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| Leonardo Boff |
“Important to note in this context, however, is that Boff himself was publicly criticized and silenced in 1985 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) – for his unorthodox writings that boldly go quite far against Church doctrine. Thus, in 1992, he (Boff) both formally left the Franciscan Order to which he had belonged and he also then publicly left the Catholic priesthood.” (1P5).
Dear friends, I don’t need to
say much on this. Just read attentively the following interview—published by
OnePeterFive—and hear for yourselves what this notorious public enemy of the
Catholic Church Leonardo Boff has to say about the man you call “Pope” Francis:
On 25 December 2016 the Brazilian Leonardo Boff,
one of the most prominent theorists and operatives of Latin American Liberation
Theology, gave a candidly revealing and manifoldly informative interview to the German regional newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. Due to his confident, if not presumptuous,
openness, the 78-year-old Boff (b. 14 December 1938) speaks about several
matters of moment which we otherwise would not so easily hear about.
For
example, he reveals the following:
o How and why Pope Francis did not meet Boff in Rome,
as planned, on the day before the second Synod on the Family in 2015 – because
the pope was angry at the Thirteen Cardinals’ Letter and was trying to quiet
the situation (and himself?) ahead of the Synod;
o How Cardinal Walter Kasper recently told Boff that
Pope Francis has some “big surprises” planned;
o How Pope Francis intends to allow the Catholic
Church in Brazil to permit married priests, as his friend Cardinal Claudio
Hummes has been requesting now for some time;
o How Pope Francis had requested from Boff material
for the writing of his own encyclical Laudato Si and how the
pope thanked him afterwards;
o How Boff considers Pope Francis to be “one of us,”
meaning one of the supportive sympathizers with liberation theology.
In the following, therefore, I shall translate
parts of this important interview. The words of Leonardo Boff will speak for
themselves. Important to note in this context, however, is that Boff himself
was publicly criticized and silenced in 1985 by
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – then the Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) – for his unorthodox writings that boldly go quite
far against Church doctrine. Thus, in 1992, he both formally left the
Franciscan Order to which he had belonged and he also then publicly left the
Catholic priesthood.
Q: Liberation Theology of Latin America – one of
whose most prominent representatives you certainly are – has now received new honours
[and encouraging support] from and through Pope Francis. [Is there now to be] A
rehabilitation also for you personally, after your years-long struggles with
Pope John Paul II himself and with his highest defender of Doctrine, Joseph
Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI?
Francis is one of us. He has turned Liberation
Theology into a common property of the Church. And he has widened it. Whoever
speaks today of the poor, also has to speak of the earth, because it, too, is
now being plundered and abused. “To hear the cry of the poor,” that means to
hear the cry of the animals, the forests, of the whole tortured creation. The
whole earth cries. Also, says the pope – and he thus quotes one of the titles
of one of my books – we have to hear simultaneously the cry of the poor and the
cry of the earth. And, for sure, both need to be liberated. I myself have dealt
in the recent past with this widening of the Liberation Theology. And that
[this environmental dimension] is also the fundamentally new aspect in Laudato Si.
Q: ….which is now in the “ecological encyclical” of
the pope promulgated in the year 2015. How much Leonardo Boff is in Jorge Mario
Bergoglio?
The
encyclical belongs to the pope. But he has consulted with many experts.
Q: Has he read your books?
More than that. He asked me for material for the
sake of Laudato Si. I have given him my counsel and sent to him some
of what I have written. Which he has also used. Some people told me they were
thinking while reading: “Wait, that is Boff!” By the way, Pope Francis directly
told me: “Boff, don’t send the papers directly to me.”
Q: Why not?
He said: “Otherwise, the Sottosegretari (the
employees of the Vatican administration, editors [of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger]) will intercept them and I will not receive them.
Rather, send the things right to the Argentine Ambassador [at the Holy See]
with whom I have a good connection, then they will safely land into my hands.”
For that, one needs to know that the current Ambassador at the Holy See is an
old friend of the pope from his time in Buenos Aires. They have often drunk
together mate [a special drink from Argentina, a sort of tea].
Then, one day before the publication of the encyclical, the pope had someone
call me in order to thank me for my help.
Q: A personal meeting with the pope is still
outstanding?
He [Pope Francis] has sought a reconciliation with
the most important representatives of the Liberation Theology: with Gustavo
Gutierrez, Jon Sobrino, and likewise with me. I have said to him with respect
to Pope Benedict – respectively Joseph Ratzinger – “But that other is still
alive, after all!” He did not accept this. “No,” he said, “Il Papa sono io”
– “The pope, that is me!” We were welcomed to come. That is where you see his
courage and his decisiveness.
Q:
Why then has your visit not yet worked out?
I
had received an invitation and I even had already landed in Rome. But just that
day, immediately before the beginning of the [second] Synod on the Family in
2015, 13 cardinals – among them the German Cardinal Gerhard Müller – rehearsed
a rebellion against the pope with a letter addressed to him which then, o
surprise!, was published in a newspaper. The pope was angry and he told me:
“Boff, I have no time. I have to establish calm before the synod begins. We
will see each other another time.”
Q: But also with the hoped-for calm, that did not
really work out, either, did it?
