One and a half million people came to Pope Francis’s farewell mass in Kraków, Poland at the end of World Youth Day. “In a time of increasing skepticism towards authority, no other world leader could draw a crowd like that. Nor could any other 79-year-old have drawn 300,000 young people to hear what he had to say.” Francis is hugely charismatic and has mastered the theatrical side of his role, using small gestures to communicate big ideas to huge audiences.
While Francis’ enormously popular predecessor Pope John Paul II knelt and kissed the ground as he arrived in his communist homeland for the first time in 1979 as pope, Francis paid his own bill and carried his own suitcase when appointed to the papal chair. He still refuses to stay in the grand papal apartments. Small gestures make huge statements and draw crowds.
Though they have used their talents in the service of very different agendas, Pope Francis is creating revolution just as John Paul did. John Paul called down judgment on the whole system of communism. Pope Francis famously asked, “Who am I to judge” concerning gays and lesbians. John Paul aimed his message at the communist governments of the Soviet Union, and they came crashing down. Pope Francis has aimed his message toward helping the poor. His first visit was to the Mediterranean islet of Lempedusa, where desperate refugees arrive every week. And as soon as he arrived in Poland, he “upbraided the government for its refusal to accept Muslim asylum seekers.”
While Pope John Paul II saw the façade of communism, he took aim at its crumbling structure and placed the Catholic Church powerfully at the center of geopolitics. Pope Francis is aiming for that church to embrace all, especially the poor, without reference to nations.
These two men have made a significant impact on quite different worlds. Their vision of Europe is at the same time poles apart, yet advancing along a common trajectory. But like John Paul, Francis pulls the nations and their cultures along on the path toward assimilation, attempting to eliminate ethnic boundaries, mixing vastly different cultures together, over which his church will one day preside. Pope Francis is aiming for the papal church to sit as a queen (see Revelation 18:7), and he is powerfully using the poor and the refugee to help him.
Pope Francis is aiming at globalism. And the pope wants the world to follow him. Europe and the world have moved on from the time of John Paul. Pope Francis is engineering the next phase of papal strength.
“And all the world wondered after the beast.” Revelation 13:3.
“And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him.” Revelation 13:8