August 22, 2025 • 37 mins
The power of Pope Francis's leadership lies not in doctrine changes but in his transformative approach to religious leadership itself. Dr. Michael Higgins, author of "The Jesuit Disruptor," reveals how Francis's humble Argentine beginnings and Jesuit formation shaped a pontiff who prioritizes mercy over legalism, authenticity over authority, and pastoral care over institutional preservation.
Pope Francis emerged from the turbulent "dirty war" in Argentina with a deep commitment to serving the marginalized. As Dr. Higgins explains, Francis's journey from autocratic provincial to humble archbishop reflects a profound spiritual transformation that prepared him to disrupt centuries of papal tradition. When he stepped onto the Apostolic Loggia without traditional regalia and simply said "Buona sera," he signaled a revolutionary shift in papal identity.
What makes this conversation particularly valuable for evangelical listeners is understanding why Francis matters beyond Catholic circles. His rejection of clericalism and insistence that "the church is a field hospital" for the wounded speaks across denominational lines. The famous "Who am I to judge?" comment wasn't abandoning Catholic teaching but redirecting focus toward compassionate encounter rather than judgment. Similarly, his efforts to include divorced Catholics demonstrates prioritizing people over policies.
Francis' papacy hasn't been without struggle. His mixed success reforming Vatican finances and addressing clergy sexual abuse reveals the challenges of institutional transformation. Yet through it all, Francis has consistently humanized the papacy by rejecting its princely trappings in favor of authentic servant leadership.
Whether you're curious, cautious, or simply want to understand one of Christianity's most visible leaders, this conversation offers valuable insights into how Pope Francis is reshaping religious leadership for the 21st century.
You can learn more from Dr. Michael Higgins through his scholarship and publications.
And you can share this episode using hashtag #Evangelical360 and join the conversation online!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brian Stiller (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360.
I'm your host, Brian Stiller,and I'm pleased to share with
you another conversation withleaders, changemakers and
influencers impacting Christianlife around the world.
My guest today is Dr MichaelHiggins, Professor Emeritus and
Distinguished Scholar.
His most recent book was titledthe Jesuit Disruptor a personal
(00:35):
portrait of Pope Francis, andhe's written about the future of
the papacy, what he refers toas the emergence of a new Leo
XIV.
An obvious question forevangelicals is why should we
care who the Pope is?
What sort of impact does thepapacy have on the Protestant
Church?
Whether you're curious,cautious or simply want to be
(00:58):
informed, Michael Higgins ishere to help us understand and
think clearly about one of themost visible roles of the
Christian faith.
So listen in and join theconversation on YouTube in the
comments below, and be sure tosubscribe and share this episode
.
Always use hashtagEvangelical360.
This is our first podcast in aseries of two.
(01:20):
Michael Higgins, nice to haveyou here on Evangelical360.
Michael Higgins (01:22):
Good to see you again, Brian.
Brian Stiller (01:31):
Our lives, as we recalled, go back many years to
CBC
Michael Higgins (01:35):
Only 40.
Brian Stiller (01:36):
40 years.
But, Michael, you have writtenthis remarkable book called the
Jesuit Disruptor, a fascinatingread about the Pope who now has
gone on across the Jordan, as itwere, and a person who I had
come to know in a modest, kindof evangelical way.
But his story is an amazingstory, both as it relates to who
(02:01):
he was and then what he did.
And so in our conversationtoday, as an evangelical wanting
to know why in the world shouldI even be interested in Rome or
your papacy and Leo XIV?
Now, this might help to unwrapthat and bring from your
experience and your writing anunderstanding.
So let's begin with PopeFrancis and his life in
(02:26):
Argentina, where he came from,and what that world did for him
in preparing him to be a pope.
Michael Higgins (02:34):
Well, as you rightly say, Argentina was the
major shaper of his life in theearly years.
For sure, he was born inArgentina, he studied to be a
priest in Argentina, he enteredthe Society of Jesus, so he
became a Jesuit Not long after,just a few years after he was
(02:55):
given responsibility asprovincial for the order.
The Jesuits are divided up intoprovinces and the head of that
province is called theprovincial.
The Argentine Jesuits aredivided up into provinces and
the head of that province iscalled the provincial.
The Argentine Jesuits werequite numerous and at one point
there were two provincials.
But he was a provincial of theJesuit community where he
(03:18):
presided for quite a number ofyears and during a very
difficult period.
Actually, brian, in Argentinehistory it was the time of the
dirty war.
Many people disappeared or weredisappeared.
In fact, it was at this timethat you get the madres de
(03:38):
desperdicios, the mothers of theplazaidamyle of the disappeared
, and you have torture, peoplebeing syringed with some kind of
chemical and then thrown fromhelicopters Out into the ocean,
(04:01):
out into the ocean or the riverPlate.
It was a terrible time and inmany ways he handled it well, as
well as one could be expected,but there was criticism over his
handling some aspects of it.
But after he served his term asprovincial, he was sent to
Coruba in the northern part ofArgentina, to Cordoba, in the
(04:30):
northern part of Argentina, andhe saw that as a form of exile,
because he came to realize,through prayer and discernment
and interior reflection, thatthere were various aspects of
his personality that didn't lenditself nicely to effective
pastoral leadership himselfnicely to effective pastoral
leadership.
He was inclined to beautocratic, to be decisive, to
be inflexible, and he realizedthat, you know, he was
(04:52):
inexperienced, he was too young,so he wanted to learn from this
.
At the same time, in a way, hewas also being punished by his
Jesuit spirits.
Eventually, however, he workedhis way back into the good
graces of both the Order and,indeed, the Archdiocese.
He was named an auxiliarybishop of Buenos Aires and then,
when the archbishop died, hewas named his successor, so
(05:14):
became the archbishop, and thenhe was created a cardinal.
During all this time, what yousee is what you also see when he
moved from the River Plate tothe River Tiber.
In other words, you sawsomebody whose whole approach
was marked by his humility.
(05:35):
He didn't have a chauffeur,which he was entitled to.
He took public transportation.
He ate with folk, with ordinaryfolk.
He maintained a style as anarchbishop and as a cardinal
which was out of sync with thegeneral way in which archbishops
and cardinals behaved.
He lived, his accommodation wassimple, his travel was simple.
(06:00):
As I said, his presence wasdefined by both simplicity and
humility, so that when he movedto Rome he carried that with him
.
Some people sometimes say well,when he became Bishop of Rome,
he changed.
No, he didn't change at all.
Actually, what he brought toRome were those qualities of his
leadership that you see comingto a new fruition in his papacy.
Brian Stiller (06:23):
But I understand as a Jesuit, that was core to
his being.
So let's take a moment andunwrap what is a Jesuit?
Where does it come from, whatdoes it mean within the Catholic
Church, and how would that, asan identity and a group to which
he was a part, shape his life?
Michael Higgins (06:43):
Well, you're quite right, he was a member of
the Society or the Company ofJesus.
The Order was founded in the16th century in Spain, during
the time of the Reformation.
The Jesuits are a body of menwho take vows, and they're not
monks, they're not mendicants orfriars, so it's not Francis of
(07:06):
Assisi or Saint Benedict.
So what's a mendicant?
A mendicant is a friar, likethe Franciscans or the
Dominicans.
Okay, and mendicancy means thatthey are dependent upon the
generosity of others to givethem alms and to feed them, to
help them.
So they take the vow ofproperty very seriously.
(07:27):
Monks are different.
