The Pope in Ajaccio and the missionary soul of popular spirituality
By Gianni Valente
Rome (Fides Agency) – There is a people of God, gathered and sustained by Jesus, who continues to implore his presence and consolation in the afflictions of life, depositing their hopes in the words of simple prayers. And it has been this grateful recognition of the vitality of that town that has driven Pope Francis, on the Christmas threshold, to make a lightning trip to French lands. The Holy Father has participated on Sunday, December 15 in the closing session of the Congress “The Religiosité Populaire in Méditerranée”, held in Ajaccio, Corsica.
References to popular spirituality go through all the teaching of Pope Francis as a living and fruitful thread. It is a recurring note that does not arise by justifications of a nostalgic type, or with the intention of “rehabilitating” practices and gestures that certain “progressive” circles disqualify as naive expressions that must be discouraged or, in the best case, tolerated after a necessary “purification.”
The Pontiff, even before being a bishop of Rome, has always highlighted the missionary value of the simplest and daily devotion acts of the people of God. During his priestly and episcopal ministry, he has been able to experiment that in such manifestations “underlies an actively evangelizing force that we cannot underestimate: it would be like despising the work of the Holy Spirit” (Evangelii Gaudium, § 126).
Pope Francis does not remember popular spirituality only as an expression of inculturation dynamics through which each people manifest faith in Christ in their own forms. The feature that, for Pope Bergoglio, characterizes the deep origin of this spirituality is its “theological” dimension: its intimate connection with the work of the Holy Spirit, who guides the people of God “towards the truth and leads it to salvation ».
The Holy Spirit, as the Bishop of Rome constantly remembers following the tradition of the Church, gives the faithful people a “instinct” of faith -the sensus fideii, that helps him recognize and follow the action of the grace of Christ. This sensus fidei of the people of God, gift of the spirit and sign of its predilection, manifests itself with special strength and clarity in what Pope Francis, even in his programmatic Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, defines as “spirituality” or “popular piety” . This popular piety, a set of simple and authentic gestures and practices, reflects how “the people continually evangelizes themselves” and must be recognized as a genuine expression of the spontaneous missionary action of God’s people (Evangelii Gaudium, §122) .
In his first apostolic exhortation, Pope Francis takes up quotes from the appearance of the V Celam Assembly held in 2007 – to highlight “the wealth that the Holy Spirit displays in popular piety for his free initiative” (EG, § 124). Popular piety, defined as an “spirituality embodied in the culture of the simple”, carries with it a missionary dynamism that drives out of oneself and to be pilgrims. In this regard, the Pope recalls: “Walking together to the sanctuaries and participating in other demonstrations of popular piety, taking the children themselves or inviting other people, is in itself an act of evangelization” (EG, §124).
The current bishop of Rome has repeatedly distanced himself from the arrogance of those who belittle the gestures of popular spirituality as mere manifestations of natural religiosity. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis writes: «Whoever loves the faithful people of God cannot see in these actions a mere natural search for divinity. They are the manifestation of a theological life animated by the action of the Holy Spirit, which has been shed in our hearts ”(EG, §125).
In the preface to Enrique Ciro Bianchi’s book about the theology of the people, the Pope firmly reiterates that «popular spirituality is not the Cinderella of the house. They are not the ones who do not understand, those who do not know. Sorry when someone says: “To those you have to educate them.” We are always pursued by the ghost of illustration, that ideological-nominalist reductionism that leads us to despise concrete reality. And God wanted to talk to us through concrete realities. The first heresy of the Church is Gnosticism, which the apostle John already criticized and condemned. Still today there may be gnostic positions in the face of this fact of spirituality or popular piety ».
The late Argentine priest Rafael Tello, a key figure with Father Lucio Gera in the theology of the people, also deeply appreciated that custom of gestures and practices with which the people evangelizes themselves “better than even the priests usually do it” . According to Tello, the request to baptize children represents the most important manifestation of this spirituality.
In recent weeks, the announcement of the papal trip to Ajaccio has generated enlightening reflections between French scholars and commentators. Camille Dalmas, on Aleteia.org, has documented with historical precision the surprising rebirth of the brotherhoods in Corsica. For his part, the essayist Jean Duchesne has stressed how popular spirituality acts as an “antidote” against clericalism and contemporary elitist intellectualism.
In addition, Professor Yann Raison Du Kleuziou, interviewed by Marie-Lucile Kubacki for the weekly VI, has resumed the intuitions of the Dominican and Sociologist Serge Bonnet and the priest Robert Pannet. These authors, already in the seventies, documented how popular devotion was criticized by elitist circles that, “in the name of the modernization of Catholicism,” they ended up imposing insidious clericalism. These sectors not only generated feelings of guilt among popular classes, but, ironically, they said “speak in the name of the people.”
(FIDS Agency 12/14/2024)
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