With the passing of Pope Francis, popular media is filled with images of the newly deceased Bishop of Rome, and the Catholic Church’s hierarchy, as the Council of Cardinals prepares to choose the next successor to Jorge Bergoglio. Conclave, a new movie highlighting the drama-filled succession process to choose a new pope, was recently trending as the #1 film on Amazon Prime. Pictures and tributes continue to pour out onto social media platforms highlighting the contentious leadership and legacy of Pope Francis.
While many positive epitaphs have been shared by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, a multiplicity of posts, comments, and discussions have emerged highlighting his reign over the Catholic Church, which was marked by doctrinal confusion, duplicity, and strategic changes enacted to liberalize the largest self-professing Christian Church in the world. Unlike Francis’ predecessors, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, who received mixed acclaim from the world stage upon their deaths due to pontificates marked by Catholic conservatism, Francis has received seemingly unanimous adulation from unbelievers of every stripe, creed, and tradition.
This praise is not tied to Bergoglio’s theological adeptness, decision-making, or moral clarity but instead, a vow of poverty taken as a Jesuit priest on March 12, 1960. As a result of decisions made that eschewed the influence of money in his life, Jorge is being celebrated by millions throughout the world today.
The Danger of Wealth
There is godly wisdom in avoiding the pitfall of the love of money. Jesus, the Son of God, believed this truth and boldly proclaimed it to His followers. The Apostles, the closest followers of Christ in His earthly ministry, recognized this as well and went as far as to declare money as a root of great evil.
1 Timothy 6:10 states, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
In the early church, countless examples of men and women who were shipwrecked and sidetracked by the love of money over the expansion of the Kingdom of God abound. Ananias and Sapphira held back offerings from a growing church to enrich themselves (Acts 5:1-11), false teachers seeped into the body of Christ to extort immature babes in Christ of their earthly riches (2 Peter 2:1-3), and numerous leaders walked away from their call to shepherd the flock of God for worldly gain (Philippians 2:20-21).
While the Word of God illustrates these falls to warn us against similar condemnation, the Bible is very balanced in its approach to exhort us to wisely steward earthly treasure as well. The Old Testament is replete with specific commands to build and pass down generational wealth as described in Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Torah. Additionally, Jesus taught on the topic of money more than any other earthly subject. Christ does at times call individuals to sell all they own and give to the poor to advance His rule and reign on the earth (Luke 18:22). He also instructed His followers to be good stewards of the time, talents, and resources the Lord provided them. Simply stated, wealth is viewed biblically as a morally neutral predicament when it is stewarded properly and does not result in idolatry. Poverty, pursued for its own sake, is not a means of godly gain and is potentially idolatrous if that calling is not specifically entrusted by the Lord.
The Snare of Poverty
From the inception of the Christian Church in Acts 2, the drift toward asceticism has always crept into the redeemed people of God. This worldly philosophy, having developed from the heresy of Gnosticism, elevates restraining the human body and punishing it for the sake of ascending to a higher spiritual realm. Rather than heed the instruction of the Apostle Paul to forsake unnecessarily chastising the body to instead seek the liberty of Christ, men, and women unnecessarily pit the physical world against the spiritual and forget that Jesus is Lord over both.
Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations — “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 2:20-23)
In Catholicism, the bent for, and attainment of, asceticism has always been pervasive. In Pope Francis holding to a vow of poverty for over sixty years of his life, he modeled for the Catholic Church, and the watching world, what it means to pursue basic principles that denigrate the glory of the human body designed by the Lord to enjoy the world He created.
The Root of Admiration
Having recognized the biblical admonition to unnecessarily avoid poverty and physical self-restraint to attain godliness, why is the world currently celebrating the poverty of Jorge Bergoglio? Influencers rejoice that the Pope autographed and sold a Lamborghini Huracán RWD gifted to him in 2017 to donate over $800,000 to charity. Many praise Francis for only having roughly $900 to his name when he passed into eternity. While giving to charity and being open-handed with wealth is commendable, if these acts are not infused with the knowledge of Christ in whom is all the riches of God, then they are done in vain.
The glamorization of ascetic poverty is an indication the world has been sufficiently discipled in latent Marxist thought. The narrative of the class struggles the Proletariat, the working class, has faced against the Bourgeoisie, the capitalist and ruling class, has found a makeover in the papal legacy of Francis. The Catholic Church, an organization that has exercised outsized influence and authority in the world, actively worked under the public messaging of Jorge Bergoglio to create a narrative castigating its earthly riches and ascendant history as ill-gotten gain to instead elevate the marginalized and impoverished of this world. In his pursuit to break down the worldly veneer the Romanist movement has become affiliated with over the centuries, the unbelieving world celebrated Francis as it hoped to witness the breakdown of one of the final vestiges of traditional history in the demise of the wealthy Catholic Church.
The Call of Discipleship
The response of the world to the pursuit of poverty in the life of Pope Francis should serve as a call to discipleship amongst pastors, lay leaders, and the redeemed people of God. Many evangelicals have hopped into the masses of men and women who celebrate the asceticism of Francis while unknowingly affirming the false underpinnings of the secular and godless mindset that undergirds this behavior.
Shepherds in the body of Christ should view this as an opportunity to re-engage with young believers, particularly men, to help them understand a proper, biblical view of attaining wealth to advance the Kingdom of Heaven. In equal measure, these same believers should be called to reject the idol of pursuing earthly treasure at the expense of their souls, as well as their responsibility to care for the poor, widowed, and disenfranchised.
Finally, Christ followers should be reminded that the Lord is gracious to call us into His harvest fields (Luke 10:2), and though our earthly labor for the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58), the ultimate fulfillment of Christ’s reign of righteousness conquering over the ungodly, wealthy, and worldly tendencies of the unrighteous will occur in the New Heaven and New Earth at His Second Coming. Above all, men, and women, in the body of Christ should be reminded the marks of a life worth celebrating are the fear of the Lord, honoring the teachings of the Word of God, and a consistent pursuit of Jesus. Poverty does not equate to godliness.
