St. Paul's Basilica: monument to a church of evangelization
Vatican City, 13 April 2013: A short speech just a few days before the conclave that
elected him pope, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio told his fellow cardinals that
the next pontiff "must be a man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus
Christ, helps the church to go out to the existential peripheries, helps her to be
the fruitful mother who gains life from 'the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.'
"The
church should not live "within herself, of herself, for herself," the future Pope
Francis said. Rather, its evangelization should extend "to the peripheries, not only
geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain,
of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents,
and of all misery."
In light of those remarks, the Basilica of St. Paul Outside
the Walls, where Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate Mass on April 14 at 5.30 pm,
holds special significance for his pontificate. The Apostle Paul, whose tomb lies
under the basilica's main altar, brought the Gospel to peoples across the central
and eastern Mediterranean, and even more consequentially, translated the Christian
faith into the philosophical terms of ancient Greco-Roman culture.
The so-called
"Apostle to the Gentiles" thus exemplifies the missionary spirit invoked by the new
pope. St. Paul also embodies the charismatic (or prophetic) side of the church, in
much the way that his fellow patron of Rome, St. Peter, the first pope, stands for
the church's hierarchical (or institutional) dimension. As the first member of a religious
order to be elected pope in nearly two centuries, Pope Francis is in a sense a successor
to both apostles, since the charismatic side of the church has traditionally been
the particular domain of religious life.