• 3 months ago
Panorama.S2014E13.The.Popes.Revolution
Transcript
00:00Tomorrow, Pope Francis meets the Queen at the Vatican.
00:05One year on, he's confronting the financial and sexual scandals
00:10his predecessor couldn't cope with.
00:13The Church was considered a sort of global culprit for all these scandals.
00:19The Pope's making enemies amongst the rich and the powerful,
00:23but Francis is putting the poor at the heart of his mission.
00:27The Pope clearly says to us, do keep a special eye on the poor.
00:32This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.
00:38So can this Pope bring a revolution to the Catholic Church,
00:42where others have failed?
00:44But he is aware of the dangers.
00:46Yes.
00:50Yes.
00:58They call it the Francis effect.
01:01The Pope who is greeted like a rock star whenever he appears.
01:07Tens of thousands of people pack St Peter's Square in Rome
01:11at his weekly audience to catch a glimpse of him.
01:15Francis is bringing disillusioned Catholics to the Vatican,
01:19and the Pope is making enemies amongst the rich and the powerful.
01:25Francis is bringing disillusioned Catholics back to the Church
01:29with his common touch and his hard-hitting words.
01:33There's no doubt about the Pope's popularity,
01:36but who is Francis really?
01:38And are the changes he's bringing to the Church for real,
01:42or are they more about style than substance?
01:45Above all, can he really satisfy the enormous expectations that he's raised?
01:51He's becoming the moral voice of the world.
01:54People are listening to him.
01:56That's what the religious leader is supposed to be.
02:00But in becoming the moral voice within the Church,
02:03Francis is meeting resistance, making enemies.
02:07What we perceive is that the honeymoon of the Pope is going to finish,
02:12and in a short time we might have all these silent resistances
02:17coming out more loudly.
02:22In his speeches, the Pope's been spelling out
02:25why the Church needs a revolution.
02:42A year ago, the shock resignation of the old Pope, Benedict,
02:46exposed the parlous state of the Catholic Church.
02:50Benedict admitted he didn't have the stamina to carry on.
02:54Scandals were rocking the Church.
02:56Corruption, sex abuse of children, gay intrigues.
03:00Some of it even leaked by his own butler.
03:09When the Cardinals met in conclave to choose a new leader,
03:13they knew the next Pope had to save the Church.
03:18One year ago, the Church was considered a sort of global culprit
03:23for all these scandals.
03:27Massimo Franco is one of Italy's foremost political commentators,
03:31an expert on the Vatican.
03:35The Church had arrived to such a miserable condition
03:39that it had to behave as it did.
03:43And the conclave was a great surprise, a happy surprise.
03:53When Francis was elected, he stepped into the limelight,
03:57not with the usual formal words, but a simple Italian greeting.
04:01Buona sera.
04:06And with that, the first Latin American Pope
04:09began to transform the style of the papacy.
04:14CHEERING
04:16The stuffy formality has gone out of the window.
04:20Pope Francis doesn't use the papal limousine
04:23and he won't wear the special red papal slippers.
04:27The Pope tends to ring people up out of the blue.
04:31He left a jokey message when some nuns weren't at home.
04:35WHISTLE BLOWS
04:44The Pope's not a superman, he told a paper,
04:48but he loves football and having his photo taken with his fans.
04:54Francis has become a global phenomenon,
04:57with his Pope app and 17 million followers on Twitter.
05:03His wish is to show the world that to be a Pope,
05:09you are a leader, but at the same time, you are one of them.
05:15And this is his philosophy, this was and this is,
05:18and this will continue being his philosophy of life.
05:23An Argentinian priest who knew him back home
05:26experienced the Pope's extraordinary personal touch
05:29in St Peter's Square.
05:32He said, what are you doing here? What are we doing here?
05:36He was laughing. He gestured for me to get in.
05:41The first thing I thought was, nobody's going to believe this.
05:47I was struck by the Pope's serenity, the way he looks at people.
05:51He's seeing each individual person.
05:57Putting the individual back at the heart of the Church
06:00is what Francis has been doing for years, where he came from.
06:06He was from one of Latin America's great cities,
06:09Buenos Aires in Argentina.
06:14He was born Jorge Bergoglio,
06:16into a family of working-class Italian immigrants.
