The pandemic hit hard in 2020. Disruption broke in at all levels. The Vatican, as the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, was no exception. Programs in Rome were canceled or held in a low-key form. Was it then a stand-by or – even worse – a wasted year? Not at all.

2020 was a year of intense activity behind the scenes, especially in the area of expanding the borders of Rome’s “catholicity”. The catholicity of Roman Catholicism is one of the two pillars of the whole system: while it is “Roman” – i.e. centered on Rome’s hierarchical institution, focused on Rome’s catechism and canon law, based on its sacramental machinery– it is also “Catholic” – i.e. ever-expanding its synthesis, assimilating trends and movements, aiming at becoming more fully universal through absorbing the world. Outside of the spotlight of media attention, it was the catholicity of Rome that gained a great deal from the COVID year.

While its ordinary events were negatively impacted, the long-term, “catholic” vision of the Roman Church was fueled with impressive consequences. Pope Francis was the architect and proactive director of all these moves. In observing the recent global activities of the pope, the Argentinian philosopher Rubén Peretó Rivas compared them with those of an international organization and asked whether Pope Francis aims at becoming the “Chaplain of the United Nations”. His 2020 “universal” initiatives indeed look like those of the United Nations in language, scope and content. Three projects deserve to be mentioned in this respect.

“All Brothers”

It has been rightly called the “political manifesto” of Pope Francis’s pontificate. In fact, there is a lot of politics and a lot of sociology in the latest encyclical “All Brothers” (3rd October 2020). In it, Francis wants to plead the cause of universal fraternity and social friendship. To do this, he speaks of borders to be broken down, of waste to be avoided, of human rights that are not sufficiently universal, of unjust globalization, of burdensome pandemics, of migrants to be welcomed, of open societies, of solidarity, of peoples’ rights, of local and global exchanges, of the limits of the liberal political vision, of world governance, of political love, of the recognition of the other, of the injustice of any war, of the abolition of the death penalty.

These are all interesting “political” themes which, were it not for some comments on the parable of the Good Samaritan that intersperse the chapters, could have been written by a group of sociologists and humanitarian workers from some international organization. The vision proposed by “All Brothers” is the way in which Rome sees globalization with the eye of a Jesuit and South American pope.

Its basic message is sufficiently clear: we are all brothers as children of the same God. This is Pope Francis’ theological truth. When “All Brothers” talks about God, it does so in general terms that can fit Muslim, Hindu, and other religions’ accounts of god, as well as the Masonic reference to the Watchmaker. To further confirm this, “All Brothers” ends with a “Prayer to the Creator” that could be used both in a mosque and in a Masonic temple. Having removed the “stumbling block” of Jesus Christ, everyone can turn to an unspecified Divinity to experiment with what it means to be “brothers” – brothers in a Divinity made in the image and likeness of humanity, not brothers and sisters on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ who has died and risen for sinners. “All Brothers” has genetically modified the biblically understood meaning of fraternity by transferring it to common humanity. In doing so, it has lost the biblical boundaries of the word and replaced them with pan-religious traits and contents. The papal document is deist, at best theistic, but not in line with biblical and Trinitarian Christianity.

“All Brothers” shows that the mission that Pope Francis has in mind is not the preaching of the Gospel in words and deeds, but the extension to all of a message of universal fraternity. This is the theological framework of the pope as he stretches the boundaries of the catholicity of his church.

The Global Compact on Education

Soon after releasing “All Brothers”, there was another indication of Pope Francis’ universalist agenda. In a video message aired on 15th October 2020, he commended the “Global Compact on Education” (GCE), i.e. an ambitious plan in the field of education worldwide to bring about a “change of mentality”. The GCE is worked out with Mission 4.7, a U.N.-backed advisory group of civil and political leaders aiming to meet the educational target (numbered 4.7) of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SDG number 4 strives for “quality education”, and within that goal, target 4.7 aims to “ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development”.

