editorial
NoonMarch 2, 2023 – 08:32
Of Emmanuel Imperiali
Napoli somehow a paradigm of the southern question in Italy. But the theme of the universal South. It’s about inequality, what a universal issue, it’s about the future of the whole world. The words of Pope Francis come to mind ten years after the election of Bergoglio as successor of Peter. The Pontiff whom the cardinals chose almost at the end of the world is leaving a strong mark on the Church of the new century. He, a man from the South of the world, who has always had an eye towards the poorest and most underprivileged areas of the Earth. Including our Noon. Since the day of the conclave, he has come to Campania four times, on 26 July 2014, 21 March 2015, 17 March 2018 and 21 June 2019. Among his destinations, not surprisingly, are Scampia and the Poggioreale prison. That Naples that somehow reminds him of his Buenos Aires.
It is no coincidence that the Pontiff recalls the sacrifice of Don Peppe Diana, his courage in choices against the cancer of organized crime, which too often even uses boys as unskilled criminals, knowing full well that what we call the southern question is nothing but the absence of the state. Francis as a new app that changes the software on the Church’s millennial hardware. His decisions prove it: the appointment of Don Mimmo Battaglia as Archbishop of Naples was as courageous as it was revolutionary, a pastor in line with the choices that the Pope carries out, often in splendid solitude. Very different from the cardinals of the curia who in the past governed the Neapolitan diocese more as an institution than as a synodal community on the move. That splendid image of the Church as a field hospital takes shape in Lampedusa, when the newly elected Pope went to the island to bear witness to the centrality of the drama of migrations. It was a way of forcing the world to listen to the voice of the least. By deleting the word clandestine and using that of refugees with rights in its place, he has put everyone in front of their own responsibilities, because the Mediterranean cannot become a huge cemetery.
The Argentine Pontiff is a pastor, whose priority is the Gospel and not doctrine. His South American origins are felt in Bergoglio, a continent that has lived the experience of Liberation Theology, and it is no coincidence that the Pope is opposed above all by North American Catholic circles, who judge him too progressive, in the name of a die-hard conservatism. It is no coincidence that Francis identifies social justice as the first guideline of the Church in the 2000s, which he then declines in various ways: from open criticism of blatant injustices at work, from precariousness to too frequent accidents, to that capitalism of the Western world which he criticizes without hesitation, because when the poor are rejected, the brother is rejected, nullifying the scope of Bergoglio’s most famous encyclical, Fratelli tutti, published in 2020, which represents a milestone in his pontificate. Which draws lifeblood from trust, bridges, peace, the relentless fight against hunger, condemning a world of fear, distrust, walls, wars. Francis’ geopolitics does not build fortresses, but rather identifies in the fight against inequality the strength to fight that culture of waste which is a paradigm of our times, finding a very advanced synthesis in the synergy between social degradation and degradation of nature. The ecological commitment with collegial, supportive and farsighted actions, another figure of his pontificate. Laudato s of 2015 is an encyclical that values integral ecology as a new paradigm of justice, and in this perspective that the Pope has criticized without hesitation the tragedy of the Land of Fires. Ten years after his appointment, the Pope of the suburbs will also be a Vox clamantis in desert, but his words weigh like lead, and deep down they cannot fail to touch the consciences of men of good will.
2 March 2023 | 08:32
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