06:21He was one of five children.
06:26This is his sister, Maria Elena, in a rare interview filmed at home.
06:32Ever since I can remember, he's always been very present in our lives.
06:37He's always been very warm and protective.
06:47In the milonga clubs at night, they still dance the tango,
06:51just as the young Bergoglio did with his girlfriend.
06:55Until one day, during confession,
06:57he experienced a powerful urge to dedicate his life to God.
07:05Our father was happy with Jorge's decision to become a priest.
07:09It was a little harder for our mother.
07:12He was her son and he was leaving.
07:16But she was happy.
07:18Mum lived to see him ordained.
07:21Dad didn't. He died very young.
07:28Jorge Bergoglio quickly became head of the Jesuits,
07:32then Archbishop of the Great Metropolitan Cathedral in the Plaza de Mayo.
07:37But he never forgot his humble origins.
07:41He always used the subway, not a chauffeur.
07:48For 20 years, Archbishop Bergoglio came to this barbershop off the square
07:53to catch up on the gossip and the football scores.
07:58He bought his paper from the stand on the corner
08:01until the vendor got a call from Rome.
08:04It was the Pope cancelling his subscription.
08:10One of the Pope's closest friends in Buenos Aires is a rabbi.
08:14They wrote a book together on religion.
08:18He is a leader, a natural leader,
08:20who knows how to combine humbleness and leadership,
08:27to be very close to the people.
08:34It's in the villas here, the slums,
08:37you see the social deprivation the Pope wants the Church to focus on.
08:41In doing so, he's pushing into controversial political territory.
08:46Pope Francis says he wants the Church to be a field hospital
08:50treating the wounded.
08:52He's focused on his experiences here in the slums of Buenos Aires.
08:56He's putting the poor at the heart of his mission
08:59to change the Catholic Church.
09:06It's Sunday morning,
09:08and Father Juan Isasmendi is celebrating Holy Communion.
09:12Archbishop Bergoglio ordained him
09:14and asked him to dedicate his life to the poor.
09:18He made us certain that only by practising our pastoral ministry
09:23as if we were missionaries, and getting close to people,
09:27would Christ's message flower in their hearts.
09:34As archbishop, Bergoglio doubled the number of priests in the slums.
09:39They deal with poverty, violence and drugs.
09:42Everyone here knows Father Juan.
09:47How are you?
09:49What do you say?
09:55Father Juan showed me the football stadium of San Lorenzo.
09:59It's the team the Pope supports,
10:01but it lies alongside streets which are no-go areas.
10:06The effects of Paco, a cocaine-based drug, can be seen everywhere.
10:12The Church provides a safety net
10:14for the street people, the addicts and the prostitutes.
10:21They feed 120 of the poorest people every day at the Church
10:25and help them find jobs.
10:30Nahuel was abandoned on the street as a baby.
10:33He's still homeless, but the Church has been a lifeline for him.
10:38To these men, the Pope isn't just a remote figure in Rome.
10:45He does many things no other Pope did before.
10:50He is great, a good guy.
10:53When I listen to him speak, I say,
10:55this man is big, he's cool, yeah, he's a genius.
11:09Francis is still the champion of the poor,
11:12but now in the grandeur of the Vatican.
11:15When the Pope appointed his first cardinals,
11:18he made it clear he was shifting power in the Church,
11:21away from Europe to the developing world.
11:26Benedict appeared in public for the first time since his resignation.
11:30People saw it as a sign he backed Francis in tackling the curia,
11:35the Church's governing body.
11:37This Pope doesn't want to be led by the curia.
11:41The other one was a prisoner of the curia.
11:44The Pope must change radically the curia.
11:47If he doesn't change radically the curia, he can be popular,
11:51he can succeed at world level,
11:54but he will not change, actually, the Church.
11:59The curia has been dominated by Italians for hundreds of years,
12:03but most of Francis' cardinals were from the New World.
12:09Vincent Nichols of Westminster was one of the exceptions.
12:14Well, I think he wants a College of Cardinals
12:17that reflects the distribution of Catholics around the world.
12:20I think he wants in the College of Cardinals
12:23people who live with and work alongside the poor,
12:26and I think he wants leaders from the great big cities of the world
12:31like Buenos Aires and Rio and Seoul and London.