The
pope feels the sharpness of the headwind from his own ranks, especially coming
from the U.S. This Cardinal Burke, Leo Burke, who now – together with your
retired Cardinal Meisner from Cologne – has already written another letter [to
the pope]; he is the Donald Trump of the Catholic Church (laughs). But, unlike
Trump, Burke has now been neutralized within the Curia. Thanks be to God. These
people really believe that it is up to them to correct the pope. As if they are
above the pope. Something like this is unusual [sic!], if not unprecedented in
the history of the Church. One may criticize the pope, one may have discussions
with him. That is what I have often done. But, that cardinals publicly accuse
the pope of the spreading of theological mistakes or even heresies, that is – I
think – too much. That is an affront with which a pope cannot put up. The pope
cannot be judged, that is the teaching of the Church.
Q:
With all your enthusiasm for the pope – what is it with these Church reforms
which so many Catholics have expected from Francis; but where, in fact, not so
much has yet happened?
You
know, as far as I understand, the centre of his interest is not any more the
Church – and certainly not the internal operation of the Church – but, rather,
the survival of humanity, the future of the earth. […] I believe that there is
a hierarchy of problems for him. When the earth perishes, all the other
problems have also been taken care of. But, with regard to the questions within
and about the Church: wait and see! Only recently, Cardinal Walter Kasper, a
close confidant of the pope, told me that soon there will be some great
surprises.
Q:
What do you expect?
Who
knows? Perhaps a diaconate for women, after all. Or the
possibility that married priests may be again engaged in pastoral care. That
is an explicit request from the Brazilian bishops to the pope, especially from
his friend, the retired Brazilian Curial Cardinal Claudio Hummes. I
have heard that the pope wants to meet this request – for now and for a certain
experimental period in Brazil. This country with its 140 million
Catholics should at least have 100,000 priests. But, there are only 18,000.
Institutionally, this is a catastrophe. No wonder that the faithful now go in
droves to the Evangelicals and the Pentecostals, who fill this personal vacuum.
If now all these thousands of already married priests might again exercise
their office, this would be a first step toward an improvement of the situation
– and, at the same time, it would be an impulse [and a sign] that the Catholic
Church now loosens the fetters of obligatory celibacy. [my emphasis]
Q:
If the pope were to make a decision in this sense and direction – would you
yourself, as a former Franciscan priest, also again undertake priestly duties?
I personally do not need such a decision. It would
not change anything for myself because I still do what I have always done: I
baptize, I give Christian burials, and if I happen to come into a parish
without a priest, then I also celebrate Mass together with the people.
Q:
Is it very “German” to ask whether you are permitted to do that?
Up
to now, no bishop whom I know has ever either criticized it or forbidden it.
The bishops, on the contrary, are happy and tell me: “the people have a right
[sic] to the Eucharist. Just keep doing it!” My theological teacher, Cardinal
Paulo Evaristo Arns – who just died a few days ago – was, for example, of a
very great openness. He went so far that, when he saw married priests sitting
in the pew during Mass, he had them come to the altar and he then concelebrated
the Eucharist with them. He did it often and said: “You are, after all, still
priests – and you will remain so!”
[End
of translation]
Comment:
In
the context of this blunt interview – and with Boff’s apparently newly
discovered “orthodox” criticisms of those people who now even dare to criticize
a pope – it might be worth recalling and reading what Leonardo Boff had earlier
said, back in 2001.
For, in that 2001 interview with the Internet site Communità Italiana,
he also spoke bluntly concerning both Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself – then
Head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II
– and Ratzinger’s own putatively provocative defence of certain traditional
positions and doctrines of the Catholic Church:
What I can say is that the
dominant tendency in the Vatican under this pontificate [of John Paul
II] is highly fundamentalist. A Cardinal like J. Ratzinger who
publishes an official [Vatican] document in which he says that the only true
Church is the Catholic Church and that the rest are not even
churches, that the only legitimate religion is the Catholic
religion and that the others have no faith (they are only convictions and
beliefs) – he commits religious terrorism [sic] and is in
grave theological error, as well. [my emphasis]
The
poignancy – and irony – of these Boff comments increases when one considers
that, in 1970 in Munich, it was Cardinal Ratzinger himself who was one of the
committee of select professorial guides of Leonardo Boff’s own doctoral
dissertation de Ecclesia: concerning “the Church as Sacrament” in
light of some of the world’s purported experiences. The main title of Boff’s
dissertation, in German, was: Die Kirche als Sakrament im Horizont der
Welterfahrung.
In the larger context of this recent 25 December
2016 interview with Leonardo Boff, we also would like to remind our readers of the work of the Vatican specialist, Dr. Sandro
Magister, who has repeatedly pointed to the possibility, even the probability,
that Pope Francis himself will grant Brazil the permission to allow for married
priests. We also remember that we ourselves earlier reported how – right after
the publication of the 13 Cardinals Letter by way of Dr. Magister himself – there also
came trustworthy reports about Pope Francis’ own outburst of anger over that polite, but firmly orthodox,
initiative of the cardinals. Thus in his confident bluntness, Leonardo Boff now
unexpectedly confirms the earlier work of journalists, both of Dr. Magister
himself and, in a small way, of mine own.
—1P5
For the scandalous "Encyclical" of "Pope" Francis, Laudato Si, see: On the Anti-Catholic Encyclical of Francis I
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