When he said it is impossible to be a Christian and not give priority to the excluded, he was only quoting the founder of the millennial company that he was CEO in the last 12 years.
Even then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (future Papa Benedict 16), in his fight against liberation theology, made it clear that “the scandal of glaring inequalities between rich and poor – whether it is inequalities between rich and poor countries, or inequalities between social layers within the same national territory – is no longer tolerated” (“Instruction on some aspects of liberation theology”, 1984).
It is no coincidence that came from Latin America, the most unequal region of modern Christianity, a Pope who gives priority to the fight against this specific scandal.
Francisco also promoted a leap in the Catholic reflection on the environment, which recent popes (cited in the encyclical) were already emphasizing.
Against those who interpret the instruction of Genesis 1:28 as a license for man to do whatever he wants with nature, Laudato if he remembers that God has placed man in Eden “to cultivate and keep him” (Genesis 2:15). The final document ended with an appeal to “Mary, mother of the”, so that “the full life that Jesus came to the world to reach everyone, especially to the poor,” and for the church to have “Amazonian face” and “missionary output.”
Francisco also made a small but important adjustment in the church discussion about the LGBT community. He admitted the possibility of Catholic priests to bless LGBT couples and couples formed by divorced persons. In repeated pronouncements, he asked the Catholics not to judge the LGBT, but first and first looked for them.
It was not the full acceptance of LGBT that leftist Catholics as I would like. But it was very important to show what exactly is the size of this question within Christianity. When Francis said “Who am I to judge?” About homosexuals, he was not declared unable to condemn something that is officially still sin. After all, Francisco judged a lot: misery, environmental degradation, inequality.
It was taking the focus of a agenda that occupies a completely disproportionate place in the discourse of political movements that claim to be Christians. Homophobia as a policy works because it sells to the voter a way of asserting itself a Christian condemning the desire of others, not themselves. And LGBT are conveniently minority in society, so that the vote that is gained among the hypocritical majority more than compensates for the vote that is lost in the persecuted minority.
Most of the Bible is about sins that we all commit, but it is difficult to elect fighting the sins of the majority. It is better to lie, as the fundamentalist bench does, that the Bible is basically a book badly talking about Pabllo Vittar.
Francis made a welcome change of focus to the sins of the majority, consumerism, indifference to misery, the depredation of creation. Defended the poor, and the poorest among the poor; the excluded, and the most excluded among the excluded. This is what the gospel has it to do. If this seemed radical in today’s world, the problem is from today’s world.
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