Pope Francis’s Vision for the Common Good

Posted on 10/1/2015 12:27:00 PM

Earth Hands

By Nicholas Rademacher, PhD, Associate Professor, Religious Studies

This article was featured in Cabrini Magazine.

Pope Francis is a dedicated soccer fan.

His passion for the sport led him to publicly pledge his neutrality during the 2014 World Cup competition; many feared that a team with the pontiff’s backing would be unbeatable.

Later that year, he welcomed soccer players from around the world to compete in the first Interreligious Match for Peace at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico (Olympic Stadium) to help raise funds to support children who lack the necessary resources to complete their education.

This joyful event was representative of the Pope’s call for a “culture of encounter,” which entails cooperation among all people of good will to promote the common good.

This culture of encounter, an important theme in the Pope’s writings, articulates Francis’s vision for the common good, which encompasses a number of elements: dialogue across difference, collaboration among all people of good will for the empowerment of vulnerable populations, and openness to a right relationship with God.

Before the match, Francis clarified his definition of a culture of encounter, inviting the players to “bear witness to the feelings of brotherhood and friendship” that are characteristic of sport both on the field and off, in everyday life¹.

Together, he continued, the players would “render testimony to the ideals of peaceful civil and social coexistence, for the edification of a civilization founded on love, on solidarity, and on peace.” On this occasion, Francis focused on interreligious cooperation.

By design, a number of religions were represented in the friendly competition. He reminded the players that the values that characterize the sport—“loyalty, sharing, acceptance, dialogue, trust in others”—are “common to every person regardless of race, culture, and religious creed.”

While acknowledging common ground, Francis also insisted that we must respect the integrity of each person’s individual religious identity. “Believers of different religions, while preserving their own identity, can coexist in harmony and mutual respect,” he insisted.

The friendly soccer match served as a demonstration of this concept and an appeal to the millions of soccer fans worldwide to do the same.

While his address before this interreligious soccer match more narrowly provided insight into how this culture of encounter points to the possibility of a just and peaceful civilization, his recent and much anticipated encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’(“Praised Be”), emphasizes this point more broadly².

In it, Francis expanded his analogy of a culture of encounter beyond the field of play in an athletic contest to include everyday life on planet Earth.

“I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home,” said Francis, referring to this planet as “our common home” and encouraging cooperation across differences to preserve and even restore the ecosystems within which we live.

He noted specifically that this conversation included everyone: “Whether believers or not, we are agreed today that the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone.”

Francis underscored this inclusive view by inviting representatives from different walks of life to present the document.

Metropolitan John Zizioulas, spiritual leader and theologian of the Orthodox Christian Church; Carolyn Woo, business leader and president of Catholic Relief Services; John Schellnhuber, founder and director of the Institute for Climate Impact in Germany; and Valeria Martano, an educator in Rome, presented the document on the occasion of its promulgation and spoke on its significance from their unique perspectives.

This seemingly disparate group of individuals, brought together over a shared concern for human suffering and the vitality of nonhuman creation, underscored the Pope’s emphasis on dialogue and cooperation for the common good.

He called for dialogue among nations; dialogue among and between communities of faith, reason, and science; and dialogue among people of different religious traditions.

In Laudato Si’, the Pope stressed that care for poor and marginalized people in the world is inextricably linked to care for creation. “A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate the questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” he said.

He compassionately explained the ways in which the poor are impacted by the ecological crisis from devastation of food sources to loss of meaningful work. Evoking the concept of solidarity, the Pope reminded us that we are interdependent, that we are part of “one single human family.”

Indeed, we live in a global community. It is increasingly difficult to ignore how our individual lifestyle choices and our public policy impact people around the world.

“An interdependent world,” the Pope explained, “not only makes us more conscious of the negative effects of certain lifestyle models of production and consumption which affect us all; more importantly, it motivates us to ensure that solutions are proposed from a global perspective, and not simply to defend the interests of a few countries.”

Heightened awareness of suffering and increased motivation to make a difference are essential elements of social transform around poverty, political marginalization, and ecological destruction.

It takes courage and tremendous effort to move beyond the social structures that ensure one’s own comfort. In the Pope’s view, divine encounter is a necessary dimension of social change.

In fact, Francis places encounter with God at the center of the culture of encounter. Speaking to the Christian dimension of social change, Francis calls for individual and communal conversion, echoed in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium(“The Joy of the Gospel”).³

“Thanks solely to this encounter—or renewed encounter—with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption,” said Francis.

This encounter with God can move us from self-serving attitudes and behaviors to attitudes and behaviors that are oriented around serving others, according to the Pope. Authentic transformation on the personal level will lead, in turn, to social transformation.

Clearly, the Pope’s culture of encounter is more verb than noun. It is typified by action, by building bridges across difference and reaching out to those who are marginalized, changing our personal habits and social context to support the development of all people.

The culture of encounter is an invitation to listen to the voice of the poor, empowering them to be fully included in society and ensuring all people have proper nourishment, equal access to education, suitable health care, and dignified work.

Francis challenges every inhabitant of the Earth, our common home, to remain open to personal transformation and to work daily for the transformation of the social order, to ensure the inherent human dignity of every person on the planet.

In other words, from the soccer field to the arenas of finance and government, his is a call to “service beyond oneself.”