They live encloistered and theyhave a regular cycle of prayer
built on the hours and theoffices.
The Jesuits were a significantdeparture from this way in which
priests and non-priests thosewho didn't proceed to ordination
, lived within the RomanCatholic Church.
(07:49):
They were an apostolic order.
They were to be in the world.
They weren't monks, but theyweren't friars either, and they
established, throughout all ofEurope and elsewhere,
institutions of higher learning,secondary schools, hospitals.
They were involved, certainly,in universities, the best
(08:11):
universities, and they createdtheir own as well.
They were involved inscientific research and whatnot.
So they became a major andpotent force in the history of
Catholicism, in the history ofthe Catholic Church In the 18th
century they were what we callsuppressed.
Various of the Catholic monarchsof Europe, particularly the
(08:32):
Spanish and Portuguese monarchs,were quite disturbed by the
Jesuit presence in Latin America, particularly Paraguay, brazil,
and the Jesuits were taking theside of the indigenous peoples
and they were affecting thesuccess of the empires the
Portuguese and the Spanish andthey were in collation.
(08:54):
Anyway, they appliedsignificant and continuous
pressure on the Pope.
The Pope suppressed them so forabout 40 years, like a
Babylonian exile.
For 40 years the Jesuits weredissolved as an order and they
dispersed and many of them wentto Catherine of Russia.
They and that is, to Frederickof Prussia.
(09:16):
They were picked up bynon-Catholic regal figures who
recognized this incredibleresource.
After about 40 years asubsequent pope reinstated them.
So the order came back, was nolonger under suppression and
during the 19th century itflourished.
It was quite conservative.
During that period they wereoften called the pope's
(09:40):
theologians.
They were the Roman school.
Then in the 20th century it'skind of a flip side then Many of
the great progressives, many ofthe great theologians of the
Catholic Church andintellectuals period and other
disciplines as well, wereJesuits.
So the 20th century Jesuit wasdifferent in many regards from
the 19th century Jesuit.
(10:00):
So the community's been aroundfor hundreds of years.
They are formed spirituallyaround a primary text called the
Spiritual Exercises.
The founder of the order,ignatius of Loyola, was a
military chap and he was woundedin the Battle of Pamplona and
(10:25):
he was forced to have a verylong convalescence and the
surgeons had to break his legafter they had originally set it
because it had been setincorrectly, and so he suffered
a lot of physical pain.
But during the extendedconvalescence he read the
Gospels and he read the Lives ofthe Saints and he had a
(10:48):
profound conversion.
And during the period after hisconversion he traveled to
Jerusalem.
He went to a place in Spaincalled Manresa and there he had
a very deep religious experience, deep religious experience.
(11:11):
And eventually the order wasfounded in Paris, approved by
the Pope in Rome, and theJesuits made it very clear that
they were going to be at theservice of the Pope.
They've always seen themselvesas the Pope's special
legionaries, and that's true.
If you go to Rome, you'll find acluster of buildings in central
Rome that originated with thefounding of society.
So you have the Jesuit, thegreat church, you have St
(11:35):
Ignatius of Loyola, another oneof the St Ignatius of Loyola.
You have the Baramino, which isa residence for the Roman
students studying in Rome, andyou and the Biblicum and the
Gregorian and all these kinds ofthings.
So the Jesuits became a verystudents studying in Rome and
the Biblicum and the Gregorianand all these kinds of things.
So the Jesuits became a verypowerful presence in Rome.
But they've traveled all overthe world.
They're missionaries by andlarge.
(11:55):
That was a major thrust forthem, and so they were in Latin
America for quite a number ofyears, long before Bergoglio
appeared.
Brian Stiller (12:05):
And what would they bring specifically to him?
How would his life have beenshaped?
Michael Higgins (12:11):
They would be shaped by the exercises which
would bring him into both anemotive or affective, as well as
intellectual relationship withJesus.
The exercises are built on theexperience of Ignatius of Loyola
, an experience which wasprofound psychologically and
mystically, and they're dividedinto weeks and the Jesuits are
(12:33):
under obligation to do the40-day exercises twice during
their lives as Jesuits.
It's quite intense, and thatspirituality is a spirituality
of deep interiority, but it's aspirituality that is also
defined by discernment, by thecareful weighing of options, the
(12:55):
realization that the attainmentof God's love is not Pelagian.
You don't earn it.
God's love is gratuitous, ofcourse, and you put your service
, you put your life at theservice of the divine majesty.
And this is the kind oflanguage that was used as a
major text.
It still shapes Jesuits allover the world.
Brian Stiller (13:15):
And how would that have prepared him for the
rule of papacy, and how did thatmark itself during his rule?
Michael Higgins (13:22):
Well, those are both good questions, because he
was the first Jesuit pope, sohe doesn't have anybody to model
it on, right.
So he didn't say well, aprevious Pope who was also a
Jesuit, no, he's the firstJesuit Pope.
So he has to internalize whathe would have internalized his
training as a Jesuit and hisexperience as a Jesuit and that
(13:42):
would find expression in hislife as a bishop and in his life
as Pope, both in terms of hisprayer but also the way he
appropriates reality.
Let me put it this way and thisis how the Catholic Church is
structured If you're a member ofa religious order and you
(14:02):
become a bishop, you are nolonger under the authority of
the general of your order.
You are now responsibledirectly and only to Rome and
the Pope.
So when he becomes Pope, theonly one, in a sense, he's
responsible to is God, so he'snot responsible to the Father
(14:24):
General of the Society of Jesus.
Now he's the Pope.
He's the Pope first.
He's the Jesuit secondly.
But the question about how histraining prepared him to be a
Pope is problematic in that noone ever knows.
They're going to be Pope, it'snot a career choice.
They're going to be pope, it'snot a career choice.
(14:54):
So my sense is he would havebrought those gifts of
discernment and interiority andprayer and the famous Jesuit
maxim ad majoriam dei gloriam,which means you do everything
for the glory of God, all thingsto stand for the glory of God,
and also the belief which runsthrough everything, that's
Jesuit Brian, the belief thatnothing human is foreign to God.
(15:16):
So if you're a Jesuit and Iknow scores of Jesuits, I've
written two books on them andyou're a biogeneticist or you're
an astrophysicist or you're apsychiatrist, or you're a social
worker or you're a teacher inhigh school, it doesn't matter,
because what you do, you do forGod's glory.
(15:36):
So no body of knowledge isforeign to God and, as a
consequence, in serving God, youshould not be frightened of any
body of knowledge by saying, oh, that's secular or it's mundane
, or it's demonic, or to cripplemy faith or whatever.
No, no, no.
There are so many Jesuits thatare scientists and you know.
(15:57):
You know that there are moremeteorites named after Jesuits
than anybody any other group ofthem.
Because of their work inastronomy, they run one of the
greatest observatories in theworld and they're run by the
Jesuits.
So he would have come from areligious tradition, an order
that prizes the inhabitants,that recognizes the importance,
(16:21):
core importance of spiritualityand that talks about the
discernment.
But he would also have a deepthread or cord of obedience to
the Father General and, when hewas Archbishop, to the Pope.
So his Jesuit life is importantin helping to understand his
(16:44):
makeup.
But when he becomes Pope heceases to be an active Jesuit.
Brian Stiller (16:50):
Michael, you had this interesting quote by
Christopher Pramuk which sayslike Merton, francis' root
spirituality is profoundlyincarnational, true to his
Jesuit and Franciscansensibilities.
