IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis is not shy about showing
his love for Mary in public and, like many Latin American bishops, he strongly
has resisted attempts to dismiss as superstitious or “simple,” in a
negative sense, popular devotion to the mother of God.
The pope’s devotion and his respect for those who turn to
Mary in their hour of need was on display May 12-13 when he and some 500,000
people gathered at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal.
Canonizing two of the illiterate shepherd children to whom
Mary appeared in 1917,
Pope Francis made it clear he sees no need for people to be
“sophisticated” in explaining their devotion.
But he also made it clear that, as in any area of faith and
spirituality, there is room in their understanding of Mary for people to grow
as Catholics and Christians.
Calling himself a pilgrim with the pilgrims, Pope Francis
asked “which Mary” did the crowds come to honor? The Mary who is
“a teacher of the spiritual life, the first to follow Jesus on the ‘narrow
way’ of the cross by giving us an example, or a lady ‘unapproachable’ and
impossible to imitate?”
For the pilgrims, he asked, is she “a woman ‘blessed
because she believed’ always and everywhere in God’s words or a ‘plaster
statue’ from whom we beg favors at little cost?”
Pope Francis said many people would want to have a vision of
Mary and to receive direct messages from her like Sts. Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin, Sister Lucia dos Santos, did at Fatima in 1917.
However, he said, “the Virgin Mother did not come here
so that we could see her. We will have all eternity for that, provided, of
course, that we go to heaven.”
Mary appeared at Fatima, he said, so that people would
listen to her pleas that they pray more, do penance and follow Jesus more
closely.
Like retired Pope Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II before
him, Pope Francis teaches that Marian devotion is an important part of Catholic
life, but always because she leads people to a deeper relationship with Christ.
Pope Francis sees a role for priests and bishops in
challenging pilgrims to grow in their faith, but not to control how they
express it.
In a letter to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America in 2016, Pope Francis said popular piety — including Marian devotion
— is “one of the few areas in which the people of God are free from the
influence of clericalism.”
“It has been one of the few areas in which the people
(including its pastors) and the Holy Spirit have been able to meet without the
clericalism that seeks to control and restrain God’s anointing of his
own,” the pope wrote. “Let us trust in our people, in their memory
and in their ‘sense of smell.’ Let us trust that the Holy Spirit acts in and
with our people and that this Spirit is not merely the ‘property’ of the
ecclesial hierarchy.”
Pope Francis is convinced that devotion to Mary and other
popular expressions of faith are a largely uncultivated seedbed of
evangelization. His conviction is so strong that April 1 he formally
transferred responsibility for Catholic shrines from the Congregation for
Clergy to the Pontifical
Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.
“Despite the crisis of faith impacting the modern world,
these places still are perceived as sacred spaces where pilgrims go to find
moments of rest, silence and contemplation in the midst of a life that is often
frenetic,” Pope Francis wrote.
The enduring popularity of Catholic shrines, “the
humble and simple prayer of the people of God” and the Catholic liturgies
celebrated in the shrines offer “a unique opportunity for evangelization
in our time,” he said.
Many people today, he said, have a longing for God, and
shrines “can be a true refuge” where people can be honest about
themselves and “find the strength necessary for their conversion.”
The decision to transfer responsibility for the shrines
seems a natural consequence of what Pope Francis wrote in his first
exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” which has an entire section on “the
evangelizing power of popular piety.”
Popular piety, he wrote in 2013, is a “true expression of the
spontaneous missionary activity of the people of God,” inspired and led by
the Holy Spirit.
In the exhortation and at Fatima, Pope Francis celebrated
the fact that Marian devotion and other forms of popular piety are particularly
strong among the poor and humble, the very people with whom Mary identifies in
the “Magnificat,”
her hymn of praise for how God lifts the lowly, fills the hungry with good
things and sends the rich away empty.
Think, the pope wrote, “of the steadfast faith of those
mothers tending their sick children who, though perhaps barely familiar with
the articles of the creed, cling to a rosary; or of all the hope poured into a
candle lighted in a humble home with a prayer for help from Mary, or in the
gaze of tender love directed to Christ crucified.”
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Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden.
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