Bishop Barron on Pope Francis and Mercy

"Having just returned from a week covering Pope Francis's triumphant journey to the United States, I can confidently tell you that the news media are in love with the Vicar of Christ. Time and again, commentators, pundits, anchorpersons, and editorialists opined that Pope Francis is the bomb. They approved, of course, of his gentle way with those suffering from disabilities and his proclivity to kiss babies, but their approbation was most often awakened by this Pope's 'merciful' and 'inclusive' approach, his willingness to reach out to those on the margins. More often than not, they characterized this tenderness as a welcome contrast to the more rigid and dogmatic style of Benedict XVI. Often, I heard words such as 'revolutionary' and 'game-changing' in regard to Pope Francis, and one commentator sighed that she couldn't imagine going back to the Church as it was before the current pontiff.

"Well, I love Pope Francis too, and I certainly appreciate the novelty of his approach and his deft manner of breathing life into the Church. In fact, a number of times on the air I commented that the Pope's arrival to our shores represented a new springtime after the long winter of the sex abuse scandals. But I balk at the suggestion that the new Pope represents a revolution or that he is dramatically turning away from the example of his immediate predecessors. And I strenuously deny that he is nothing but a soft-hearted powder-puff, indifferent to sin.

"A good deal of the confusion stems from a misinterpretation of Francis's stress on mercy. In order to clear things up, a little theologizing is in order. It is not correct to say that God's essential attribute is mercy. Rather, God's essential attribute is love, since love is what obtains among the three divine persons from all eternity. Mercy is what love looks like when it turns toward the sinner. To say that mercy belongs to the very nature of God, therefore, would be to imply that sin exists within God himself, which is absurd.

"Now this is important, for many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer matters. But just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness. Or to shift to one of the Pope's favorite metaphors, it is to be acutely conscious that one is wounded so severely that one requires, not minor treatment, but the emergency and radical attention provided in a hospital on the edge of a battlefield. Recall that when Francis was asked, in a famous interview two years ago, to describe himself, he responded, 'a sinner.' Then he added, 'who has been looked upon by the face of mercy.' That's getting the relationship right. . . ."

In a recent commentary, Bishop Robert Barron reflected on Pope Francis and the reality of Divine Mercy.

To access Bishop Barron's complete essay, please visit:

The Boston Pilot: Echoes: Pope Francis and True Mercy (13 OCT 15)