It is also profoundly cosmicand creational, trusting that
the whole of human life,inclusive of our bodies, is part
(17:11):
of a greater mystery aboutwhich we are still profoundly
ignorant.
Michael Higgins (17:16):
And you see that perfectly articulated in
his encyclical La Datocee aboutour common home, the environment
, environment, and in thatdocument he makes a compelling
case for what he calls humanintegral ecology, by which he
means all of creation isconnected.
Okay, we can't talk aboutthings being bifurcated or
(17:38):
divided.
These are false polarities orantinomies.
We have to work towards agreater unity and a greater
harmony, and that's why.
That's why he never saw otherreligious traditions through an
adversarial lens.
He never said oh my God, theMuslims are here.
What are we going to do?
Brian Stiller (17:57):
Okay, Michael, that just brings us perfectly to
ask the question why in theworld did you call him the
Jesuit disruptor?
Like what did he disrupt?
Pretty?
Michael Higgins (18:08):
well, several things in the Catholic Church.
To begin with, you may recallthat when he was elected Pope he
came out on the ApostolicLoggia.
He didn't have the Mosetta andhe didn't have the Apostolic
stole, he didn't have thevarious pontifical raiment that
was worn.
Leo XIV wore it, for instance,benedict XVI did.
(18:30):
He wore his simple whitecassock and he said to the
people Buona sera, good evening,nothing particularly religious,
just welcoming everybody.
And that warmth communicatedprofoundly to the large
gathering in the piazza thatthis is going to be a different
kind of book than hispredecessor.
(18:52):
And that's of course exactlyright.
Brian Stiller (18:55):
I asked him the question when you were brought
out to be introduced had youplanned what to say when you ask
people to pray for you?
He said no.
He said just as I stood there Irealized I desperately needed
their prayer and he said thatwas kind of an involuntary
response to the situation to themoment.
Michael Higgins (19:17):
Well, I think you know.
You put it very wellInvoluntary is right or
spontaneous is right, because hewas a descriptive guy.
This used to drive his aidescrazy and people listening to
him.
Brian Stiller (19:32):
I love your quote of him talking about the priest
distorting the beauty of publicprayer.
He says, with rigid austerityor an exasperating creativity, a
spiritualizing mysticism or apractical functionalism.
a rushed briskness over anoveremphasized slowness, a
sloppy carelessness or excessivefickiness, a superabundant
(19:56):
friendliness or priestlyimpassibility.
And he goes on to say, which attimes expresses a poorly
concealed mania to be the centerof attention.
Michael Higgins (20:05):
That's right, and he felt that strongly.
If the two synods that Iattended as an accredited
journalist, not as a delegate,so, that would have been the
synod of October 2023 and thesynod of October 2024.
On both occasions, but one inparticular, he railed against
(20:26):
young priests and seminariansobsessing about their clothing,
about their titles, about theirhonorifics and everything else,
because he saw in this preciselya departure from the core of
their ministry.
The core of their ministry mustbe grounded in Christ and it
must be grounded in theawareness or the encounter with
(20:47):
Christ in the other.
Well, it doesn't matter whatyou wear, what you call, what
you present.
These things get in the way ofeffective ministry.
Speak very firmly about what heconsidered to be the fact that
they were taking these marginal,indulgent, self-indulgent
(21:16):
interests and giving thempriority, priorities in the
ministry of witness, which is awitness to and with the poor.
Big thing for Francis.
We're not a church for the poor, we're a church with the poor,
so was he disrupting the churchin that?
sense he was, and that's one ofthe reasons why I began with the
example of him on the balcony.
He already disruptedexpectations around how popes
(21:37):
carried themselves.
Brian Stiller (21:39):
So he had an internal reputation already
about him.
Michael Higgins (21:42):
Well, not for the Romans.
They wouldn't have known this,but he was Would the other
cardinals have seen him andpeople the way he lived?
No, because Buenos Aires isquite distant from the Curia.
He was never a member of theCuria in any real sense of the
term.
He would sit on somecongregations or advisory bodies
, but he was never what theycall a dicasterio cardinal.
(22:06):
He wasn't working in the Curiaper se.
So he's exposed.
And he never studied at theRoman University.
So his exposure to Rome was, bycomparison to his predecessors,
pretty minimal, pretty minimal.
So that's one of the reasonswhy they elected him because
they wanted to clean out themess that was in the Curia.
So they wanted somebody fromafar who was untouched, who had
(22:31):
a natural authenticity about him.
And they got to know him andthey liked what they saw.
And his charge was clean thehouse.
What he did, he scoured thehouse, but what he did was also
set the style.
My big thing about Francis and Icontinue to see it now as we
reflect on his ministry witnessis he humanized the papacy,
(22:53):
marian.
He took the office of leaderand he humanized it.
It's a monarchy and manynon-Catholics object to what the
Pope has become, and manyCatholics do as well, and in
fact so do Popes.
John Paul II I remember when hewas here in Toronto said I'm
the source of the disunity, I'mthe source of the division.
(23:15):
Help me to exercise my ministryas Peter, as a focus of unity
of the church, rather than whatwe have been, which is a focus
of division Can?
Brian Stiller (23:25):
you take us through the particular areas
that you've identified him asbeing a disruptor, I guess, the
first one being when he was onthat plane ride and he was asked
about the gay issue.
He said you know, who am I tojudge?
Michael Higgins (23:39):
Well, in that, as in every other aspect of his
ministry, francis never changeddoctrine.
You know when his critics goafter him and they say he's a
dangerous man.
The seat has been empty.
We haven't had a real popesince Pius XII or at best, john
Paul II.
He's heretical and whatnot.
(24:01):
This is all men.
It's all crazy, because henever changed any doctrine.
What he did do, however, andprofoundly, and that's why it's
disruptive, he changed the waythe church prioritizes mercy and
compassion over legalism andrigorism.
So he would say, all right.
(24:21):
The Catholic Church does notbelieve in divorce.
It allows, however, fordeclarations of nullity,
declaring that marriage,canonically, was never
sacramental because there wasimproper intention or whatever
other impediment exists.
But many Catholics find thatobjectionable and they don't
want to go through the processof getting an annulment and, as
(24:43):
a consequence, what happens isthey find themselves distant
from the church and distant froma community that they love.
And he says well, no, youshouldn't feel this way, this
isn't right.
Brian Stiller (24:53):
This isn't right.
So his pastoral heart wanted tobring them in to experience the
Eucharistic meal and theworship Absolutely.
Michael Higgins (25:01):
And so what he does is he tries to regularize
that relationship by expeditingthe process of the annulment or
by finding other ways to ensurethat the person, if their
marriage is quotation markscanonically irregular, they
still don't see themselves asmarginal to the life of the
church.
So what he did was heprioritized inclusivity, mercy,
(25:28):
flexibility over the morecanonically rigid approach that
was often taken in the past.
And he did this because healways places the heart before
the mind.
He talks about what is moreimportant than ideas Reality.
What is the church for PopeFrancis?
It's not the Societas Perfectae.
It's not the Societas Perfectae.
(25:49):
It's not the mystical body ofChrist, it's not the pilgrim
people of God.
Those are all good images,they're good metaphors and they
are true, but for Francis it'sthe field hospital.
The church is a field hospital.
It's for the wounded, thebroken, the shattered, in short,
all of us.
So when he says something likewho am I to judge?
