Pope Francis has done the unthinkable. That is to say, he has done what only a spiritual leader with a prophetic commitment to truth could do. Spoken the truth; the truth that hurts the establishment. Also, the truth that liberates; the truth that, like the monsoon rains to nature, cleanses the deep crevices of corruption in the nature of man. The truth that, in purifying, liberates, heals and transforms. In understanding our present theme, it’d help if readers keep in mind the continuity between Jesus’s self-revelation as ‘the truth’ and His zeal in cleansing the temple.

What did Pope Francis say? Well, he said, in the main, four things.

-That the abuse of nuns in the Catholic Church is rampant.

-That such nuns, nearly always, endure this atrocity and degradation in silence. He attributed two reasons to this. (i) They fear ‘retaliation’ if they complained. They have slim chances of surviving if, out of extreme exasperation, they complained. (ii) Secondly, they are hardwired, in the name of spiritual formation, to subordinate themselves to ‘authority.’ As a result, they believe that resisting the will of those who violate them is not an option and that they are bound, or doomed, to endure their privation.

-That their plight is tantamount to being ‘sex-slaves.’

-That it is time this reality is addressed and redressed. The supreme Pontiff said, this will be done.

Now my readers will understand why I have boundless admiration for Pope Francis. I wish there were a bishop like him, or remotely like him, in a few churches! Why? Because, the hallmark of the spiritual vitality of a religious establishment is its capacity to blaze from within itself the prophetic fire to reform itself. As long as this strength remains, there is ground for hope. The sad reality is that this is hardly obtained in Christendom today. As a result, where the prophetic fire should burn and purify, the diabolically oppressive stifles truth and criminalizes the cry for justice. With that, the corruption of a religious system hardens itself against its regeneration. This is the truth writ large over the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The irony is that the church, which preserves the annual ritual of ‘meditating on the Cross,’ mocks the Cross in practice for the rest of the year by nailing the truth down into the coffin of ecclesial repression, as is being done to the four nuns who are in solidarity with their fellow nun who, they believe, has been outraged by a bishop.

We need to consider the implications of what Pope Francis in the light of biblical norms. The Pope says, with the sort of clarity that makes his words ripple with the power of truth, that there is slavery thriving in the church. I don’t know to what extent the general public is aware of what it takes for a Pope to tell truth of this kind! Let me only say this for the time being. Pope John Paul I died, in mysterious circumstances, within a short span of assuming office. Bearing witness to truth-truth inconvenient to the establishment-is as dangerous now as it was at the time of Jesus Christ. The High Priest willed Jesus dead. He was; within days. That’s how brutal as it can get.

Seen thus, what stands out in brilliant spiritual radiance is the exemplary courage or is it desperate determination? of the complainant nun. Her detractors, who can bay at her in the cowardly courage of being in a worked-up crowd, cannot approach her courage and endurance even remotely. The question to ask is not, “Why did she take it lying down twelve times?” The question to ask is, “From where did she, given the way the situation stands, get the grit to complain at the thirteenth?”

The second aspect of the slavery of these nuns is that they are slaves to authority. This means, among other things, that the holy men involved are dangerously deluded about the meaning of ‘authority.’ They have, worse, made the sisters misunderstand its meaning and scope. They should turn to Jesus and learn from Him what it is to be in ‘authority.’ Jesus’ authority was used to ‘set the captives free’ (Lk. 4:18). The ‘authority’ of these sex maniacs enslaves godly women. And that, in the name of Jesus Christ, whose daughters they are! It is about them that Jesus said that they turned the temple “into a den of thieves.” The most depraved thief is one who steals the soul of a woman, defenceless against his power.

When an issue like the cry for justice and redressal by a nun comes up, the church could respond to it in either of the two ways.

– Respond politically. We see it routinely that the political response to every allegation against those who wield power over others is reprisal and suppression, with stigmatizing the complainant as the principal strategy. This was done to the complainant nun in this case. Every attempt was made to calumny her as morally perverse -temptress out to undo a holy man. The (unfairly) accused rapist is her victim. This version found resonance with some, because of the deep-seated prejudice they have about women, which goes back, all the way, to the garden of Eden. Adam fell because of Eve! No man is safe in the proximity of a woman (We see the same anxiety-ridden prejudice at work in the alibi that the proximity of menstruating women will ruin Lord Ayyappa’s spiritual powers!).

– Respond spiritually. It involves confronting what happened, working towards repentance, reparation and reconciliation; so that a new beginning can be made. (After all, the church expects the laity to make confession of sins, small and big). This is basic to the liberation that Jesus offers. To be liberated, in a spiritual sense, is to be transformed. This possibility is suppressed by the ‘political’ response, which ensures that the depravity is protected and not remedied. The church by resorting to the political option, and rejecting the spiritual path, degrades itself and discredits its authority. It squanders the right to proclaim the good news. The church comes to be seen as the bad news. This anxiety underlies the Pope’s prophetic stance.

This brings us to the fourth thing Pope Francis has said: that the situation cannot go on like this. It has to be addressed. The church has to cease to be a political establishment and be ‘born again’ as a spiritual entity. Truth-speaking of the riskiest kind is the investment that the Pope has made to signal this transformation. People of good will all over the world need to be in solidarity with his mission in this regard.

I am not a Catholic. But ever since Francis became Pope, I have been attending, randomly, Sunday services in Catholic Churches. I have a deep sense of reverential affinity to Francis and I am glad that he is so named. St Francis is my favourite saint; but I am an admirer more of prophets than of saints. Pope Francis, though named after a saint, is a prophet. But, then, that was indeed what St Francis of Assisi was: a prophet disguised as a saint; one who incarnated truth in love!

I value and respect celibacy; but not as an enforced requirement, but as a special and fiery vocation, which can only be between the individual and God. No system – political or religious – has any right to this sacred sanctuary. What trespasses into this mysterious sphere of personal destiny smacks of the totalitarian. It is inherently political; and it militates against the Way of Jesus Christ.