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Wednesday, June 6, 2018

THERE ARE MANY REASONS FOR SMALLER PAPAL CROWDS AT MEGA EVENTS BUT THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ITS ABOUT THE CULT OF THE PERSONALITY AND NOT THE INSTITUTION OF THE PAPACY

Should small papal crowds have been the straw that breaks the camel's back when it comes to reversing course in Chile?  The papacy isn't about you Holy Father it's about the institution of the papacy instituted by Jesus Christ. We need more of the institution and less of the person.

Ad orientem for popes, bishops and priests would go a long way to help us move from the cult of the personality which opens the door to abuse and placing the focus on Christ--a less self referential approach to Church institutions and ecclesiology.

Holy Orders and celebrity should not go together.

I thought the Holy Father's comment was very telling:


SANTIAGO, Chile — James Hamilton recalls clearly the time in late April of this year when he traveled to the Vatican to visit Pope Francis and the pontiff shared a story from his earlier visit to Chile. A papal mass held at the port city of Iquique drew a crowd of 90,000, less than half of the 200,000 the pope's entourage expected.
"The pope looked around and saw there was nobody," says Hamilton, a physician who was one of the first Chilean victims of clerical sexual abuse during childhood invited to meet the pope. He and two other men allege that the abuses were covered up by the Catholic Church for decades. 
TOPSHOT - Pope Francis is pictured during his visit at Padre Hurtado Sanctuary in Santiago, on January 16, 2018. 
The pope landed in Santiago late Monday on his first visit to Chile since becoming pope, and his sixth to Latin America, a trip that will also take him to Peru. / AFP PHOTO / PABLO VERA LISPERGUER        (Photo credit should read PABLO VERA LISPERGUER/AFP/Getty Images)

"He told me that Iquique was a blow to his heart," Hamilton says. "The Chilean people told him overwhelmingly: 'You are not welcome here because the church has pending debts with the abused children of this land.' That was the message."

2 comments:

rcg said...

There is a lot more to learn than is contained in that statement. Fot starters, why was he led to expext 200,000 people instead of 90,000? Are these the same people blowing sunshine up his cassock about inter-communion, homosexuality, immigration, environmental politics, economics, and so many other problem areas? I am sensitive to his background and the Argentine social and political environment he grew up in. Yet I was uncomfortable that he preferred to live in an appartment and relatively isolated from the main areas of activities in his diocese. He does the same in Rome. He tries to shield himself from bad influences and manipulative people, but he seems unable to distinguish them when he finally does encounter them. I think he may now be like Pope Benedict and unsure to know who he can trust.

TJM said...

rcg, well at least PF isn't getting advice from MT!!!