After a brief time of Sé Vacante, the Chair of Peter is newly occupied. The Holy Church of God has again a Pope, a new successor of St. Peter, chief of the college of Apostles.

Qui sibi nomen impusuit Franciscum-“What he chose for himself, the name of Francis!” The announcement of the Cardinal Proto-deacon filled all with surprise. The new Pontiff will take the name of the “Poverello” of Assisi! There is news that certainly resonates the strings of the heart of faithful Catholics and in them sprouts a great hope. The great Francis of Assisi! The saint who received from Our Lord Crucified the mission to restore the Church in an epoch in which he found himself in great crises both moral and spiritual.

There is no doubt that also we find ourselves in a time of great crises. The philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy define both crises and war as diseases of language. Making war the society is incapable of hearing the enemy. Living in crisis the society becomes incapable of speaking to the friend.

Our society is in crisis because millions of youth hasten to the generation before and wait for counsel, a friendly word. “Master what should I do to have life?” But whomever ages adoring dead idols already is not capable of speaking to friends nor youth, for they became what they loved: a dead idol. Hastened by the “dictatorship of relativism” a generation that should fulfill the role of mother and teacher does not know how to teach. It does not know how to exercise that supreme charity that is to speak the Truth.

Our Pope, therefore, does not appear to suffer from this same crisis, from this mute oppressor. In his first homily, Pope Francis as a good helmsman of the ship of Peter, steers from the “wave” of religious pluralism and makes the voice of the Church mother and teacher sound out.

“If we do not confess Jesus Christ, we are going to be in error. Turning ourselves into a social-charitable NGO not the Church, Spouse of the Lord […] When one does not confess Jesus Christ, one confesses the worldliness of the devil, the worldliness of the devil.”

It is this, the new Pope is not afraid of making reference to the Father of lies. And in this time in which more and more preachers are transforming themselves into the “enemies of the Cross of Christ” (Phil 3:15) The Holy Father remembers that the road of the Church is not the trail without a cross. Commenting on the gospel of the confession of St. Peter, he remembers that speaking of Christ without the cross is a diabolical temptation. “When we build without the Cross and when we confess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord”. The Holy Father encouraged all the members of the Church to walk and build “the Church with the Blood of the Lord that He spilled on the Cross.”

In these months that separate us from the visit of the Holy Father to the Land of the Holy Cross, we make vows that his word may be received by this new generation and by all the Church.

Will this homily assume a programmatic character for all his pontificate? Still we don’t know. But in a world where silence, the omission of the Truth and political correctness is the order of the day, we should not allow it to be a great consolation to hear echoed again in the voice of the Supreme Shepherd, the voice of the Church Mother and Master: “We announce Christ Crucified!” (1Cor 1:23)

Fr. Paulo Ricardo Azevedo, Jr.

Fr. Paulo Ricardo writes from Brazil.

translated from Portuguese