(26:10):
He's not saying that the RomanCatholic Church is suddenly now
going to shift to a new kind ofbiblical anthropology and say we
no longer hold to male andfemale, heterosexual normativity
, all this kind of thing.
What he does is he moves awayfrom those kinds of debates
(26:31):
because they're polarizing andwhat he says is what matters is
the individual.
That's what is the mostimportant.
And so he says I'm not going tojudge.
That doesn't mean he approvesor disapproves.
He says that's not the primarypoint of encounter.
The primary point of encounteris to listen to the wounds of
another, to share with them, toencounter them, to bring them
(26:54):
along right.
So he doesn't change Catholicteaching with regard to
homosexual behavior, but what hedoes is he opens up the
Catholic world to the beauty andthe wisdom and the good in the
gay relationships that we maynot approve of but nonetheless
are important to recognize aslegitimate.
Brian Stiller (27:18):
So he's pastor, but he's also administrator of a
church that has had enormousfinancial scandals over the last
few decades.
How did he do on that?
Michael Higgins (27:32):
It's uneven, because he discovered as many do
it would be interesting to seehow Leo XIV handles this that a
great deal of this is embeddedin a structure that predates the
modern papacy, and so it isn'tan easy matter to clean house.
(27:54):
An easy matter to clean house?
Oh, he did.
He fired various people whowere involved in vino activity
of one sort or the other or whowere culpable in some way around
issues of financialskullduggery.
He did that, but he alsobrought people in.
(28:14):
He brought auditors in, hebrought financial experts in, he
worked to regularize therelationship with the Vatican's
policy, with the generalfinancial policies of the EU and
things like that, get a kind ofcoordinated, ethical way of
behaving.
But even then he found himselfin situations of corruption
where the lay people were nodifferent than some of these
(28:34):
corrupt clerics, and so he wouldfire them.
So it's a situation of endlessreform.
Brian Stiller (28:41):
No pope has really got a handle on this, and
perhaps Leo XIV will Is thereany way to get a handle on the
amount of money and the assets,both liquid and physical assets,
of Rome?
Michael Higgins (28:55):
Well, he's trying to do that, or Francis
tried to do that, byconsolidating and putting under
one or two specific heads ofrubrics or bodies entities with
direct responsibility, becausethey found that there were
multiple of the organizations.
The entities were operatingindependently of each other.
So you have the Institute forthe Works of Religion.
(29:18):
That's technically the VaticanBank, so the Vatican Bank's over
here.
Then you have the PatrimonyCommission over here.
It has other responsibility.
Then you have the museums.
The museums are the majorrevenue generator for the Holy
See in the work that needs to bedone.
So there are several differententities or niches, or little
(29:39):
kingdoms right, and they couldbe part of a family history.
Or this particular cardinal hashad it for a long time
relationships with particularfinanciers in the Italian
financial world, some of themlegit, some of them criminal.
So it's a morass and none ofthe popes have been entirely
successful getting it undercontrol.
(30:00):
Now he did achieve a fair bit.
You know, two steps forward,one step back, but it'll be
important for Leo to build it.
I think that Leo will, partlybecause he probably has the
administrative work to do so.
Brian Stiller (30:19):
Let's go on to the clergy.
Sexual abuse and he inheritedit.
More revelations came duringhis time.
He had friends who he took thema long time to see their own
(30:39):
wrongdoing.
How did he do in handling that?
file
Michael Higgins (30:44):
that one again.
Some success but a lot offailure.
And in this particular instanceit wasn't resistance
necessarily from within centraloffice or even among the bishops
.
Part of it is Francis's ownblind spot.
You mentioned earlier aboutsome friends yes, specifically a
(31:09):
priest and some bishops inChile, and he wouldn't hear of
criticism about them.
And he wouldn't hear ofcriticism about them until
finally it was brought home tohim and eventually the entire
hierarchy of Chile offered hisresignation, didn't accept all
of them, of course, but it was ahuge scandal.
The commission that he set up,the Pontifical Commission for
(31:30):
Safeguarding several of thefigures on that commission,
stepped off because they saidthere are roadblocks everywhere
coming from the Curia and fromthe hierarchy.
And one of the priests involved, an expert involved in a lot of
the stuff, a Jesuit, a GermanJesuit.
He gave up in despair.
There's just no traction here.
(31:51):
The Pope says one thing, but itjust really doesn't happen.
Francis, I think, didn'tunderstand the enormity of the
problem until it hit him in thehead, and it did several times.
And when it did, he respondedbrilliantly to the Sauvé report
in France, to the Comboni crisisin England, once he
(32:13):
personalized it, once he couldsit down, brian, like you and I,
are talking to the victims.
Once he could hear them, thenhe moved more directly to try to
get to the root of the problem.
But the root of the problem inthe Catholic Church is
clericalism, and every pope hasbeen saying this, certainly from
Paul VI on, but even with JohnXXIII.
(32:35):
The big problem in the CatholicChurch is clericalism, and
clericalism breeds this cultureof exceptionality.
Brian Stiller (32:44):
And clericalism is.
As a Catholic, how would youdefine it?
Well?
Michael Higgins (32:48):
it's a form of casteism Caste A caste.
The priesthood becomes a caste,a special preserve for
individuals.
Brian Stiller (32:59):
But isn't that aided and abetted by the very
theology of the church?
Michael Higgins (33:04):
In great measure it is.
But it also is a distortion ofthat theology.
And various scholars have beentrying to free the presbyterate,
(33:27):
the priesthood, from theexcrescences and evil that is
attached to that office byclericalism.
Like clerics, clericalists, tobe even more precise, are people
who think that somehow,ontologically, metaphysically,
spiritually, they're superior toothers.
They are immune toaccountability, they're a little
potentates in their ownspiritual fiefdoms.
And that runs right through avery hierarchical church, very
(33:50):
layered, hierarchical, tightlycontrolled and whatnot.
But it does enormous damage tothe priesthood itself, because
the priesthood itself is thesacrament.
It's critical to Catholicself-identity.
You can't have the CatholicChurch without priests and you
can't have priests withoutbishops.
So you need this, but what youdon't need is the superfluity of
(34:11):
structures and mentalities andwhatnot that get in the way.
So about active perspiration didhe disrupt that at all?
Yes, he did.
He disrupted it on severaloccasions, but not to the degree
that it affected the kind ofchange he he wanted.
(34:31):
You can see it in some of thestatements he makes to seminary
rectors, for instance in Italy,but in other places as well,
where he berates every year.
The cardinals would gather fortheir Christmas get-together and
he would berate them.
Well, the language was stunning.
Oh the language he uses.
Now I mean, you don't winfriends that way, right, you
(34:54):
don't, bringing them all incalling them Pharisees or
hypocrites and whatever.
But you know, he oftenidentified and this, I think, is
one of the things that attractsevangelicals to him is, from
the outset, francis doesn't putany emphasis on the princely
nature of his office, becausethat's actually a late medieval
(35:20):
Renaissance accretion.
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome.
That's his job.
He's Peter's successor.
Where does all this stuff withprinces and titles and palaces
and everything else?
He's got that whole historicallegacy he has to deal with Now.
He can't jettison it.
He can't come in and say, okay,we're going back to a kind of
(35:41):
early church, primitivespirituality and ministry.
It's not going to happen.
This is 20 centuries ofCatholic Christianity.
But what you can do is you canpurify it.
You can purge its excesses,successes.
