When the new Archbishop of Milan stood up to give his first speech to his new diocese last Friday he wore a crumpled jacket over a faded clerical shirt. He said that he had proof of his “inadequacy” as leader of Europe’s largest diocese. Consider the names of his predecessors, he said, “illustrious [ones] like Angelo, Dionigi, Carlo Maria, Giovanni, Giovanni Battista, etc. But Mario – what kind of name is that?”
It’s true that few thought that Mario Enrico Delpini would succeed Cardinal Angelo Scola in Milan. Most expected another ecclesiastical heavyweight. According Church-watcher Rocco Palmo, five of Delpini’s nine predecessors in the past century have been either beatified, elected to the papacy, or both. In recent decades, archbishops of Milan have been intellectual titans, notably Carlo Maria Martini, the Jesuit biblical scholar, and Scola.
But Pope Francis has set aside these expectations. Until now, Delpini has served as an auxiliary bishop and vicar general of Milan. He has formed a deep bond with diocesan clergy and got to know Milan’s more than 1,100 parishes. He is nicknamed the “bicycle bishop” because of his habit of navigating the city on two wheels (seemingly without a helmet).
Palmo describes the Milan appointment as “arguably the most significant personnel choice of any Pope Francis will make”. So what does his choice mean? Simply that, when it comes to diocesan bishops, what matters most to Francis is that they are totally dedicated to their priests and people.
That is why, when he recently had to select a new vicar of Rome, Francis chose Archbishop Angelo De Donatis, who like Delpini served as a vicar general and oversaw the ongoing formation of priests.
This emerging pattern in major appointments won’t surprise those who have been paying attention to papal utterances. A few months after his election in 2013, Francis urged new bishops to be “profoundly bonded” to their communities. “I beg you, please, to stay among your people,” he said. “Avoid the scandal of being ‘airport bishops’.”
Under Francis, the face of Catholic leadership is changing. Jet-setting careerists are being edged out by unassuming cyclists like Delpini. The intellectually ambitious are being passed over in favour of those who pour their time into their people.
Is there any downside? At the risk of sounding perverse, the Church has occasionally benefitted from personally ambitious leaders who have mobilised the faithful far more effectively than less determined souls. Also, if the episcopate loses some of its intellectual heft it could find it even harder to influence public debates.
In the coming months, Pope Francis must fill some significant vacancies: Mexico City, Durban, Tokyo, Melbourne and Quito. He is likely to be looking within those dioceses for modest, hard-working equivalents of Delpini. If he succeeds in finding them, some of the world’s most important dioceses will find themselves in excellent, if unspectacular hands.
Morality’s new frontier
Almost 10 million British adults are diagnosed with at least one mental health problem each year. Around one in four adults in the UK have been diagnosed with at least one mental health problem over their lifetime. So this issue is rightly receiving active attention from the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and at the level of children’s societies, parishes and schools.
In a recent report, the think tank Theos provides a comprehensive description, listing more than 30 forms of mental disorder, and how they might be addressed. Many people who would not think of themselves as mentally ill will nevertheless recognise some tendency towards this condition or that.
This raises an important theological question: what is the degree of responsibility that can be imputed to decisions which are strongly influenced by a mental health condition and, if formal sin is involved, what capacity can there be for repentance?
We may describe the use of conscience as opening ourselves up to God’s voice and applying our reason in the light of the Church’s teaching. But there appear to be many mental conditions, from the mild to the seriously damaging, which threaten to falsify the process.
We can go further. Even in the absence of formal mental problems our judgments are influenced through our genetic inheritance, our upbringing and our experiences. We know, for example, that the first three years or so of a child’s life – while the personality is still malleable – are crucial to the internal attitudes and thus the inclinations of the future adult.
Our formal moral theology, which has understandably been concerned with distinguishing wrong from right, must more fully incorporate what the psychologists can teach us, not only about mental health but also about our internal tendencies which may influence what we decide even if we are not aware of them.
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