The Argentine pontiff was labeled, since the accession to the throne of Peter, as an anti-capitalist, an environmentalist, a terzomondist, a pauperist and, above all, an immigrationist. From here arose an evident sympathy coming from the world of the antagonists. The customs clearance of liberation theology, doctrinal openings, the abandonment of a certain sumptuousness of costumes, that typical of Ratzinger's years, the fight against the pre-established positions of the Curia of Rome, the open debate with the so-called Catholic-traditionalists, the public praise to Emma Bonino and Giorgio Napolitano, the theology of “Outgoing Church”, a communication style once again mediatized, the tendency towards interreligious communion with Protestants and with Islam (…) they did the rest.
Pope Francis, perhaps despite himself, it somehow filled an iconographic void: to the Italian maximalist left, for a few decades, a political leader is missing. So much so that we often have to resort to xenophile depictions: Hugo Chavez, Pablo Iglesias, Fidel Castro and so on. And Bergoglio was “used” to fill that vacancy. The Holy See, if nothing else, it is geographically closer to our social unrest than Cuba. In September of 2013, as he remembers today The weather, the Roman social center Intifada came to send a letter in Vatican: “We express it to you’ admiration and respect that he aroused in us’ work you are doing. – it could be read in the letter – Your statements, the gestures you have made to date, have reawakened our attention towards’ work of the Church, from which we felt estranged and distant”. And again: “The simplicity and naturalness with which you addressed controversial issues in life, such as solidarity, civil rights and, In the end, the war, they pushed us to seek a meeting with Your Holiness”, the antagonists wrote.
I no-Tab, in the autumn of 2013, they declared instead:”It seems equally significant to us to point out, as for l’ yet another war that this system is setting in motion, the Church shows itself more openly’ height of the times of secularized politics. Not being kissers we can say this: and’ an institution very distant from us is at least capable of grasping the crisis, not only of system but of civilization, that we are going through. Crisis of which the TAV is a part’ clear and concrete example”. A Pope, In short, of struggle, of government and capable of representing the needs of a world in search of an icon.
In the 2014, it was said, Pope Francis held a meeting with popular movements. They were there representing Italy, on that occasion, Leoncavallo, Ethical Bank, Genuino Clandestino and the Rimaflow Recovered Factory:”Let's say together from the heart: no homeless family, no peasant without land, no worker without rights, no person without the dignity of work!”, said the pontiff on that occasion. “Continue the fight, it's good for us all”, the pontiff highlighted during the audience with the Social Forum. And again: “Terra, Work, casa. Strange, but if I talk about this, for some the Pope is a communist” and instead “love for the poor is at the center of the Gospel”.
At the center of the sacred texts and the millenary tradition of the Church, they say the traditionalists, there would also be bioethical issues, doctrinal differences with the Protestants, the necessity, especially these days, of a strenuous defense of the natural family, that of opposing certain contemporary practices, such as abortion and euthanasia, the danger of the Islamization of our civilization, the need for clear words from the Church against the advent of relativism, the right for peoples not to emigrate and to build a future in and for their own nation and so on.
The “Bergoglio doctrine”, but, he seems not to want to accentuate these traits too much and wants to insist, Instead, on the topic of’welcome at all costs. So much so that some have gone so far as to label the Pope as a “immigration theologian”. And on the goodness of immigration “they beat” almost daily some entities close to or belonging to the Catholic Church (Astalli Centre, Caritas, the) in tune with radicalism and the third world left (Bonino, Boldrini, Faithful). The countryside “I was a foreigner”, just to give one example among many possible, was supported by the unity of all these protagonists of the Italian political-social scene.
A candidate from Democratic Party it even has a place Bergoglio in his pantheon with a purely electoral purpose. It's not clear, In short, whether Francis is left-wing. The only certain thing about this whole story is the consideration that a certain left has of the man placed at the top of the Holy Roman Church: an ideologue useful for promoting a certain narrative, a Leoncavallo militant dressed in white.