The funeral of Pope Francis will be held in Rome on Saturday 26 April. And, while thousands of faithful, in turn, go to pay homage to the body of the Argentine pontiff in the Basilica of San Pietro (where the Holy Father will not be buried), it is spontaneous to ask what has meant, at least from a political point of view (theology is certainly not a matter for this modest space of thought), for the Church and beyond, a pontificate that lasted “just” 12 Unimaginable storms: from the Syrian civil conflict to the migrant crisis, from the economic and financial catastrophe of the early ten years of the year 2000 to the pandemic, from climate change to wars, above all the Russian-Ukraine and Middle Eastern one. Without forgetting that Jorge Mario Bergoglio ascended to the papal throne after the shocking resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Di Francesco has so much said and so much has been written, since, for the first time, he appeared from the loggia of San Pietro. From those who (especially at the beginning), they apostrophized it in no uncertain terms for progressive openings, such as those towards divorced divorced and LGBT communities (there were no more conservative prelates, the case of the former apostolic nuncio in the USA, Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, excommunicated) to those who, instead, exalted the figure as a human icon. Too human, sometimes. Even if its proximity to the last, although it has sometimes taken on colorful and experienced connotations, by different observers, such as excessively “exuberant” (especially in the case of migrants, where the comparison with the “is always echoedright not to emigrate “ by Benedict XVI), looking at it in retrospect can be fully ascribed to the Christian message and nothing else.
Then there are those who even have seen in him a symbol of globalism and the so -called “unique thought”. The truth, as often happens, is however more complex than what can be deduced by applying the simple dichotomy (very “western-centric”, among other things) between conservatives and progressives. Or that, even more rough, between “sovereigns” and “globalists”. Francesco, who undoubtedly enjoyed the applause of the Gotha of western secular liberal-liberal-planning and has often signed you (and this is an undeniable fact), it was, also and above all, the pope of the advent of multipolarism and the consequent “World War to pieces“, By him evoked on various occasions. A Pope who, in front of a world in strong transformation, did not pulled back when there was a need for strong positions. The last, in order of time, was perhaps the one on Ukraine, when he spoke, in no uncertain terms, of the need for a “White flag”.
An opinion that, among others, must certainly be taken into consideration, is that of the authoritative scholar and historian of Latin American things Loris Zanatta, who, in an interview with the Agency Dire.itdescribed Bergoglio as “populist “. A term that, the professor specified, should not be understood “as a brand to stigmatize or enhance, but as a concept“. Bergoglio, for Zanatta, had a well -defined vision:”Its premise is the myth of a people of the origins, pure and not corrupted by the Protestant reform, by rationalism, by the Enlightenment and liberalism; A degeneration that requires a form of redemption, sometimes embodied by the ‘caudillo’, which leads the people to the promised land, which is not in the future but in the origins of purity. (…) This makes the Pope a peronist, from head to feet. (…) nor on the right, nor left, but Orthodox; And peronism comes from fascism, with an anti-modern and anti-liberal spirit, with the claim of a Catholic, Corporate, National-Popular identity “. A vision, this, which could not fail to conflict with rational and European Catholicism, that of the Ratzinger of Regensburg and which instead found points of contact with the southern and orientations of the world and their desire for redemption towards the collective West and its paternalism. But not on everything. And not with everyone. Because Aleksandr Dugin, the Russian philosopher among the most radical ideologists of multipolarism and the fight against Western Enlightenment and Liberalism, while recognizing the merit of having taken a position against the fierce assassination of his daughter Darya, did not hesitate to call him a pope “left, woke, without vertical size“And even”in the spirit of Biden and Obama“In short, the picture is difficult to reduce to those simplified schemes that too often poison the information, even on important themes and characters. And it is right. Because the things of the world, at certain levels, simple are never.