Pope Francis' 'earthy' Marian message

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FEBRUARY 4, 2011

Vol. 47, No.6-19, 8 | $2.95 December 2013

The pope’s ‘earthy’ Marian message Are Francis’ words on Mary archaic piety or a pastoral image of ‘every mother’?

By MEGAN FINCHER

Salus Populi Romani, Protectress of Rome, delivered the city from a plague in the late 500s. Mary Untier of Knots helped a couple smooth out their marriage in 1615. Our Lady of Fatima told the world in 1917 to pray for the end of all war.

These are the images that Pope Francis devotes himself to, illustrating his understanding of Mary as a compassionate mother, a judicious counselor and a woman resolute in her faith.

“Tomorrow I wish to go and pray to Our Lady, that she may watch over all of Rome,” Francis concluded in his first papal speech March 13. He prayed the next morning before the Salus Populi Romani image at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, and has returned many times.

“This image has a long and rich history in the devotion of the popes and the people of Rome themselves,” Marian expert Aurelie Hagstrom told NCR in an email. “This is also the image [Francis] had brought to St. Peter’s Square during the vigil for peace back in September.”

Per request, Cardinal José Policarpo of Portugal entrusted Francis’ papacy to Our Lady of Fatima on her feast day, exactly two months after Francis’ election. When he entrusted the world to Mary’s Immaculate Heart Oct. 13, Francis had the Fatima statue flown to Rome for the occasion.

“Mary’s faith unties the knot of sin,” Francis said at a vigil the night

—CNS/Paul Haring

Pope Francis makes the sign of the cross as he prays in front of the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima during a vigil in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Oct. 12.

before.

German artist Johann Georg Melchior Schmidtner commemorated “Mary Untier of Knots” in a painting from around 1700. It was relatively unknown until Jorge Mario Bergoglio “became fascinated” with it while studying in Germany, and

then as archbishop of Buenos Aires encouraged its veneration, said Hagstrom, who is a theology professor at Providence College in Rhode Island.

Mary unties a knotted ribbon in the painting, but Francis preached that Mary “is the mother who patiently and lovingly brings us to God, so that he can untangle the knots of our soul.”

“For Francis, Mary is our ‘Mother,’ ” Hagstrom said. “His affection for her as ‘Madonna’ might be Italian or might be Latin American. Both of these cultures share a very earthy, human, motherly devotion to Mary.”

Francis’ fondness for Mother Mary can also be construed as an attitude of machismo, turning Mary into someone archaic, irrelevant or unappealing. His particular catechesis about Mary Untier of Knots offended Melissa Jones, adjunct professor of religious studies at Brandman University in California.

“I’m afraid this quote and the pope’s metaphor of Mary the patient and loving mother who brings us to God the Father for healing takes us back at least 40 years in our religious view of women and men,” she told NCR in an email.

Jones not only refers to the church before the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), but also to John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (“On the Dignity and Vocation of Women”), which highlighted motherhood and virginity as “two particular dimensions of the vocation of women” that find their “loftiest expression” in Mary.

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Francis, however, typically speaks of Mary as an everyday woman, promoting the idea that “love for the Madonna” will develop “popular piety, which needs to be strengthened.” He teaches the faithful to esteem Mary, no matter what form she takes.

“She is our mother, but we can also say that she is our representative, our sister, our eldest sister, she is the first of the redeemed, who has arrived in heaven,” Francis said at the Mass of the Assumption Aug. 15.

Hagstrom pointed out that Francis often refers to Mary as a pilgrim who precedes us in the journey of faith.

“His Mariology is a pastoral Mariology — practical, existential, and ‘earthy,’ ” she said. His simple and direct style of preaching “is a ‘new way’ to revive ancient piety and devotion to Mary. The content of Mariology is the same. But his style is part of the new evangelization.”

Francis told the general audience at St. Peter’s Square Oct. 23, “The life of the Holy Virgin was the life of a woman of her people: Mary prayed, she worked, she went to the synagogue.”

Mary lived her life “in the simplicity of the thousand daily tasks and worries of every mother,” Francis continued. “It was precisely Our Lady’s normal life which served as the basis for the unique relationship and profound dialogue which unfolded between her and God.” As a mother of two grown children, Jones said she can relate to this “every mother” Francis speaks of, if not his perfectly patient and loving Madonna.

Mary looked at the infant Jesus and “felt the same overwhelming sense of responsibility that all parents feel, and she knew that she would have no control over his des-

tiny,” Jones said. “She watched him make decisions that made him famous and infamous, and watched at his feet as he was put to death as a criminal. What kind of woman is this?!”

Francis teaches that this woman was not simply a lowly handmaid, but an intelligent and independent thinker, “a Jewish girl who was waiting with all her heart for the redemption of her people.” He says three words — listening, deciding and acting — sum up Mary’s attitude toward life.

Mary “is attentive to reality itself and does not stop on the surface but goes to the depths to grasp its meaning,” Francis said at the May 31 general audience.

He spoke of the “realism, humanity and practicality of Mary who is attentive to events, to problems.”

He said that “Mary goes against the tide” by entrusting herself totally to God. Hagstrom said Mariology, like Christology, has a high dimension that emphasizes Mary’s privileges, such as the Assumption, and a low dimension that “stresses her proximity to us (model disciple, mother of the church, etc.). Francis seems to stress her proximity to us.”

“Mary is the prototype for all humans. She is the human mother who has human wisdom, strength and faith that we all (male and female) should try to emulate,” Jones said.

The section concluding Francis’ Nov. 24 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (see Page 15), is titled “Mary, Mother of Evangelization.”

In it, Francis again speaks of Mary paradoxically, using language scholars would describe as both antiquated and enlightened.

“She is the handmaid of the Fa-

December 6-19, 2013

ther who sings his praises. She is the friend who is ever concerned that wine not be lacking in our lives.

She is the woman whose heart was pierced by a sword and who understands all our pain. As mother of all, she is a sign of hope for peoples suffering the birth pangs of justice,” Francis writes.

He also clarifies the mystery of Mary’s attributes, “Through her many titles, often linked to her shrines, Mary shares the history of each people which has received the Gospel and she becomes a part of their historic identity.”

He then presents yet another image of Mary, one ubiquitous in Latin America: Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“As she did with Juan Diego,” Francis writes, Our Lady of Guadalupe offers all people “maternal comfort and love, and whispers in their ear: ‘Let your heart not be troubled … Am I not here, who am your Mother?’ ” [Megan Fincher is a Bertelsen intern at NCR. Her email address is mfincher@ ncronline.org.]

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