“Incredible! I don't know about you, but I am so moved to see what the Pope's visit means in France. He is being received almost like a rock star, but I think it would be a mistake to dismiss this simply as celebrity. In one of Europe’s most determinedly secular cultures, enormous crowds are turning out to see an elderly man dressed in white who comes speaking unapologetically about Christ, the Cross, holiness, vocation, human dignity and eternal things. Last night, 80,000 young people packed the Stade de France and chanted “Leo! Leo!”; today, some 600,000 people registered for the great outdoor Mass.
“You cannot say that does not tell us something vital!
“Secularism may have succeeded in pushing Christianity from much of public life, but it has not abolished the human hunger for transcendence. We still want to know what life means, why we are here, what is good, what is worth sacrificing for and whether death has the final word. Consumerism, politics and technology can occupy us; they cannot answer those questions & we recognise that is what the Pope represents.
“And there is another remarkable dimension to these images. Regardless of what the sedevacantists argue, here is the Bishop of Rome travelling through France and being received quite unmistakably as the Pope. Not merely as another religious leader, but as the successor of Peter. For us Catholics, there is something wonderfully tangible here about Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18. The papacy is not an abstraction or an internet theory. Peter has a successor, he has a name and a face & billions recognise what that office represents.
“And then there is the extraordinary “soft power” of the Holy See. Leo can speak with presidents and diplomats in the morning, address UNESCO, enter Notre-Dame, fill a national stadium with young people and place questions of peace, human dignity, faith and the common good before an international audience within hours.
“Very few human beings possess a platform remotely comparable to that.
“Which is why the papacy matters so enormously. Used well, its moral authority can reach far beyond practising Catholics. What we are seeing in France is not merely the popularity of Pope Leo XIV. It is a glimpse of the extraordinary missionary potential of the Petrine office itself. The world may call itself secular. It does not appear to have stopped searching for God.”
Mark Lambert @sitsio
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