Elderly pope begins his last lap with a youth festival in Portugal

Does Pope Francis have a messianic complex? Or is he just stubborn? Perhaps, neither. But at four-and-a-half months shy of his 87th birthday, and struggling with increasingly declining health, he refuses to slow down.

This coming Tuesday (August 2) he will travel, with about 70 journalists on his plane, to Lisbon to preside at World Youth Day (WYD) festivities. It is the first of three international trips that are on his schedule in just the next eight weeks. He's supposed to visit Mongolia (yes, you heard that right -- Mongolia!) from August 31 to September 4 and then make the jaunt up the coast to Marseille, the French port city on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, for a September 23-24 visit.

The pope's obsession with ending the Russo-Ukrainian war 

If I were the pope's doctor, or a close friend and confident (which he, like his recent predecessors, does not seem to have), I would have strongly -- very strongly -- advised him not to make the puddle-jump to the Portuguese capital in the height of Europe's hottest summer on record. And I would have certainly tried to talk him out of doing the long-haul to Mongolia where there are like five Catholics. Ok, there are maybe fifteen hundred. And, yes, this is the pope of the peripheries who wants to shower his love on the "little guy" and refocus the world's attention on the forgotten and insignificant place in the world. But that is not what the trip to Mongolia is about.

Perhaps you believe that narrative, and it is certainly what a few of those 70 scribes traveling in the back of his air-bus will uncritically convey to their readers. But the trip to Mongolia -- which sits between Russia and China on a large swathe of God's green earth that's comparable in size to all of Western and Central Europe -- is more about Francis' desire to forge closer ties with China and his obsession with trying to end the war that Russia unleashed on Ukraine a year-and-a-half ago. As obsessions go, it's a very noble one. And Francis must be applauded for doing all in his power (extremely limited as it is) to stop this insanity. But a Roman pope can play absolutely no role in this, as some of us have repeated many times since February 2022 when Vladimir Putin ordered his generals to invade neighboring Ukraine, a country that has been sovereign since 1991.

A gathering of young people focused on an old pope

But let's go back to World Youth Day. Portugal's capital is the latest tourist destination for an event the Vatican engineered early in the pontificate of John Paul II (Santo Subito) to use young Catholics -- aged 16 to 35 -- as props for the hierarchy's attempt to show the world that the Church is still relevant and will remain so in the future. Many -- perhaps most -- of the 500,000 to one million "youths" who will be in Lisbon for the big jamboree with the pope will have their travel and lodging subsidized by their parish, diocese or national bishops' conference. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, this is not a "Catholic Pride" event that attracts kids who feel they are misunderstood, mistreated or even discriminated against because of their faith. Please, spare us this nonsense. World Youth Day is something meticulously planned and orchestrated by the Church's bishops and cardinals. Just watch how many of them show up in Lisbon. There will be at least 40 from the United States alone.

Sorry to be so unenthusiastic about WYD, but there are no reliable statistics to support the hierarchy's assertion that this global event -- which has been taking place every three or so years since 1985 -- has any real impact on keeping the vast majority of those who are coaxed into attending it actively engaged in the life of their parish or the Church. A recent article in La Croix that looked at the "fruits" of WYD 2016 in Krakow proved it. Polish Church officials who were interviewed claimed, contrary to all statistical evidence, that this Catholic Woodstock (as some have also unthinkingly called World Youth Day) has stopped young people from walking away from the Church. It has not.

Certainly, any initiative to bring teens and young adults together around issues of faith -- prayer, fellowship, sincere discussion and questioning -- is to be encouraged. But World Youth Day, with anecdotal exceptions to the side, does not seem to be achieving anything more than being a public relations event. It uses a whole lot of kids, a good number of whom are not really interested in the core message or teachings the world's mostly conservative bishops are preaching, and places the main focus on the oldest person at the event -- the pope! If he's not there, you can bet that all those bishops would not be bringing all those kids there, either. That's the reality. And, as the old saw goes, there will likely be a number of babies born next May who will be given the name Francesco or Fatima. And with the current trend to be different, there will probably be few infants nine months from now who are named Lisbon or some variation of that, like Lisbona or Lisboa.

A plea for peace before Our Lady of Fatima

As for Pope Francis, he will likely use his five days in Portugal to hammer away at some of his greatest concerns for our world. This includes building greater friendship and fraternity (sorority, too) among people at every level -- in families, small communities, cities, nations and the world at large. It also entails caring for planet earth, which is God's creation and the "common home" of all of us who are fortunate enough to be alive. And, above all else, you can expect the pope to forcefully make the case for an end to all wars and armed conflicts around the world, most especially the one Russia has unleashed against Ukraine.

Of course, the Argentine pope -- who, let's be very clear, is extremely critical of the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Alliance better known as NATO -- will continue to convey to the world (perhaps more quietly than before) the idea that Russia was provoked into attacking its neighbor, even while he expresses his heart-wrenching concern and urges people to pray for the poor, "battered Ukraine" and the people who are dying there.

Francis' brief visit to the Marian Shrine of Fatima next Saturday is expected to be the centerpiece of his peace-making efforts during his weeklong, rock star appearance in traditionally Catholic Portugal. The famous pilgrimage site some 130 km (about 80 miles) north of Lisbon is where the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared to three shepherd children in 1917 and allegedly gave them a message about how God would obliterate the world if people did not convert to -- what? the Catholic faith? It's not clear. But the children said Our Lady instructed them to tell the pope that he must consecrate atheist, communist Russia to her "immaculate heart" and that the world must repent in order to stop God's hand from wiping out the earth.

The real message of hope and comfort that the world needs

All the popes, dating back to the reign of Pius XI (1922-1939), seem to have obeyed the message conveyed by the young "visionaries". That includes Pope Francis, who consecrated both Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary last year, despite the fact that no one in either of those overwhelmingly Orthodox countries requested such an act or was consulted about it. But the elderly and increasingly frail pope is amazingly riveted on the idea that he can somehow be a major player in bringing an end to the criminal and increasingly delusional Mr. Putin's war on Ukraine, which, course, is not the way Francis has characterized the "conflict" at all.

So back to the original question(s). Does Pope Francis have a messianic complex? Or is he just stubborn? The answer is not clear. Not to me, anyway. I just pray he makes it through this trip without experiencing any further complications to his health. That's because the Jesuit pope has been a great inspiration to the Catholic people who have tried to faithfully live and and implement the teachings and spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). But ever more than that, it is because he has been absolutely electrifying in reviving our Church's image and its mission to provide Christian hope and comfort to our very troubled world, a hope based on faith and trust in the God of "tenderness and compassion" who "forgives all (our) guilt". That's the real message the world desperately needs to hear.

(Wishing all our readers a restful and relaxing August, the next "Letter from Rome" will be published in September.)

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