Papal Power. Pope Francis of the Little Doughnut

I have chosen the doughnut as metaphor because Pope Francis has both a realistic as well as an idealistic frame of mind, and this one is really food for thought. As one of my favorite wits Oscar Wilde puts it:

Between the optimist and the pessimist
The difference is droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut,
the pessimist the hole!

And Pope Francis? He sees The Whole.

He opposes same-sex marriage, and the more I look at the doughnut, the more I can see why: Because it's incongruous, inefficient, insufficient, insane, that is, not a wholesome whole – because same-sex marriage is either doughnut-doughnut or hole-hole!

Thus, we can call him the Wholistic Pope, or Holistic Pope. You must see not only the whole doughnut but the whole system, its context defining its content.

Today, Sunday, 28 December 2014 is the Feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth. It is also our 24th church wedding anniversary, as Ms Amparo Reynoso and I were married in 1990 (the civil wedding occurred 18 March 1967 yet); we have a large family of 12 children. Cheaper by the dozen or not, it is the family that makes us whole or not whole. "Complementarity," Pope Francis says, "is at the root of marriage and family" (en.radiovaticana.va). "Although there are tensions in family, the family also provides the framework in which those tensions can be resolved." There are no fixed rules and relations of sexes. "Complementarity will take many forms as each man and woman brings his or her distinctive contributions to their marriage and to the formation of their children." It is the family that makes you either complete or not complete.

Pope Francis' motto is "Miserando atque eligendo" (By having mercy and by choosing), taken from the 21st homily of Saint Bede on the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus chose this tax collector as a disciple "not in spite but because of his being a sinner" (Wikipedia). If you look at the whole, not only will you have a better view but you too will have mercy.

Seeing the whole is also like this: "I see the Church as a field hospital after battle," Pope Francis says. "It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds (first). Then we can talk about everything else" (Antonio Spadaro SJ, 30 September 2013, americamagazine.org). The whole first, not the parts.

"He emphasized the Christian obligation to assist the poor and the needy" (Wikipedia). You are not whole if you simply live your life and not assist the disadvantaged.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is whole and is not whole; when he was 21 and suffering from pneumonia, he had a "part of a lung excised" (Wikipedia). It's not that he has only 1 lung; that surgery "actually only removed the upper part of his right lung" (Michael Warren, 01 April 2013, news.yahoo.com). So? "His experience for the past 50 years more than tells us that he has lung enough for the job," says Dr Sumita Khatri, Co-Director of the Cleveland Clinic Asthma Center in Ohio (14 March 2013, ANN, Catholic Online, catholic.org). Of course! The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

When he was still living in Bueno Aires, he had a heart problem and doctors prescribed surgery, but he opted for alternative medicine, getting in touch with a Chinese doctor who helped him get much better with his heart, liver and other ailments (Courtney Coren, 22 May 2014, newsmax.com). You have to treat the whole body, not just a part or two.

He is known for "his commitment to dialogue as a way to build bridges between people of all backgrounds, beliefs and faiths" (Wikipedia). Your world is not whole if as a Roman Catholic you exclude the Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and so on. "The dialogue between us," he says, "should help to build bridges connecting all people, in such a way that everyone can see in the other not an enemy, not a rival, but a brother or sister to be welcomed and embraced." The whole is the world.

"Bergoglio has written about his commitment to open and respectful interfaith dialogue as a way for all parties engaged in that dialogue to learn from one another" (Wikipedia). Nonbelievers are included. In his address on 20 March 2013 after his election as the new Pope, he said, "We also sense our closeness to all those men and women, although not identifying themselves as followers of any religious tradition, are nonetheless searching for truth, goodness and beauty, the truth, goodness and beauty of God." The doughnut must consider the hole and the whole or it is not complete.

Is he the "Superman Pope" as John Vidal reports? (27 December 2014, theguardian.com). No, I don't think so. Superman does everything himself with his vast powers; this superpope does everything with the vast powers of God and the universe. Next year, Pope Francis will issue an encyclical on climate change, address the United Nations General Assembly, and call a summit of the world's main religions, because of his "wish to directly influence next year's crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions." He wants to meet with leaders of the main religions "to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion." The whole world must make the whole world whole.

Last year, he denounced the global financial system "for tyrannizing the poor and turning humans into expendable consumer goods" (Mark Pygas, news.distractify.com). The whole is victimizing the whole. This year, on Christmas Day, he spoke against the "globalization of indifference" (Khaleda Rahman, 25 December 2014, dailymail.co.uk), The whole is denying the whole.

There is no personal salvation, only popular. "In the history of salvation, God has saved a people," Pope Francis says. "There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community" (Spadaro as cited).

Pope Francis sees community in all that he does. "A thing that is really important for me: community," he tells Spadaro (cited). "I (am) always looking for a community. I (do) not see myself as a priest on my own. I need a community."

His community is in fact the world. On 31 March 2013, in his first Easter homily, he prayed for peace throughout the world, specifically mentioning the Middle East, Africa and North and South Korea; he also prayed "for humanity to become a better guardian of creation by protecting the environment." (Wikipedia). We are not whole without the environment.

As part of the community, thereby, from now on you can call me The Optimist Catholic because of Pope Francis. Another way of looking at community is like this:

More than the Superman Pope, more than the Optimist, beyond the Pessimist, Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis is The Alchemist. No, he is not The Alchemist of the Paulo Coelho kind, who believes in the Personal Legend, that "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." Rather, Pope Francis is The Alchemist of the Jorge Mario Bergoglio kind, who believes in the Social Legend, that "when the world wants something, all men must conspire in helping the universe to achieve it!"