Four years after having started his papacy, Pope Francis has not left anyone indifferent. There are those who value the “fresh air” he has given the Catholic Church, reinforcing the importance of following Jesus and his message; but there are also those who by default will always criticize anything that comes out of the Catholic Church, and also those within who are suspicious of Francis, his apostolic documents, his messages and his actions.
Curiously, despite admitting that he is not at all a “technological” guy, Pope Francis frequently uses Twitter to get his message across. He was certainly not the first to do so -Pope Benedict XVI opened the official papal account shortly before his resignation- but he has made the most of the opportunity that allows his followers to expand his message, retweeting them to reach the greatest number of people possible.
Michael J. O’Loughlin has studied Pope Francis’ digital approach and has captured the result in his book “The Tweetable Pope: A Spiritual Revolution in 140 Characters” (Harper One, 2015). O’Loughlin is a reporter for America Magazine, the leading Catholic journal of opinion in the United States, and formerly reporter for Crux. He writes regularly about contemporary Catholics issues, and was able to see firsthand the fascination generated by Francis and his twitter account @Pontifex that as of today has more than 20 million followers in several languages -English, Spanish, German, Polish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, and Latin-. Although small in number when compared to many celebrities, it has enormous potential of spreading the pope’s message to more people with thousands of retweets daily. Francis became what O’Loughlin calls the Tweetable Pope, a celebrity who from 2013 through 2015 was named “The Most Influential Tweeting Global Leader”, and in later years has remained among the most influential in the world.
Starting from the tweets of Pope Francis, O’Loughlin outlines the main themes the pope pays special attention to, and details each one of them. The most tweeted words by the pope are no surprise: God, love and Jesus. His recurring messages focus on prayer, mercy, suffering and creation, to which he dedicates the encyclical Laudato Si’ –“We must never forget that the natural environment is a good collective, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone” he tweeted last June, in what can be considered an implicit response to the United States decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement-.
O’Loughlin calls the papacy of Francis a revolution led by a pope who insists that Catholics cannot be passive bystanders, and who is passionate about requiring his followers to go out and “make a mess” in the world, where service, love and mercy have the most important emphasis. This is clear from his first messages, posted the same day of his presentation in the balcony of St. Peter’s Square in 2013: “Let us keep a place for Christ in our lives, let us care for one another and let us be loving custodians of creation.” and “True power is service. The Pope must serve all people, especially the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.”
This papacy’s focus on service and above all love and mercy is reflected in his already famous answer “Who am I to judge?“ in reference to a question about gays priests. Francis constantly repeats on Twitter the invitation he makes in his apostolic exhortation Evangeliii Gaudium: an invitation to meet Jesus, an invitation to love. After all, for Francis, Jesus is the name and the face of the love of God. As he says in one of his tweets, “Our Mission as Christians is to conform ourselves evermore to Jesus as the model of our lives.” (May 16, 2014). To meet Jesus, O’Loughlin points out that Francis suggests “three doors”: prayer, celebration, and imitating Jesus, and the way to imitate Him begins in open the Gospel, to discover Jesus and to discover that “with Jesus there is true joy” (December 25, 2014).
Francis positions have generally had a hugely positive reception inside and outside the Church but a poorly disguised resistance of some conservative sectors. O’Loughlin makes it clear that inside the Church things are not rosy for Francis, with an emphasis on constant gossip that “would make even the most vicious ‘mean girl’ blush”. This displeasure has not gone unnoticed by the pope, who tweeted in October 2014, asking the Lord “the grace to not speak badly of others, not to criticize, not to gossip, but rather to love everyone“. Probably because of this it is not unreasonable to question about whether Pope Francis’ legacy will stand the test of time when his papacy concludes. Will the Church continue with its revolution focused on loving and serving, especially those in need? Although the book does not delve into this, it is a valid concern.
In the meantime Francis continues to work with vitality that any teenager would envy, in a papacy that leaves no one indifferent and continues to win sympathizers despite external and internal obstacles and resistances. No problem, gossip, intrigue, leak, seems to stop a sometimes stubborn and persistent pope who has already expressed that although his papacy is short, he still has a lot to do. “The Tweetable Pope” continues to use the social network in his eagerness to wake up lethargic and apathetic Catholics indifferent to their neighbor and their environment, more focused on judging than on forgiving. Pope Francis’ premise is simple and challenging at the same time: to know, to follow and to imitate Jesus and his message of love.
“Go forth and reach out to all people at the margins of society! Go there and be the Church, with the strength of the Holy Spirit.” (@Pontifex June 23, 2017)
Featured Image: Harper Collins
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