Pope Francis may be remembered as the man of mercy, which is also the theme of his anomalous jubilee. Bergoglio's jubilee is widespread all over the world, it is not Rome-centric, and it is also a jubilee protracted over time, because it is planned for a year but which will probably see the jubilee doors open for much longer, perhaps forever or closed. only after the Pope's death.
It is a jubilee without emphasis, subdued, and therefore traced back to its origin as a pilgrimage (understood as the man who seeks) and the first pilgrim was Bergoglio who personally went to open many of the jubilee doors, even in lands where it extends to the Islamist threat as in the heart of Africa. But the Pope had to do the hardest act of mercy recently, inviting Muslims to pray in Catholic churches and to remember that Islam is not just violence. There has been no shortage of criticism of the Pope for this position, on the one hand there are those who argue that the "sharp" (not to say forked) language of the Jesuit Bergoglio is a skilful tool to undermine the barbarism of Islam, on the other c 'are those who argue that this “do-goodness” risks being functional to the Islamist design, which is considered equally subtle. To make a more careful discussion, in reality, the problem must be traced back to the identification of the crisis of civilization we are witnessing at the beginning of this millennium. It is not easy, because there are many open issues on the table.
The economic crisis
Unlike what is perceived in reality we are facing an oil crisis, in the sense that oil is no longer worth anything, despite the conflict with the Caliphate and the contractions of production, the price of crude oil does not rise. For the first time in its contemporary history, Saudi Arabia, for example, has had to contract public spending, and this certainly entails a problem for the producing countries with the consequent choice of field and probable sympathies for the Caliphate. There has been a lot of talk about the monetary crisis, both of the causes and of the remedies, Draghi has worked more than a miracle, but in fact we are unable to circulate money in the West and in particular in Europe, with the consequent depression of industrial production. Even the choice of Great Britain to leave the euro is certainly linked to the need for that country to circulate more currency, paradoxically the same need that Greece has.
The crisis of the values of the West
Pretext or not, contempt for our values and the lifestyle of the West is certainly the most used lever for the recruitment of the Caliphate. A contempt that winds even among those who are not Islamic. We Westerners ourselves find it difficult to recognize our constitutive values and accept the complexity of modern life. The widespread impoverishment, especially of the middle class, and the labor crisis lead to the crisis of democratic and representative institutions with the consequent crisis of intermediate bodies, such as trade unions, parties, trade and cultural associations, with the only exception of religious but also lay volunteers. Among the democratic values of the West there is respect for the individual, sanctioned with the universal declaration of human rights, but which today is threatened by the issue of migrants and all the problems that the issue of migration brings to daily coexistence . The most striking case of the crisis in the West is certainly Turkey. A country, Turkey, which in a short time, from a positive example of Westernization, has turned into a regime bordering on despotism, which undermines the meaning and role of NATO itself. Trump called NATO a useless tinsel. Even if the attempted Turkish coup is considered an unacceptable fact, it is necessary to understand how it has been possible that in the last decade Turkey has screwed towards a pre-dictatorial situation.
This is the scenario of crisis that Bergoglio is also facing, a scenario that is almost a "collapse" of a civilization, and he wants, beyond the strategic considerations that can be made, to reconcile the Christian values of which mercy is a fundamental hinge, with the values of modernity and secularism, without being a modernist and secularist. This is the great vision of Pope Francis, in a situation of involution he does not want a clash of civilizations between Catholics and lay people, and he does not even want a generic clash of civilizations with Islam, also in this sense the mission of mercy must be understood. . In fact, he circumscribes the issues not on the basis of trivially religious or trivially political issues and if it is necessary he also wanders the Church within it, but on the contrary smooths out the conflicts inside and outside the Church, tries to reconcile and not divide, he seems to remind us every moment the Gospel saying: "peace on earth to men of good will". This is perhaps the clash of civilizations that Pope Francis deems useful to fight, between those who are a man of good will and those who are not, regardless of whether you are Christian, secular, Jewish or Muslim. Obviously, the Defense does not do theology and has its stringent and mandatory prerogatives - it does another job - but it should still appreciate Bergoglio's lesson. Because we will win this war even if we understand that we are on the right side, and the right side is not that of Catholics against the laity, of the West against the East, but that of mercy and tolerance against intolerance and contempt. for Man and the Human Family.