You can say, all right, we needto do something to make the
priesthood and the Episcopateconform more clearly with what
(36:01):
we think would have beenChrist's intention, and those
are the kinds of things hedisrupted and they made him
enemies.
Brian Stiller (36:08):
Michael, thank you for being a guest on
Evangelical 360.
See you 40 years from now.
Thank you On Evangelical 360.
See you 40 years from now,thank you.
Thank you, michael, for helpingus grow in understanding as we
seek to bridge the chasm betweenour two sides of the Christian
global witness.
By the way, this is the firstpart of two-part series with
(36:30):
Michael Higgins and thank youfor being a part of the podcast.
I'd be so grateful if you wouldsubscribe and share this
episode and always use hashtagEvangelical360.
If you'd like to learn moreabout today's guest, be sure to
check the show notes ordescription below, and if you
haven't already received my freee-book and newsletter, please
(36:50):
go to brianstiltercom.
Thanks again for joining us.
Until next time.
Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360.
I'm your host, Brian Stiller,and I'm pleased to share with
you another conversation withleaders, changemakers and
influencers impacting Christianlife around the world.
My guest today is Dr MichaelHiggins, Professor Emeritus and
Distinguished Scholar.
His most recent book was titledthe Jesuit Disruptor a personal
(00:35):
portrait of Pope Francis, andhe's written about the future of
the papacy, what he refers toas the emergence of a new Leo
XIV.
An obvious question forevangelicals is why should we
care who the Pope is?
What sort of impact does thepapacy have on the Protestant
Church?
Whether you're curious,cautious or simply want to be
(00:58):
informed, Michael Higgins ishere to help us understand and
think clearly about one of themost visible roles of the
Christian faith.
So listen in and join theconversation on YouTube in the
comments below, and be sure tosubscribe and share this episode
.
Always use hashtagEvangelical360.
This is our first podcast in aseries of two.
(01:20):
Michael Higgins, nice to haveyou here on Evangelical360.
Michael Higgins (01:22):
Good to see you again, Brian.
Brian Stiller (01:31):
Our lives, as we recalled, go back many years to
CBC
Michael Higgins (01:35):
Only 40.
Brian Stiller (01:36):
40 years.
But, Michael, you have writtenthis remarkable book called the
Jesuit Disruptor, a fascinatingread about the Pope who now has
gone on across the Jordan, as itwere, and a person who I had
come to know in a modest, kindof evangelical way.
But his story is an amazingstory, both as it relates to who
(02:01):
he was and then what he did.
And so in our conversationtoday, as an evangelical wanting
to know why in the world shouldI even be interested in Rome or
your papacy and Leo XIV?
Now, this might help to unwrapthat and bring from your
experience and your writing anunderstanding.
So let's begin with PopeFrancis and his life in
(02:26):
Argentina, where he came from,and what that world did for him
in preparing him to be a pope.
Michael Higgins (02:34):
Well, as you rightly say, Argentina was the
major shaper of his life in theearly years.
For sure, he was born inArgentina, he studied to be a
priest in Argentina, he enteredthe Society of Jesus, so he
became a Jesuit Not long after,just a few years after he was
(02:55):
given responsibility asprovincial for the order.
The Jesuits are divided up intoprovinces and the head of that
province is called theprovincial.
The Argentine Jesuits aredivided up into provinces and
the head of that province iscalled the provincial.
The Argentine Jesuits werequite numerous and at one point
there were two provincials.
But he was a provincial of theJesuit community where he
(03:18):
presided for quite a number ofyears and during a very
difficult period.
Actually, brian, in Argentinehistory it was the time of the
dirty war.
Many people disappeared or weredisappeared.
In fact, it was at this timethat you get the madres de
(03:38):
desperdicios, the mothers of theplazaidamyle of the disappeared
, and you have torture, peoplebeing syringed with some kind of
chemical and then thrown fromhelicopters Out into the ocean,
(04:01):
out into the ocean or the riverPlate.
It was a terrible time and inmany ways he handled it well, as
well as one could be expected,but there was criticism over his
handling some aspects of it.
But after he served his term asprovincial, he was sent to
Coruba in the northern part ofArgentina, to Cordoba, in the
(04:30):
northern part of Argentina, andhe saw that as a form of exile,
because he came to realize,through prayer and discernment
and interior reflection, thatthere were various aspects of
his personality that didn't lenditself nicely to effective
pastoral leadership himselfnicely to effective pastoral
leadership.
He was inclined to beautocratic, to be decisive, to
be inflexible, and he realizedthat, you know, he was
(04:52):
inexperienced, he was too young,so he wanted to learn from this
.
At the same time, in a way, hewas also being punished by his
Jesuit spirits.
Eventually, however, he workedhis way back into the good
graces of both the Order and,indeed, the Archdiocese.
He was named an auxiliarybishop of Buenos Aires and then,
when the archbishop died, hewas named his successor, so
(05:14):
became the archbishop, and thenhe was created a cardinal.
During all this time, what yousee is what you also see when he
moved from the River Plate tothe River Tiber.
In other words, you sawsomebody whose whole approach
was marked by his humility.
(05:35):
He didn't have a chauffeur,which he was entitled to.
He took public transportation.
He ate with folk, with ordinaryfolk.
He maintained a style as anarchbishop and as a cardinal
which was out of sync with thegeneral way in which archbishops
and cardinals behaved.
He lived, his accommodation wassimple, his travel was simple.
(06:00):
As I said, his presence wasdefined by both simplicity and
humility, so that when he movedto Rome he carried that with him
.
Some people sometimes say well,when he became Bishop of Rome,
he changed.
No, he didn't change at all.
Actually, what he brought toRome were those qualities of his
leadership that you see comingto a new fruition in his papacy.
Brian Stiller (06:23):
But I understand as a Jesuit, that was core to
his being.
So let's take a moment andunwrap what is a Jesuit?
Where does it come from, whatdoes it mean within the Catholic
Church, and how would that, asan identity and a group to which
he was a part, shape his life?
Michael Higgins (06:43):
Well, you're quite right, he was a member of
the Society or the Company ofJesus.
The Order was founded in the16th century in Spain, during
the time of the Reformation.
The Jesuits are a body of menwho take vows, and they're not
monks, they're not mendicants orfriars, so it's not Francis of
(07:06):
Assisi or Saint Benedict.
So what's a mendicant?
A mendicant is a friar, likethe Franciscans or the
Dominicans.
Okay, and mendicancy means thatthey are dependent upon the
generosity of others to givethem alms and to feed them, to
help them.
So they take the vow ofproperty very seriously.
(07:27):
Monks are different.
They live encloistered and theyhave a regular cycle of prayer
built on the hours and theoffices.
The Jesuits were a significantdeparture from this way in which
priests and non-priests thosewho didn't proceed to ordination
, lived within the RomanCatholic Church.
(07:49):
They were an apostolic order.
They were to be in the world.
They weren't monks, but theyweren't friars either, and they
established, throughout all ofEurope and elsewhere,
institutions of higher learning,secondary schools, hospitals.
They were involved, certainly,in universities, the best
(08:11):
universities, and they createdtheir own as well.
They were involved inscientific research and whatnot.
So they became a major andpotent force in the history of
Catholicism, in the history ofthe Catholic Church In the 18th
century they were what we callsuppressed.
Various of the Catholic monarchsof Europe, particularly the
(08:32):
Spanish and Portuguese monarchs,were quite disturbed by the
Jesuit presence in Latin America, particularly Paraguay, brazil,
and the Jesuits were taking theside of the indigenous peoples
and they were affecting thesuccess of the empires the
Portuguese and the Spanish andthey were in collation.
