The election of Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario
Bergoglio to serve the Catholic Church as Pope under the name Francis I has
been greeted with much rejoicing. Here, at last, is a pontiff who prefers
simplicity and informality; who eschews the usual fancy trappings of the
papacy; who even encouraged his compatriots not to make the expensive journey
to Rome to witness his installation as pope but, instead, to give that money to
the poor—of which there are all too many in his own and other Latin American
countries.
Among those who have gone before us to heaven
and are smiling at the election of Pope Francis I is Fr. Edward Cleary, OP, the
late Director of Latin American Studies at Providence College. Ed, I would dare
say, must have prayed very hard to get this man elected; he was an unstinting
champion of Latin America and its people throughout his long, distinguished
career, and his staggering list of publications—he was still hard at work on
several more at the time of his sudden passing late in 2011—covers just about
every imaginable aspect of Latin America, its people and their way of life.
One of Ed Cleary’s books on which I’m proud to
have been his editor is How Latin America Saved the Soul of the Catholic Church. Despite the countless pages that
have been written about the dramatic rise of Pentecostalism and its winning of
converts away from Catholicism, the Catholic Church still enjoys, by Ed
Cleary’s reckoning, vigorous health in Latin America.
In
stark contrast to Europe and North America, the numbers of priests and
seminarians in Latin American countries shows a vibrant church: between 1964 and 2004 the number of Catholic priests increased
by 40 percent, and in Mexico it doubled. As for seminarians, their numbers sextupled
between 1972 and 2004. Similarly with lay involvement: in contrast to the
precipitous decline in church attendance in Europe and North America,
Latin America has witnessed an explosion of lay involvement, not only in church
attendance but also in lay ministerial activity. Indeed lay initiative in Latin America, above
all as catechists, originally took off as a result of priest shortages, and
catechists remain a vital and indispensable presence in the Latin American Catholic
Church. In fact, the way in which several
Latin American countries historically coped with priest shortages in the past is
the subject of a book Fr. Cleary was working on when he died. Tentatively
titled The
Challenge of Priestless Parishes: Learning from Latin America, it will be published by Paulist Press next year. As
the subtitle suggests, the book’s final chapter, by Fr. David Orique, OP, Ed
Cleary’s successor at Providence College, explores what we in the USA might
profit from should we end up facing priestless situations as challenging as what
Latin America has experienced in the past.
The exhaustive research done by
this indefatigable sociologist shows that our new pope hails from a region in
which Catholicism is not moribund but vibrant and growing. As Fr. Orique
observes about How Latin America Saved the
Soul of the Catholic Church, “With the election of Pope Francis I, the
first Pope from the Americas, this book provides invaluable understanding of
and appreciation for the most Catholic region of the world.”