This is the U.N.’s globalist language, but the Roman Catholic language significantly overlaps with it. GCE speaks of “human fraternity” regardless of and beyond religious beliefs. In the plan, the watchwords are wholly secular. The dominant formula is “new humanism”, explained in terms of “common home”, “universal solidarity”, “fraternity” (as it is defined in “All Brothers”), “convergence”, “welcome”, overcoming “division and antagonism” …  The “new humanism” is coupled with the “universal brotherhood” so as to embrace the whole of humanity in a human, common project. In the “new humanism” Rome reads its increased catholicity, the U.N. its globalist agenda.

In the video Francis also praised the U.N.’s role and contribution in offering a “unique opportunity” to create “a new kind of new education”, and quoted Paul VI’s 1965 message of appreciation of the U.N. in which he lauded the institution for “teaching men peace”. Francis is certain that this plan will bring about “the civilization of love, beauty and unity”. No explicit Christian reference is made and there is no indication that the root problem is human sin. It seems that as we will have better education opportunities for all, the “new humanism” will come. This is in line with the U.N. vision, but is realistic from a Christian viewpoint? 

The Economy of Francesco

If “Brothers All” is the theological framework and GCE is the project in education, a third area that Pope Francis has strongly pushed forward is an initiative in the field of economics. Making reference to Francis of Assisi’s reconciled view between humanity and the earth and drawing inspiration from it, the initiative was called the “Economy of Francesco” (EF).

In a video broadcast on 21st November, the pope called young economists, entrepreneurs and business leaders “to take up the challenge of promoting and encouraging models of development, progress and sustainability in which people, especially the excluded (including our sister earth), will no longer be – at most – a merely nominal, technical or functional presence. Instead, they will become protagonists in their own lives and in the entire fabric of society”. The goal is to strive towards “a pact to change the current economy” and to “give a new soul to the global economy”, and indeed to radically overthrow it in the wake of the “popular movements”.

Again, this project is another extension of the catholicity of the Roman Catholic Church, with no explicit reference to a Christian framework, but falling in line with an apparently globalist view of an economic reality marked by the “new humanism”.

As Francis promoted EF, he also included as partner in the initiative the “Council for Inclusive Capitalism”, meaning the magnates of the Ford Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Bank of America, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the like. The Council is formed by around 500 companies, which together represent 10.5 trillion dollars in assets under management and 200 million workers in over 163 countries. This is to say that simply painting Rome’s catholicity as anti-capitalist is wrong. Pope Francis aims at including all parties in his “new humanism”. In these relationships with the global companies there are also strategic opportunities for funding the initiatives of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a win-win relationship.

As already mentioned, Francis’s activism on the global scene in 2020 prompted someone to label him as “Chaplain of the United Nations” because of the striking convergence between the “new humanism” that he has been advocating in the areas of fraternity, education and the economy and the goals of the U.N. In doing what the pope does, the impression is not to be given that Francis is awkwardly operating outside of Roman Catholic principles and convictions. While there are apparent similarities with the ethos of an international organization such as the U.N., what the pope did in 2020 is an attempt to implement the vision cast at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

In one of its foundational documents on the church, Vatican II argues that the church is a “sacrament”. Here is how it explains what thismeans: the church is a “sacrament” because she is “a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (Lumen Gentium 1). The idea of the global “human fraternity” and the Roman Church being a sign and instrument of it is embedded in the self-understanding of Rome. With these recent projects, Pope Francis is making it plain what it means for the Roman Catholic Church to be a “sacrament” in the world in the realms of global politics, education and economy, i.e. uniting the whole of humanity around itself.

In his 2013 document “Evangelii Gaudium”, Francis wrote that “initiating processes rather than possessing spaces” (n. 223) is what he wanted to achieve. “All brothers”, GCE and EF are all processes initiated by the expansion of Rome’s catholicity. Those who are used to think of Roman Catholicism as a “Roman” system (e.g. dogmatic, rigid, locked-in) and not as a “Catholic” project (e.g. open-ended, absorbing and expanding) may be surprised and even puzzled. But Roman Catholicism demands that its Roman-centered institution be unceasingly fertilized by its evermore Catholic horizon, and vice versa.