The Man who could be Pope, Part 5

The question in Part 4 for Cardinal Tagle was whether he could walk his talk, embrace liberation theology, and pull the trigger on recalcitrant bishops. It’s a tall order for him especially with the turmoil surrounding the Hamas-Israeli conflict that is escalating by the day. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons if the West would allow Ukraine to strike deeper in Russia.

China, of course, is having a good time of its own doing; forcefully expanding its territory in the South China Seas and egging the Philippines and the United States by extension, to engage them militarily. With such turmoil, will there be even territories and lives left post-nuclear confrontation? Pope Francis seems unperturbed by such grim possibilities and used his trip to Southeast Asia and the Pacific to remind people of his celebrity status, able to draw huge crowds.

He used his bully pulpit to amplify his recurring message on synodality, climate change, violence, and conflict. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim populated country in the world, the pope wanted to close a little the religious divide between Christianity and Islam through interfaith dialogue. He even visited Jakarta’s largest mosque and sat down with the grand Imam for tete-a-tete.

Absent from his itinerary was Taiwan, a country with diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Clearly, he was mindful of not offending the Bear given the chilly relations with China now. He knew President Xi was monitoring his trip and praising China as a “great country” was his way of being diplomatic. “Someday, I’ll get to visit that country,” he said. The bilateral agreement between China and the Holy See has not been renewed yet.

Chinese Catholics (and others) are probably wondering why the pope is going through such lengths to appease and reach détente with the communist leadership. Well, Pope Francis is a great statesman and an avid student of world history. He must be and for that matter, the moist eyes of ambitious cardinals wanting to be pope must take notice.

This threat of a nuclear war is apocalyptic and if it materializes, it is Armageddon. The pope clearly has his eyes on the Seven Signs in Heaven (a Woman, a Dragon, and two Beasts) as foretold by John in the Book of Revelation. In particular, the facets of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse that had been revealed is an ongoing evolution since the beginning of time: conquest, war, famine, and death.

One of Pope Francis favorite themes is climate change (The Woman Clothed with the Sun, the moon under her feet, and 12 stars – is Mary, the Mother and Queen of Creation). The Great Red Dragon embodies Satan seeking revenge on Mary for giving birth to Jesus and Christianity by extension. The pope is seeing this now happening in China where the children of God are being persecuted. Pope Francis knows that the Red Dragon (Lucifer) can be defeated.

Mary’s role in climate change is perhaps best explained through the lines of Resuene Vibrante, the theme song of the Feast of Our Lady of Peñafrancia. The song, Himno a Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia (popularly called Resuene Vibrante) was composed by Fr. Maximo Juguera’s for the Canonical Coronation of Our Lady of Peñafrancia that incidentally is celebrating its centenary. The lines allude to how Mary cares for the poor and desires for devotees to care for the environment.

As the Queen of Creation, she is the first guardian of creation – planets, people – humanity. A Xi-Putin combo is not good for creation and will lead to the destruction of the earth by drawing others to it for another world war. The scriptures allude to the start of the Great Tribulation and lasts for nearly three years. Many prophets of doom mention that the West (America, United Kingdom, and Israel will be devastated the most.

Bringing these apocalypse symbolisms, Pope Francis is trying to distract the Red Dragon from joining forces with the Eurasian brown bear (Russia) that could bring about Armageddon. In Russian folklore, the menacing brown bear is associated with fire (bombs, nuclear weapons) and the harbinger of harm.

Pope Francis must have read the “Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order” by Samuel Huntington, Harvard political science professor in the 90’s. The book doubted the universality of mankind, alluding to the euphoric adoration of the fall of the Soviet Union by the West, and emphasized that Gorbachev’s tearing of the Berlin Wall was a pause because the rifts that demarcate the East and the West will endure.

Huntington’s best seller referred to events that just happened with known protagonists, but the future of civilization is really not composed of easily identifiable boundaries like borders, constitutions, armies or nationalistic symbols. Civilization is an artificial construct , a human invention that refers to anything with the human tag like Christianity, Communism, Democracy, and so on. Nation states have needs for itself and for its people, thus it supports the notion of enduring rifts when nation states use its power.

Aside from the material things, humans do need identity and continuously search for meaning and purpose. Religious wars can be viewed as not only acquiring territories and subjugating people, but to stay in power, maintain order, and to and determine where civilization is headed. In history, mortals often make the same mistake and that is to see the waves kissing the shores and totally missing the currents that lead to their downfall.

The kings and emperors of ancient civilizations, the Romans, and the Soviets remind us that power corrupts and that power, riches, even nations fade and yield to a new reality or order. Since antiquity, humans have long recognized the duality of man as exemplified by Jesus. Contextually, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Iran/ Palestine is about people who expose certain beliefs. And such beliefs become the basis for diplomacy or war.

Conservative or traditional religious leaders often highlight the path to a divine world and ignore the currents. Pope Francis sees the currents of world affairs not from the sensory vacuum of Vatican City but from a vantage view of washing feet, noting the smells of the poor, communing with people of different religions, and beholden to a particular ideology. He doesn’t subscribe to the niceties of theories but would rather listen to what the people of God here on earth are saying.

So, he views the leadership of China as a threat to humanity’s survival and needs to be managed through diplomatic means or sound policy. He can sacrifice a cardinal or bishop towards that end by avoiding clashes of civilizations. His recent trip to Southeast Asia at 86 years old, Pope Francis is showing would be papabili that there’s more to papacy than just religion. He is, after all, the leader of nearly 1.5 billion Catholics worldwide. (To be continued)