(08:54):
Anyway, they appliedsignificant and continuous
pressure on the Pope.
The Pope suppressed them so forabout 40 years, like a
Babylonian exile.
For 40 years the Jesuits weredissolved as an order and they
dispersed and many of them wentto Catherine of Russia.
They and that is, to Frederickof Prussia.
(09:16):
They were picked up bynon-Catholic regal figures who
recognized this incredibleresource.
After about 40 years asubsequent pope reinstated them.
So the order came back, was nolonger under suppression and
during the 19th century itflourished.
It was quite conservative.
During that period they wereoften called the pope's
(09:40):
theologians.
They were the Roman school.
Then in the 20th century it'skind of a flip side then Many of
the great progressives, many ofthe great theologians of the
Catholic Church andintellectuals period and other
disciplines as well, wereJesuits.
So the 20th century Jesuit wasdifferent in many regards from
the 19th century Jesuit.
(10:00):
So the community's been aroundfor hundreds of years.
They are formed spirituallyaround a primary text called the
Spiritual Exercises.
The founder of the order,ignatius of Loyola, was a
military chap and he was woundedin the Battle of Pamplona and
(10:25):
he was forced to have a verylong convalescence and the
surgeons had to break his legafter they had originally set it
because it had been setincorrectly, and so he suffered
a lot of physical pain.
But during the extendedconvalescence he read the
Gospels and he read the Lives ofthe Saints and he had a
(10:48):
profound conversion.
And during the period after hisconversion he traveled to
Jerusalem.
He went to a place in Spaincalled Manresa and there he had
a very deep religious experience, deep religious experience.
(11:11):
And eventually the order wasfounded in Paris, approved by
the Pope in Rome, and theJesuits made it very clear that
they were going to be at theservice of the Pope.
They've always seen themselvesas the Pope's special
legionaries, and that's true.
If you go to Rome, you'll find acluster of buildings in central
Rome that originated with thefounding of society.
So you have the Jesuit, thegreat church, you have St
(11:35):
Ignatius of Loyola, another oneof the St Ignatius of Loyola.
You have the Baramino, which isa residence for the Roman
students studying in Rome, andyou and the Biblicum and the
Gregorian and all these kinds ofthings.
So the Jesuits became a verystudents studying in Rome and
the Biblicum and the Gregorianand all these kinds of things.
So the Jesuits became a verypowerful presence in Rome.
But they've traveled all overthe world.
They're missionaries by andlarge.
(11:55):
That was a major thrust forthem, and so they were in Latin
America for quite a number ofyears, long before Bergoglio
appeared.
Brian Stiller (12:05):
And what would they bring specifically to him?
How would his life have beenshaped?
Michael Higgins (12:11):
They would be shaped by the exercises which
would bring him into both anemotive or affective, as well as
intellectual relationship withJesus.
The exercises are built on theexperience of Ignatius of Loyola
, an experience which wasprofound psychologically and
mystically, and they're dividedinto weeks and the Jesuits are
(12:33):
under obligation to do the40-day exercises twice during
their lives as Jesuits.
It's quite intense, and thatspirituality is a spirituality
of deep interiority, but it's aspirituality that is also
defined by discernment, by thecareful weighing of options, the
(12:55):
realization that the attainmentof God's love is not Pelagian.
You don't earn it.
God's love is gratuitous, ofcourse, and you put your service
, you put your life at theservice of the divine majesty.
And this is the kind oflanguage that was used as a
major text.
It still shapes Jesuits allover the world.
Brian Stiller (13:15):
And how would that have prepared him for the
rule of papacy, and how did thatmark itself during his rule?
Michael Higgins (13:22):
Well, those are both good questions, because he
was the first Jesuit pope, sohe doesn't have anybody to model
it on, right.
So he didn't say well, aprevious Pope who was also a
Jesuit, no, he's the firstJesuit Pope.
So he has to internalize whathe would have internalized his
training as a Jesuit and hisexperience as a Jesuit and that
(13:42):
would find expression in hislife as a bishop and in his life
as Pope, both in terms of hisprayer but also the way he
appropriates reality.
Let me put it this way and thisis how the Catholic Church is
structured If you're a member ofa religious order and you
(14:02):
become a bishop, you are nolonger under the authority of
the general of your order.
You are now responsibledirectly and only to Rome and
the Pope.
So when he becomes Pope, theonly one, in a sense, he's
responsible to is God, so he'snot responsible to the Father
(14:24):
General of the Society of Jesus.
Now he's the Pope.
He's the Pope first.
He's the Jesuit secondly.
But the question about how histraining prepared him to be a
Pope is problematic in that noone ever knows.
They're going to be Pope, it'snot a career choice.
They're going to be pope, it'snot a career choice.
(14:54):
So my sense is he would havebrought those gifts of
discernment and interiority andprayer and the famous Jesuit
maxim ad majoriam dei gloriam,which means you do everything
for the glory of God, all thingsto stand for the glory of God,
and also the belief which runsthrough everything, that's
Jesuit Brian, the belief thatnothing human is foreign to God.
(15:16):
So if you're a Jesuit and Iknow scores of Jesuits, I've
written two books on them andyou're a biogeneticist or you're
an astrophysicist or you're apsychiatrist, or you're a social
worker or you're a teacher inhigh school, it doesn't matter,
because what you do, you do forGod's glory.
(15:36):
So no body of knowledge isforeign to God and, as a
consequence, in serving God, youshould not be frightened of any
body of knowledge by saying, oh, that's secular or it's mundane
, or it's demonic, or to cripplemy faith or whatever.
No, no, no.
There are so many Jesuits thatare scientists and you know.
(15:57):
You know that there are moremeteorites named after Jesuits
than anybody any other group ofthem.
Because of their work inastronomy, they run one of the
greatest observatories in theworld and they're run by the
Jesuits.
So he would have come from areligious tradition, an order
that prizes the inhabitants,that recognizes the importance,
(16:21):
core importance of spiritualityand that talks about the
discernment.
But he would also have a deepthread or cord of obedience to
the Father General and, when hewas Archbishop, to the Pope.
So his Jesuit life is importantin helping to understand his
(16:44):
makeup.
But when he becomes Pope heceases to be an active Jesuit.
Brian Stiller (16:50):
Michael, you had this interesting quote by
Christopher Pramuk which sayslike Merton, francis' root
spirituality is profoundlyincarnational, true to his
Jesuit and Franciscansensibilities.
It is also profoundly cosmicand creational, trusting that
the whole of human life,inclusive of our bodies, is part
(17:11):
of a greater mystery aboutwhich we are still profoundly
ignorant.
Michael Higgins (17:16):
And you see that perfectly articulated in
his encyclical La Datocee aboutour common home, the environment
, environment, and in thatdocument he makes a compelling
case for what he calls humanintegral ecology, by which he
means all of creation isconnected.
Okay, we can't talk aboutthings being bifurcated or
(17:38):
divided.
These are false polarities orantinomies.
We have to work towards agreater unity and a greater
harmony, and that's why.
That's why he never saw otherreligious traditions through an
adversarial lens.
He never said oh my God, theMuslims are here.
What are we going to do?
Brian Stiller (17:57):
Okay, Michael, that just brings us perfectly to
ask the question why in theworld did you call him the
Jesuit disruptor?