12:38Three-quarters of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics
12:42live in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
12:46What do you think about Pope Francis?
12:48Oh, he's a nice, nice, nice father.
12:52Love him.
12:55More than half the cardinals are from Europe.
12:58Most from Italy.
13:00Now they're losing ground as Francis gathers new advisers around him.
13:06The Italians have done a marvellous job so far
13:09in being able to help the Holy Father to take decisions,
13:13but now is the time for professionalism.
13:15Now, today, the world is moving so fast, changing so fast.
13:18He's answering the needs of the times.
13:21Oswald Gracias is from India.
13:23He's one of the so-called leaders of Catholicism.
13:26He's also from India.
13:28He's one of the so-called C8,
13:30eight cardinals from the four corners of the world.
13:33They're the new power in the Vatican,
13:36and that's threatening the old guard.
13:39His critics are not usually open critics.
13:43They are people of the old curia
13:46who say that he's going too far with reforms,
13:50and they are telling that he's a prisoner of a sort of Gorbachev syndrome.
13:56So he's reforming too much and too much in depth
13:59so that he risks to destroy the Church.
14:02Every change is difficult.
14:05Every change has resistance.
14:07Every change makes people uncomfortable.
14:11But change is inevitable,
14:13and it's always important to make change
14:16before you're forced to make the change.
14:20It's not just within the Church that Francis is stirring things up.
14:24His new cardinal, Vincent Nicholls, received congratulations
14:28from a visitor once at the heart of British politics.
14:32But just days before, he'd upset David Cameron.
14:36Taking his cue from Francis,
14:38the cardinal criticised welfare cuts for removing the safety net for the poor.
14:44The Pope clearly says to us,
14:46do keep a special eye on the poor.
14:49And what I was saying was what had been told by the priests
14:52who work on the ground and people who were there alongside the poor.
14:56Now, you know, the causes of poverty are very complex,
14:59but nevertheless, there's something wrong when people are just left.
15:04And I think, you know, the Holy Father would understand
15:08and echo that directly himself.
15:17HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN
15:30In his keynote exhortation to the faithful,
15:33Francis launched a blistering assault on the whole capitalist system.
15:40This is pretty strong stuff.
15:42The Pope attacks what he calls the economy of exclusion,
15:45which deadens us, he says, to the misery of the poor.
15:49He's scathing about the current idolatry of money
15:52and he condemns tax evasion, corruption and debt.
15:58The Pope's words have infuriated conservatives,
16:01particularly in the US.
16:03The Republican Party's favourite radio shock jock attacked Francis.
16:07But the Pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here
16:11and has turned to pure Marxism, coming out of the mouth of the Pope.
16:18But Francis keeps on highlighting
16:20the world's most intractable social problems.
16:26His first trip was to Lampedusa,
16:29the Italian island where desperate migrants from Africa wash up.
16:33Many drown on the way, victims of people trafficking.
16:37You can't close her eyes or be insensitive to the sufferings of people.
16:42That's not the church which Jesus wants.
16:45Pope Francis is reminding us of this.
16:47You're not there just to correct people, you're there to help people.
16:51That's what you've got to do.
16:55The Pope also wants to get to grips
16:57with the most difficult international conflicts.
17:00One of his first acts was to wash the feet of young offenders,
17:04especially two Muslim women.
17:08Both of us believe that...
17:13..dialogue is the key to avoid conflicts.
17:20His Jewish friend is going with Francis to the Middle East next month
17:24to try and bring warring faiths together.
17:27How does Pope Francis think he can achieve anything in the Middle East?
17:31It's so difficult. What is he able to do?
17:33Special prayers?
17:35Special moments of spirituality?
17:38This is the diplomacy of a pope.
17:41The idea is to feel some deep sentiment of friendship
17:48to both of the sides.
17:54Before solving the world's problems, the Pope must tackle the Vatican.
17:59Every state within a state is used to running its own affairs.
18:03It has its own diplomats and financial institutions, its Swiss Guard.
18:08This was once the Renaissance court of the Borgias,
18:12the scene of plots and murder.
18:14But Francis has refused to play the king.
