“Beyond my wildest dreams,
 in front of him I was converted”

by John Waters

Since I began to say “yes” to Fr. Giussani and to Communion and Liberation, my life has changed in ways that have long since ceased to be subtle. You could not say that it has been merely an intellectual journey, although it has certainly taken my thinking in unexpected directions. The changes that have come about have gradually tended to build what is clearly a total disposition, embracing every aspect of my life in reality. Often, these changes seem to have little or nothing to do with my own efforts. My “yes”–or, rather, my resolve not to say “no” if “yes” is remotely practicable–has been leading me toward all kinds of new frontiers and adventures. At times, it is breathtaking. At times, it strikes me that, in earlier periods of my life, I would have shuddered at the implications of it: to be witnessing publicly about something as personal as faith, and the risks this involves of being misunderstood or negatively judged. But now that it is actually happening, it seems right. It seems worth the risks. More than that, it seems to be my life–in a way that demonstrates that any kind of life `I might have imagined makes a great deal less sense.
But to end up in St. Peter’s Square, speaking to the Pope and 200,000 others is clearly in another league. This is something beyond my wildest dreams. And yet, it has come to pass.
I was bemused, two weeks beforehand, to receive a telephone call from Mauro Biondi, the responsible of the Irish branch of CL, asking me if I could go to Rome on May 18th, to deliver a short testimony “in front of the Pope,” as part of the Pentecostal Vigil for members of Catholic movements. He said that the Pontifical Council for Evangelization would be sending out the invitation.
I learned that a crowd of about 70,000 was expected, including members of more than 100 different movements, large and small. My speech was to last seven minutes–no more and no less.
I had no idea that there were so many new religious movements. I knew, for example, about Focolare and New Horizons and, of course, Communion and Liberation, but no more than the names of the Emmanuel Community or the Neocatechumenal Way–not to mention the 100 others.
What a responsibility!  But, what a joy too! I said “Yes,” as I always do to Mauro, whom I met for the first time eight years ago at Dublin Airport.
I was to speak along with the Pakistani politician Paul Bhatti, Pakistan’s former Minister of Minority Affairs, whom I met at the New York Encounter in January, where I interviewed him onstage in front of 1,000 people, about his changed life in the government of Pakistan, following the assassination by Islamists of his brother Shahbaz in 2011.
There was one thing that troubled me: I had not yet arrived at a judgment of my own relationship with the new Pope. To my old self, this would have been a disqualifying problem, but now I had come to see it as merely another part of the journey, and the events now unfolding as a new kind of sign.

First fears. Although I had been willing to pledge my reverence and obedience to him, I wasn’t sure where I stood with Pope Francis. I knew he had been chosen by the Holy Spirit for a purpose, but my sense of sadness at losing Pope Benedict XVI was getting in the way. For the past few years, I had had this growing sense of an approaching moment, at which the penetration and persistence of Pope Benedict’s descriptions of our modern situation would bear fruit in some tremendous way.
Here, I wish to be completely frank. I had been disconcerted by the way discussion of the new Pope in the media seemed to be predicated on discussions of  “reform” that seemed, by their nature, to miss the point of the present moment, and also to imply some deficiencies on the part of Pope Benedict. The new pope’s gestures were being reported in a way that seemed to carry an implicit criticism of his predecessor, although his words, when examined for themselves, spoke differently.  That initial series of gestures of the new pope, reported by the media as indicative of a changed understanding of the papacy, seemed to imply that Pope Benedict had been less Jesus-like on account of, for example, wearing red shoes or not taking the bus.
I worried that the media–which are almost overwhelmingly antagonistic toward the Church–seemed to approve a little too much of Pope Francis, and I felt that this was more likely calculated to undermine the Church than wish it well on a new journey.
Meanwhile, I have been reading as much as I could about Cardinal Bergoglio, trying to gain a deeper sense of him and his life. As a result, I had already begun to understand that all these gestures were rooted in his life and his faith. But, still, I did not know exactly where or how to begin in order to write something truthful or useful about him. This is my first attempt to do so.
On Saturday, May 18th, I began to see everything more clearly: his passion, his animation, his clarity, the way he speaks to a crowd of 200,000 as though to a person, the way he condenses profound understandings into striking stories and images. I was struck by something unexpected: his similarity to Benedict XVI in how he thinks, in the way he speaks about Christ. The two men have different ways of expressing themselves, but they nevertheless exist in a coherent continuum which can be traced back to John Paul II.
John Paul was capable of intricate and profound insight, but in public tended to speak simply, sometimes uncompromisingly. Benedict XVI, on the other hand, spoke the way he thought–in complex constructions which were the result of deep reflection and reasoning, and embraced complexity and contradiction as a matter of course. Francis somehow manages to integrate the approaches of both his most immediate predecessors into his own style, condensing great thoughts and ideas into simple stories and images, which invoke the experience of the human struggle in a graphic way–always reminding his listeners that what unites us all is the figure of Jesus.

