Personalism Is the Key to Understanding Pope Francis

Pope Francis does not speak like an intellectual. He is not, like John Paul II, an original thinker, or, like Benedict XVI, a supreme scholar of the Tradition. He is a pope whose manner is simpler and more ordinary, and yet, when I hear him, I hear them.

Or, rather, I hear the same love song in glorious polyphony. His voice is individual and distinctive, but his concerns are their concerns; his themes are their themes. His words and gestures as Pope bespeak, like theirs, the essential personalism of the Church in the modern world.

To be a human person is to be made in the image and likeness of God. It is to be absolutely unique and unrepeatable. It is to exist from love and for love, with others and for others. It is to be embodied, incomplete and in need. It is to be called to a life-giving union and communion with God and others ? or, with God through others.

This is the mystery that has been unfolding in a particular way over the course of the modern period of history. Its centrality to our faith was established at Vatican II, brilliantly expounded throughout the papacy of John Paul II and confirmed in its organic continuity with Tradition by Benedict XVI.

Pope Francis is challenging the Church ? all of us ? to take it to the next level of practical application.

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