Pope Francis, United Nations Chaplain?

In observing the recent global activities of Pope Francis, the Argentinian philosopher Rubén Peretó Rivas asked whether Pope Francis aims at becoming the ‘Chaplain of the United Nations’.

His 2020 ‘universal’ initiatives indeed look like those of the United Nations in language, scope and content. While the encyclical ‘All Brothers’ reiterated the Roman Catholic universalism two (en, December 2020), other projects deserve to be mentioned in this respect.

In a video message aired on 15 October 2020, Francis commended the ‘Global Compact on Education’ (GCE), i.e. an ambitious plan in the field of education worldwide to bring about a ‘change of mentality’. The GCE is worked out with Mission 4.7, a UN-backed advisory group aiming to meet the educational target (numbered 4.7) of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

SDG no. 4 strives for ‘quality education’, in terms of promoting ‘sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship’. This is the UN’s globalist language, but the Roman Catholic language significantly overlaps with it. GCE speaks of ‘human fraternity’ regardless of and beyond religious beliefs. In the plan, the watchwords are wholly secular. The dominant formula is ‘new humanism’, explained in terms of ‘common home’, ‘universal solidarity’, ‘fraternity’ (as it is defined in ‘All Brothers’), ‘convergence’, ‘welcome’, overcoming ‘division and antagonism’.

Francis is certain that this plan will bring about ‘the civilisation of love, beauty and unity’. No explicit Christian reference is made and there is no indication that the root problem is human sin. It seems that as we will have better education opportunities for all, the ‘new humanism’ will come. This is in line with the UN vision, but is it realistic from a Christian viewpoint?

The ‘Economy of Francesco’

If ‘Brothers All’ is the theological framework and GCE is the project in education, a second area that Pope Francis has strongly pushed forward is an initiative in the field of economics. Making reference to Francis of Assisi’s reconciled view between humanity and the earth and drawing inspiration from it, the initiative was called the ‘Economy of Francesco’ (EF).

In a video broadcast on 21 November, the Pope called business leaders to strive towards ‘a pact to change the current economy’ and to ‘give a new soul to the global economy’. Again, this project is another extension of the catholicity of the Roman Catholic Church, with no explicit reference to a Christian framework, but falling in line with an apparently globalist view of an economic reality marked by the ‘new humanism’. As Francis promoted EF, he also included as partner in the initiative the ‘Council for Inclusive Capitalism’, meaning the magnates of the Ford Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Bank of America, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the like. The Council is formed by around 500 companies, which together represent 10.5 trillion dollars in assets under management and 200 million workers in over 163 countries. This is to say that simply painting Rome’s catholicity as anti-capitalist is wrong. Pope Francis aims at including all parties in his ‘new humanism’. In these relationships with the global companies there are also strategic opportunities for funding the initiatives of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a win-win relationship.

As already mentioned, Francis’s activism on the global scene in 2020 prompted someone to label him as ‘Chaplain of the United Nations’ because of the striking convergence between the ‘new humanism’ that he has been advocating in the areas of fraternity, education and the economy and the goals of the UN. Those who are used to think of Roman Catholicism as a ‘Roman’ system (e.g. dogmatic, rigid, locked-in) and not as a ‘Catholic’ project (e.g. open-ended, absorbing and expanding) may be surprised and even puzzled. But Roman Catholicism demands that its Roman-centred institution be unceasingly fertilised by its evermore Catholic horizon, and vice versa.