Out of our stuffy room.  On May 18th, I was first of all awoken to the physical presence of the Pope, which is far more animated and more vibrant than he had appeared on television. He moves like a man a decade younger than his 76 years. The media had called him shy, but there is nothing in the least timid about him. He puts his entire personality into his words and into the encounter with those he speaks to. Because my Italian is not so good, I watched his gestures and expressions for a long time, and found that, when in repose, his face becomes almost blank; he fills with life when he begins to interact and speak. I was struck in particular by his physicality–the way his whole body seems to be summoned toward the act of communication and, as I said, the way he spoke to these 200,000 people as though he was speaking to one. He had prepared notes but only occasionally referred to them. Despite my deficient Italian, there was much to be gathered from watching him and understanding occasional phrases sufficiently enough to be able to follow his drift. Having his words translated later on, I was transported by his descriptions of his early calling to the priesthood, and of the necessity for the Church to move out of its stuffy room and take the risk of meeting the rest of humanity.
His clarity in speaking about the present condition of the Church struck me as transcending any desire to merely defend what he loves. There is also a desire to speak truly and clearly. “When the Church becomes closed,” he said, “she falls sick, she falls sick.”
Catholics, he said, must  touch “the flesh of Christ, taking upon ourselves this suffering for the poor.” For Christians, poverty is not a sociological or philosophical or cultural category. It is a theological category, because Christ made Himself poor in order to walk the earth, suffer, die, and rise from the dead to save humanity. “We cannot put up with this! Yet that is how things are. We cannot become starched Christians, those over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea. No! We must become courageous Christians and go in search of the people who are the very flesh of Christ, those who are the flesh of Christ!” The Pope emphasizes phrases like this, as though to break through what he intuits as a complacency in listening to concepts which have been used too often for mere effect. Pope Francis wants us to understand that he means what he says.  He relates his interchange with those coming for Confession: “‘Do you give alms?’–‘Yes, Father!’ ‘Very good...’ And I would ask them two further questions: ‘Tell me, when you give alms, do you look the person in the eye?’ ‘Oh I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it.’ The second question: ‘And when you give alms, do you touch the hand of the person you are giving them to or do you toss the coin at him or her?’ This is the problem: the flesh of Christ, touching the flesh of Christ, taking upon ourselves this suffering for the poor.”
What I think about Pope Francis now, in the wake of my encounter with him, is that he is a real man, who wants to remain in contact with reality in so far as he can. There is a sense about him of astonishment–at the fact that he is Pope–but also a sense of determination to make a mark in accordance with the inspiration that led him to the priesthood 60 years ago. I met him also more privately, briefly in Domus Sanctae Marthae, where, for the moment at least, he has chosen to live rather than moving into the pontifical palace. It is strange to see him there, for instance in the dining room when you go in for breakfast, an imposing figure in white, sitting, eating with everyone else, chatting with a cardinal or a priest. I greeted him after breakfast on the Sunday morning after our public encounter, and presented him with my book, Lapsed Agnostic (the long version of my speech!)–although, unfortunately, I think his English may be no better than my Italian! 
This Pope is bound to be a nightmare for his security people, because he is determined to push the papacy back into the crowd, from which it had withdrawn–of necessity–following the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. He is a Pope of risk, but he means what he says. He does not want to be Pope for the sake of prestige or power. He railed good-humouredly against the habit of the crowds in St. Peter’s Square to chant the name of the Pope (“Francesco! Francesco!”). No more “Francesco,” he admonished, just “Jesus!”

What will happen now? It is not, I feel, that he objects to being Pope, but that he seems to believe that it is possible to be Pope in an unexpected way, a way that belongs uniquely to the present moment, which is perhaps why nobody thought of doing it before. We tend, wisely or otherwise, to become skeptical about gestures, especially from our leaders. But the gestures of Pope Francis, I am now convinced, are those of a man who wishes to announce himself, taking the risk that they will be received skeptically or even cynically, but understanding that these risks, too, are necessary if he is to form the correct relationships with those whom he leads in Christ.
Anyway, I am a convert! It was, of course, inevitable that I should have dragged my feet at the outset of this change. The slowness to understand lies entirely with me–a failure born of excessive wariness of the influence of the media. Pope Francis, on the other hand, was simply being himself.
For me personally, the encounter has been a great honor, and a great source of excitement and joy. But it is not something to be regarded as having occurred for its own sake, certainly not for the sake of self-importance or recognition. It seems to be a sign–another part of a story that is not written by me, or indeed by any human hand. I pause only to wonder what will happen next.