressed into servicing a variety of agendas: ecological, sociological, economic, political and ecclesiological. We need to be careful, though, as assigning a particular agenda to him is a risky business. As I’m a Third Order Franciscan, friends assumed I’d be pleased when the new Pope chose the name Francis I. Not really, I confessed. He’s actually a Jesuit, I said. If he really wanted the Church and society to live according to Franciscan values, he would have…