The fresh breath of air from Pope Francis

In the last week of November, Pope Francis continued to surprise the world with an unprecedented trip to the religiously conservative countries of Kenya, Uganda and — most notably — the war-torn Central African Republic. The Pope has been redefining the perception of the Roman Catholic Church in society with his strikingly liberal and forward-thinking statements, especially relative to the past conservatism of the papacies of John Paul and Benedict. When Francis was elected to receive the highest office of the Church, he came into a Church ravaged and torn by sexual abuse cases in dioceses throughout the nation and lacking in the times. Catholics were turning away from their old religion.

Francis, in the style of his Jesuit order, has brought a fresh breath of liberalism, modernity and, perhaps most importantly, humility into the Church, doing much to return it to its once-held position as an almost universally respected moral authority. He has traveled to a local Roman prison to wash the feet of prisoners as part of the Catholic tradition during Holy Week, recently released his encyclical — among the most direct dissemination tools of teaching at a pope’s disposal — on the environment, calling for similarly widespread climate change action as is being discussed this week at the COP21 in Paris, and has made sweeping pronouncements on the universal dignity of humanity — something that, under his definition of humanity, even includes homosexuals once shunned by the Church. And now, in an effort to bring together the entirety of Catholics in every reach of the world, Francis traveled to an unstable area of Africa to pronounce peace, an area suffering from religious and ethnic tension, especially between Muslims and Catholics, and one that legally condemns homosexuality.

In Nairobi, Francis, according to the New York Times, “traveled from the airport in a simple Honda — then visited a slum long accustomed to the ribbon of raw sewage,” speaking for increased access to education and work; in Uganda, he spoke about the all-too-common child soldiers being forced to fight in the region. He referenced problematic corruption, urging the African leaders to “please [not] develop that taste…[for that] something that eats the inside.” The most daunting aspect of his trip — and perhaps the most profound — was his visit to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. The city, according to The Guardian, “has been embroiled in a civil war between a Muslim minority and a Christian majority since March 2013.” Protected by a UN security detail, he visited the Saint Sauveur camp for displaced people in the capital and visited a mosque in a “dangerous Muslim neighbourhood of the city known as PK5” where he appealed for Christian-Muslim unity. “We are all brothers,” Francis retorted, “whatever may be your ethnicity, your religion, your social status.”

The impacts of his African visit, though, go far beyond its hopeful benefits to Kenya, Uganda and the CAR. When placed in a global context, Francis’s actions show a positive transition in the Church, one that is well-needed in a time when mass attendance is falling and belief wavering. At a further time when ‘Islamaphobia’ is ravaging the United States amid fears of the ‘pervasive’ Muslim terrorists, promises of Francis that “Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters” give comfort to me as a Catholic and in the moral stature of the Church that the currently widening strife between ignorant Christians and Muslims will in the future be able to be bridged. That Francis’s visit was to particularly vocal and religiously conservative countries that also rank among the most homophobic of all the Church shows a positive liberalization of thought and action that has the potential to repair the Church’s image in the world. By reaching out to these countries directly, I believe he is attempting to show Catholic unity, something that was more-or-less nonexistent during Benedict’s papacy. It is a breath of fresh air that the Church is no longer remaining this conservative stalwart. And perhaps his strategy will work: as Urbain, a young man speaking to reporters in Bangui, said, “He is God’s diplomat. Bandits don’t listen to politicians, but they will listen to him.”

Dan Sullivan is a freshman from Southold, NY. He can be reached at dgs4@princeton.edu.