“‘Pope mania’ makes a wonderful headline, but I increasingly think it misses the most interesting part of what we are witnessing in France. Of course there is excitement surrounding Leo himself, but hundreds of thousands of people did not simply gather in central Paris to see a celebrity, they gathered for Mass! And what did the supposed ‘rock star’ tell them? Not that they should admire him, but that ‘only God can fill the emptiness within us’; that Jesus Christ gave His life for us; that France possesses a ‘long and beautiful history of faith’; that they should ‘drink from the source that is the pierced heart of Jesus’; and, crucially, that they must not keep their faith in Christ to themselves. ‘Let it overflow.’ For decades we have been told a fairly simple story about France: modernisation means secularisation, Christianity belongs increasingly to the past, and Catholicism will gradually retreat into the private lives of an ageing minority. Then 700,000 people gather for Mass in the heart of Paris, 80,000 young people fill the Stade de France, and adult baptisms are rising dramatically. None of this proves that France is suddenly becoming Catholic again. We should resist romantic conclusions as much as pessimistic ones.
“But it surely tells us that the secularisation thesis is considerably more complicated than we thought.
“Perhaps beneath the ‘Pope mania’ lies something much more consequential: a spiritual hunger which modern secular culture has proved remarkably bad at satisfying. And Leo's message to that hunger could hardly have been clearer:
“‘You thirst for God, for life, for truth, for unity, for peace, for communion and for happiness.’
“Only God, he told them, can ultimately satisfy it.”
- Mark Lambert @sitsio
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