By Francis X. Maier, First Things, 4 . 3 . 23
Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Airports harbor interesting stories. Here’s an example. On my way home from a speaking engagement recently, I spent time with a lay friend, a young scholar, while he waited for his flight. We fell to talking, and the conversation soon turned to the Church. Ten years earlier, he’d been working on his doctorate at a Jesuit university in the east. On the morning Pope Francis was elected, he bumped into an acquaintance, a prominent Jesuit scholar on the ecclesial left, and congratulated him on now having one of his own as pope.
The response was surprising. “It’s a disaster,” the priest said. He then went on at length about the unhappy experience of then-Father Bergoglio’s leadership as provincial superior of the Jesuit community in Argentina; a tenure (he said) marked by authoritarian ambiguity, abrasive behavior, and a pattern of not listening to his brothers. …
