Looking Back and Pope Francis" First Year: a Q&A with John Allen

By Lilly Fowler
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 31, 2014

http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/looking-back-and-pope-francis-first-year-a-q-a/article_9feea21b-a1a2-5d5b-ad38-6a362b0ac8ce.html

Pope Francis delivers his speech during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Saturday, John L. Allen Jr., a prominent Vatican correspondent for the Boston Globe, will discuss Pope Francis' reign at National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville. The talk, which starts at 9 a.m., will cover the three pillars of Francis' vision for the church.

In this Q&A, religion reporter Lilly Fowler talks to Allen about his years covering the Roman Catholic Church, the Boston Globe's new website, Crux, and Pope Francis' leadership so far.

For people who might not know a lot about you, can you tell us how you become the go-to guy as far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned?

In 1999, I was shipped over to Rome because the National Catholic Reporter, like every other media outlet in the world, thought that Pope John Paul II was going to drop dead any day. Of course, he proceeded to live. But I got to Rome at a time when other American media organizations were pulling back from overseas coverage.

All of the sudden, several things happened at once. First of all, there was 9/11 in 2001, which made the whole clash of civilizations between Islam and the West and the Vatican's role in that important. Then you had the child sexual abuse scandals in 2002. The war in Iraq in 2003, and Pope John Paul's role in opposing that war. Then you had the repeated health crisis that he went through, which meant the transition story didn't start when he died, but it started every time he went into the hospital.

All of those things combined made the Vatican hugely important in the American media market, and for a while there, I was kind of the only guy doing it.

You're the chief correspondent for this new website dedicated specifically to covering the Roman Catholic Church – Crux. Can you describe the website's role?

I think the unique opportunity that we have with Crux is that we can be far enough away from the Catholic story to get it right. That is, unlike a lot of Catholic media outlets that are sponsored by different groups, we're not committed to one side or the other in the church's internal arguments. We want to be evenhanded.

The problem with a lot of secular coverage of religion is they just don't have the resources to pay the kind of close attention to really truly understand on a day-to-day basis what's happening.

What do you see as Pope Francis' primary strengths and weaknesses so far?

The most striking thing is the way that he's completely changed the narrative about the Catholic Church. Eighteen months ago, the big Catholic stories were sex abuse scandals, crackdowns on nuns and bruising political controversies. Those stories obviously haven't gone away, but they are no longer the dominant Catholic narrative.

The dominant Catholic narrative today is more like rock star pope takes the world by storm. He has created a public perception of himself as a man of genuine simplicity, genuinely caring about ordinary people, who is trying to lead the church to be a friend to the world. That's a very attractive narrative for a lot of people, which means people are taking a more sympathetic look at the Catholic Church.

He is also a serious reformer who has, among other things, thoroughly launched an internal house cleaning operation in the Vatican itself beginning with a push for greater financial transparency and accountability. Also in terms of the personnel that he's elevating, he clearly has a preference for non-ideological, moderate, pastoral leaders. He is changing the composition of the leadership of the church.

On the other hand, it has to be said that one of the ironies about Pope Francis is that while he's universally popular outside of the church, he's become something of a lightening rod inside the church. There is a more conservative, or more traditional camp, in Catholicism that is alarmed about where things are going.

He wants to be everyone's pope. If he's going to be able to pull that off, he's going to have to find a way to bring this kind of mounting resistance around.

There's still a lot of news about sexual abuse. Do you think there's going to be a point when that's going to become the dominant narrative again?

(Pope Francis has) said all the right things. He's created a new commission to lead the charge for reform, and he's staffed it with people who are seen as on the cutting edge of best practices in child protection. The test really will be is he serious about accountability and more precisely, are we going to see a bishop some place drop the ball on zero tolerance held accountable? He has launched an investigation of Bishop (Robert) Finn in Kansas City. If that process ends with a bishop resigning, that is, basically losing his job, then I think some people would be inclined to say that something meaningful is happening.

Will there be actual change? Should the faithful expect to see things like divorced and remarried Catholics taking Holy Communion in a few years?

I don't know how to predict that one. It's much easier if you were to ask me should they expect to see women priests, or should they expect to see the church celebrating gay marriage. The answer is clearly no. Francis has taken those things off the table.

But when it comes to communion for the divorced and remarried, I think it's almost impossible to predict. He clearly has opened up the conversation. We now have a year of discussion ahead of another synod of bishops on the family next October where this issue will once again be front and center. He's certainly dropped hints that he is open to change. That he, himself, might be favorable to it.

But he also said that he wants to govern in collaboration. That is, that he doesn't just want to impose his own will. Clearly, bishops are divided.

To me the drama of this comes down to which side of Francis is going to prevail? Is he going to say, well, I was elected to lead, so I'm going to pull the trigger on this change? Or is he going to say I've committed to governing by consensus?

Anything in particular we should look for in 2015?

For Americans, obviously the big highlight of 2015 is going to be his trip to the United States in September. We're expecting him to visit Philadelphia, New York and Washington. It will be his first trip to the U.S., not just as pope, by the way, his first trip to the U.S. ever. And that's going to be a massive, massive several days. He draws huge crowds everywhere he goes. He's like a magnet for humanity.