Brisbane Talk

This is speculation on my part, but if you were part of a world where selfrighteous murderers brought your nation to the edge of social and political collapse, if you had no experience of the management of people but you were put in charge of a dysfunctional if highly motivated group of Jesuits trapped in their divisions and misgivings with one another, I’d understand you were in a job you were ill equipped for and would most likely fail in it.

That is what Bergoglio faced at 36. And I don’t doubt we will hear more of his failures to act, his indecision and his confused performance as Jesuit Provincial.

He has already made partial amends for his, the Jesuits and the Catholic Church’s failures during the time of the military dictatorship by leading calls for a Churchwide act of repentance for the sins of that time.

This pope knows how to go to his knees to find God’s mercy, humbly accept failure and do what he has done already – declare himself a sinner.

Of course, Ignatius Loyola doesn’t enjoy a reputation for being one of the most perceptive analysts of the human heart because he’s gushing and effusive, unqualified in his positive assessments of people and issues or just over the top in affirmation of everyone and everything, all the time.

As a retreatant travels through the First and Second Weeks, Ignatius introduces two forms of review of prayer that not only need to be used throughout the retreat but ever after. I am referring to what he calls the “discernment of spirits” which we might more readily appreciate as “reading mood swings”. They are one of the first things about the spiritual life that he learnt during his convalescent period following his wounding at Pamplona.

He was deeply bored by being flat on his back, unable to get out and move about for nine months, and could only amuse himself by reading romantic novels. He tired of that and was reduced to reading the lives of saints.

But he found that where the romantic novels left him feeling despondent about the life he was missing, the lives of the Saints ̶ especially Dominic, founder of an order of mobile preachers, and St Francis of Assisi, founder of an order of mendicant friars who embraced poverty, humility and service ̶ moved Ignatius deeply. This is something to keep in mind when considering Bergoglio’s choice of Francis for his papal name.

Ignatius felt what he called consolation – being at peace, enriched, uplifted, moved to gratitude and urged to respond when he read the lives of the saints in contrast to the despondency he felt after putting down the romantic novels.

Consolation and desolation are the revelatory moments and indicative tools Ignatius came to use especially for the First and Second Weeks of the Exercises so the retreatant could become more deeply in touch, in an experiential and