Like what did he disrupt?
Pretty?
Michael Higgins (18:08):
well, several things in the Catholic Church.
To begin with, you may recallthat when he was elected Pope he
came out on the ApostolicLoggia.
He didn't have the Mosetta andhe didn't have the Apostolic
stole, he didn't have thevarious pontifical raiment that
was worn.
Leo XIV wore it, for instance,benedict XVI did.
(18:30):
He wore his simple whitecassock and he said to the
people Buona sera, good evening,nothing particularly religious,
just welcoming everybody.
And that warmth communicatedprofoundly to the large
gathering in the piazza thatthis is going to be a different
kind of book than hispredecessor.
(18:52):
And that's of course exactlyright.
Brian Stiller (18:55):
I asked him the question when you were brought
out to be introduced had youplanned what to say when you ask
people to pray for you?
He said no.
He said just as I stood there Irealized I desperately needed
their prayer and he said thatwas kind of an involuntary
response to the situation to themoment.
Michael Higgins (19:17):
Well, I think you know.
You put it very wellInvoluntary is right or
spontaneous is right, because hewas a descriptive guy.
This used to drive his aidescrazy and people listening to
him.
Brian Stiller (19:32):
I love your quote of him talking about the priest
distorting the beauty of publicprayer.
He says, with rigid austerityor an exasperating creativity, a
spiritualizing mysticism or apractical functionalism.
a rushed briskness over anoveremphasized slowness, a
sloppy carelessness or excessivefickiness, a superabundant
(19:56):
friendliness or priestlyimpassibility.
And he goes on to say, which attimes expresses a poorly
concealed mania to be the centerof attention.
Michael Higgins (20:05):
That's right, and he felt that strongly.
If the two synods that Iattended as an accredited
journalist, not as a delegate,so, that would have been the
synod of October 2023 and thesynod of October 2024.
On both occasions, but one inparticular, he railed against
(20:26):
young priests and seminariansobsessing about their clothing,
about their titles, about theirhonorifics and everything else,
because he saw in this preciselya departure from the core of
their ministry.
The core of their ministry mustbe grounded in Christ and it
must be grounded in theawareness or the encounter with
(20:47):
Christ in the other.
Well, it doesn't matter whatyou wear, what you call, what
you present.
These things get in the way ofeffective ministry.
Speak very firmly about what heconsidered to be the fact that
they were taking these marginal,indulgent, self-indulgent
(21:16):
interests and giving thempriority, priorities in the
ministry of witness, which is awitness to and with the poor.
Big thing for Francis.
We're not a church for the poor, we're a church with the poor,
so was he disrupting the churchin that?
sense he was, and that's one ofthe reasons why I began with the
example of him on the balcony.
He already disruptedexpectations around how popes
(21:37):
carried themselves.
Brian Stiller (21:39):
So he had an internal reputation already
about him.
Michael Higgins (21:42):
Well, not for the Romans.
They wouldn't have known this,but he was Would the other
cardinals have seen him andpeople the way he lived?
No, because Buenos Aires isquite distant from the Curia.
He was never a member of theCuria in any real sense of the
term.
He would sit on somecongregations or advisory bodies
, but he was never what theycall a dicasterio cardinal.
(22:06):
He wasn't working in the Curiaper se.
So he's exposed.
And he never studied at theRoman University.
So his exposure to Rome was, bycomparison to his predecessors,
pretty minimal, pretty minimal.
So that's one of the reasonswhy they elected him because
they wanted to clean out themess that was in the Curia.
So they wanted somebody fromafar who was untouched, who had
(22:31):
a natural authenticity about him.
And they got to know him andthey liked what they saw.
And his charge was clean thehouse.
What he did, he scoured thehouse, but what he did was also
set the style.
My big thing about Francis and Icontinue to see it now as we
reflect on his ministry witnessis he humanized the papacy,
(22:53):
marian.
He took the office of leaderand he humanized it.
It's a monarchy and manynon-Catholics object to what the
Pope has become, and manyCatholics do as well, and in
fact so do Popes.
John Paul II I remember when hewas here in Toronto said I'm
the source of the disunity, I'mthe source of the division.
(23:15):
Help me to exercise my ministryas Peter, as a focus of unity
of the church, rather than whatwe have been, which is a focus
of division Can?
Brian Stiller (23:25):
you take us through the particular areas
that you've identified him asbeing a disruptor, I guess, the
first one being when he was onthat plane ride and he was asked
about the gay issue.
He said you know, who am I tojudge?
Michael Higgins (23:39):
Well, in that, as in every other aspect of his
ministry, francis never changeddoctrine.
You know when his critics goafter him and they say he's a
dangerous man.
The seat has been empty.
We haven't had a real popesince Pius XII or at best, john
Paul II.
He's heretical and whatnot.
(24:01):
This is all men.
It's all crazy, because henever changed any doctrine.
What he did do, however, andprofoundly, and that's why it's
disruptive, he changed the waythe church prioritizes mercy and
compassion over legalism andrigorism.
So he would say, all right.
(24:21):
The Catholic Church does notbelieve in divorce.
It allows, however, fordeclarations of nullity,
declaring that marriage,canonically, was never
sacramental because there wasimproper intention or whatever
other impediment exists.
But many Catholics find thatobjectionable and they don't
want to go through the processof getting an annulment and, as
(24:43):
a consequence, what happens isthey find themselves distant
from the church and distant froma community that they love.
And he says well, no, youshouldn't feel this way, this
isn't right.
Brian Stiller (24:53):
This isn't right.
So his pastoral heart wanted tobring them in to experience the
Eucharistic meal and theworship Absolutely.
Michael Higgins (25:01):
And so what he does is he tries to regularize
that relationship by expeditingthe process of the annulment or
by finding other ways to ensurethat the person, if their
marriage is quotation markscanonically irregular, they
still don't see themselves asmarginal to the life of the
church.
So what he did was heprioritized inclusivity, mercy,
(25:28):
flexibility over the morecanonically rigid approach that
was often taken in the past.
And he did this because healways places the heart before
the mind.
He talks about what is moreimportant than ideas Reality.
What is the church for PopeFrancis?
It's not the Societas Perfectae.
It's not the Societas Perfectae.
(25:49):
It's not the mystical body ofChrist, it's not the pilgrim
people of God.
Those are all good images,they're good metaphors and they
are true, but for Francis it'sthe field hospital.
The church is a field hospital.
It's for the wounded, thebroken, the shattered, in short,
all of us.
So when he says something likewho am I to judge?
(26:10):
He's not saying that the RomanCatholic Church is suddenly now
going to shift to a new kind ofbiblical anthropology and say we
no longer hold to male andfemale, heterosexual normativity
, all this kind of thing.
What he does is he moves awayfrom those kinds of debates
(26:31):
because they're polarizing andwhat he says is what matters is
the individual.
That's what is the mostimportant.
And so he says I'm not going tojudge.
That doesn't mean he approvesor disapproves.
He says that's not the primarypoint of encounter.
The primary point of encounteris to listen to the wounds of
another, to share with them, toencounter them, to bring them
(26:54):
along right.
So he doesn't change Catholicteaching with regard to
homosexual behavior, but what hedoes is he opens up the
Catholic world to the beauty andthe wisdom and the good in the
gay relationships that we maynot approve of but nonetheless
are important to recognize aslegitimate.
Brian Stiller (27:18):
So he's pastor, but he's also administrator of a
church that has had enormousfinancial scandals over the last
few decades.
How did he do on that?
Michael Higgins (27:32):
It's uneven, because he discovered as many do
it would be interesting to seehow Leo XIV handles this that a
great deal of this is embeddedin a structure that predates the
modern papacy, and so it isn'tan easy matter to clean house.
(27:54):
An easy matter to clean house?
Oh, he did.
He fired various people whowere involved in vino activity
of one sort or the other or whowere culpable in some way around
issues of financialskullduggery.
He did that, but he alsobrought people in.
(28:14):
He brought auditors in, hebrought financial experts in, he
worked to regularize therelationship with the Vatican's
policy, with the generalfinancial policies of the EU and
things like that, get a kind ofcoordinated, ethical way of
behaving.
But even then he found himselfin situations of corruption
where the lay people were nodifferent than some of these
(28:34):
corrupt clerics, and so he wouldfire them.
So it's a situation of endlessreform.
Brian Stiller (28:41):
No pope has really got a handle on this, and
perhaps Leo XIV will Is thereany way to get a handle on the
amount of money and the assets,both liquid and physical assets,
of Rome?
Michael Higgins (28:55):
Well, he's trying to do that, or Francis
tried to do that, byconsolidating and putting under
one or two specific heads ofrubrics or bodies entities with
direct responsibility, becausethey found that there were
multiple of the organizations.
The entities were operatingindependently of each other.
So you have the Institute forthe Works of Religion.
(29:18):
That's technically the VaticanBank, so the Vatican Bank's over
here.
Then you have the PatrimonyCommission over here.
It has other responsibility.
Then you have the museums.
The museums are the majorrevenue generator for the Holy
See in the work that needs to bedone.
So there are several differententities or niches, or little
(29:39):
kingdoms right, and they couldbe part of a family history.
Or this particular cardinal hashad it for a long time
relationships with particularfinanciers in the Italian
financial world, some of themlegit, some of them criminal.
So it's a morass and none ofthe popes have been entirely
successful getting it undercontrol.
(30:00):
Now he did achieve a fair bit.
You know, two steps forward,one step back, but it'll be
important for Leo to build it.
I think that Leo will, partlybecause he probably has the
administrative work to do so.
Brian Stiller (30:19):
Let's go on to the clergy.
Sexual abuse and he inheritedit.
More revelations came duringhis time.
He had friends who he took thema long time to see their own
(30:39):
wrongdoing.
How did he do in handling that?
file
Michael Higgins (30:44):
that one again.
Some success but a lot offailure.
And in this particular instanceit wasn't resistance
necessarily from within centraloffice or even among the bishops
.
Part of it is Francis's ownblind spot.
You mentioned earlier aboutsome friends yes, specifically a
(31:09):
priest and some bishops inChile, and he wouldn't hear of
criticism about them.
And he wouldn't hear ofcriticism about them until
finally it was brought home tohim and eventually the entire
hierarchy of Chile offered hisresignation, didn't accept all
of them, of course, but it was ahuge scandal.
The commission that he set up,the Pontifical Commission for
(31:30):
Safeguarding several of thefigures on that commission,
stepped off because they saidthere are roadblocks everywhere
coming from the Curia and fromthe hierarchy.
And one of the priests involved, an expert involved in a lot of
the stuff, a Jesuit, a GermanJesuit.
He gave up in despair.
There's just no traction here.
(31:51):
The Pope says one thing, but itjust really doesn't happen.
Francis, I think, didn'tunderstand the enormity of the
problem until it hit him in thehead, and it did several times.
And when it did, he respondedbrilliantly to the Sauvé report
in France, to the Comboni crisisin England, once he
(32:13):
personalized it, once he couldsit down, brian, like you and I,
are talking to the victims.
Once he could hear them, thenhe moved more directly to try to
get to the root of the problem.
But the root of the problem inthe Catholic Church is
clericalism, and every pope hasbeen saying this, certainly from
Paul VI on, but even with JohnXXIII.
(32:35):
The big problem in the CatholicChurch is clericalism, and
clericalism breeds this cultureof exceptionality.
Brian Stiller (32:44):
And clericalism is.
As a Catholic, how would youdefine it?
Well?
Michael Higgins (32:48):
it's a form of casteism Caste A caste.
The priesthood becomes a caste,a special preserve for
individuals.
Brian Stiller (32:59):
But isn't that aided and abetted by the very
theology of the church?
Michael Higgins (33:04):
In great measure it is.
But it also is a distortion ofthat theology.
And various scholars have beentrying to free the presbyterate,
(33:27):
the priesthood, from theexcrescences and evil that is
attached to that office byclericalism.
Like clerics, clericalists, tobe even more precise, are people
who think that somehow,ontologically, metaphysically,
spiritually, they're superior toothers.
They are immune toaccountability, they're a little
potentates in their ownspiritual fiefdoms.
And that runs right through avery hierarchical church, very
(33:50):
layered, hierarchical, tightlycontrolled and whatnot.
But it does enormous damage tothe priesthood itself, because
the priesthood itself is thesacrament.
It's critical to Catholicself-identity.
You can't have the CatholicChurch without priests and you
can't have priests withoutbishops.
So you need this, but what youdon't need is the superfluity of
(34:11):
structures and mentalities andwhatnot that get in the way.
So about active perspiration didhe disrupt that at all?
Yes, he did.
He disrupted it on severaloccasions, but not to the degree
that it affected the kind ofchange he he wanted.
(34:31):
You can see it in some of thestatements he makes to seminary
rectors, for instance in Italy,but in other places as well,
where he berates every year.
The cardinals would gather fortheir Christmas get-together and
he would berate them.
Well, the language was stunning.
Oh the language he uses.
Now I mean, you don't winfriends that way, right, you
(34:54):
don't, bringing them all incalling them Pharisees or
hypocrites and whatever.
But you know, he oftenidentified and this, I think, is
one of the things that attractsevangelicals to him is, from
the outset, francis doesn't putany emphasis on the princely
nature of his office, becausethat's actually a late medieval
(35:20):
Renaissance accretion.
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome.
That's his job.
He's Peter's successor.
Where does all this stuff withprinces and titles and palaces
and everything else?
He's got that whole historicallegacy he has to deal with Now.
He can't jettison it.
He can't come in and say, okay,we're going back to a kind of
(35:41):
early church, primitivespirituality and ministry.
It's not going to happen.
This is 20 centuries ofCatholic Christianity.
But what you can do is you canpurify it.
You can purge its excesses,successes.
You can say, all right, we needto do something to make the
priesthood and the Episcopateconform more clearly with what
(36:01):
we think would have beenChrist's intention, and those
are the kinds of things hedisrupted and they made him
enemies.
Brian Stiller (36:08):
Michael, thank you for being a guest on
Evangelical 360.
See you 40 years from now.
Thank you On Evangelical 360.
See you 40 years from now,thank you.
Thank you, michael, for helpingus grow in understanding as we
seek to bridge the chasm betweenour two sides of the Christian
global witness.
By the way, this is the firstpart of two-part series with
(36:30):
Michael Higgins and thank youfor being a part of the podcast.
I'd be so grateful if you wouldsubscribe and share this
episode and always use hashtagEvangelical360.
If you'd like to learn moreabout today's guest, be sure to
check the show notes ordescription below, and if you
haven't already received my freee-book and newsletter, please
(36:50):
go to brianstiltercom.
Thanks again for joining us.
Until next time.
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