18:30In a clear break with tradition, Francis has chosen to live in Santa Marta,
18:36a modest guest house, not alone in the papal apartment.
19:00HE SPEAKS ITALIAN
19:07When the Pope says that he lives here for psychiatric reasons,
19:11he means for his sanity.
19:14He's surrounded here by more ordinary people,
19:17not isolated in a papal apartment
19:19under the influence of the Vatican's courtiers.
19:22How Francis lives is a rebuke
19:25to the Vatican edifice of status and power.
19:29He wants to say to all the cardinals and bishops
19:33who fight to get the best flats in the Vatican,
19:37listen, the time has changed.
19:40And this is a big challenge because I think that in the Vatican
19:44his choice has been very much disputed
19:48and is still disputed, although silently.
19:52The Pope invited his old friend from Buenos Aires
19:55to lunch in the guest house.
19:58He is surrounded in Santa Marta
20:01by very faithful and trustful people.
20:06Does he talk to you about the difficulties he faces in Rome?
20:10Of course. He's aware of that.
20:14Yes, he knows exactly what the problems are.
20:21Francis has demoted some of his predecessor's most powerful officials.
20:26The new Pope keeps his own diary, makes his own phone calls
20:30and he has an authoritarian streak.
20:34He's a man who knows very well what being a Pope means.
20:38So he's a man who knows what power is.
20:42He's a man with sometimes a short temper.
20:46He gets angry if somebody doesn't do what he has decided must be done.
20:59Francis quickly decided something must be done
21:02to end the financial scandals which have tainted the Curia.
21:09This medieval-looking tower is the Institute for Religious Works,
21:14also called Vatican Bank.
21:17For years, it was used as a conduit for dirty money,
21:20even involving criminal organisations like the Mafia.
21:31Nello Rossi, an Italian prosecutor who's tried Mafia cases,
21:35has investigated the Vatican Bank.
21:39The Vatican city-state is an enclave within the Italian state.
21:44Therefore, any financial institutions operating in it have no boundaries.
21:49There are no financial controls.
21:52For a long time, extreme secrecy prevailed and a lack of cooperation.
22:00The bank was established to give the Church financial sovereignty,
22:04but some accounts were misused.
22:09Some people were able to use the Vatican Bank for money-laundering purposes.
22:15It was like wading across a river without leaving a trace.
22:22They could send money into a secret account there
22:25and get it back through another bank.
22:33When international financial regulations were tightened up,
22:37the Vatican Bank was seen as toxic.
22:40In 2010, the police began to investigate.
22:44Italy's main banks stopped dealing with the Vatican Bank.
22:48The last Pope, Benedict, tried to clean it up,
22:51but was thwarted by powerful insiders in the Vatican.
22:54Were there strong people within the Vatican, perhaps,
22:57who didn't want those reforms to succeed?
23:01I can't say anything about this.
23:04It's a bureaucratic structure.
23:06Old habits and old ways of operating surely represented a resistance,
23:10as far as I could see, from the outside.
23:18But after Francis arrived, he increased cooperation with the authorities.
23:23After a two-year investigation, a senior Vatican official was arrested.
23:29Senior Scarano was charged with money-laundering and corruption.
23:36It's extraordinary that he could go to the Vatican Bank
23:39and withdraw 600,000 euros in cash, as he admitted himself,
23:44go out easily and come back to Italy without any checks.
23:51Scarano lived in this extravagant 17-room apartment,
23:56which he paid for, allegedly, when he used false donations
24:00to move money from offshore to the Vatican Bank.
24:03He denies the charges.
24:27Pope Francis has set up a new system,
24:30directly challenging the old curia.
24:33Now cardinals from different parts of the world and professional advisers
24:37will manage the Church's finances.
24:40The former director-general of the bank and his deputy
24:43are awaiting trial for violating money-laundering laws.
24:48The pope has even acknowledged that the Vatican Bank
24:51might have to be closed down.
24:54But whatever happens from now on,
24:56Francis says that the Church's finances
24:59must be based on transparency and honesty.
25:04We can perceive very well that there are tensions.
25:08Tensions with the powers that are within the Vatican
25:11and have been there historically for a long time.
25:13Yes, there are very much tensions with all the powers
25:18that have covered the dirty manoeuvres of the bank for years.
25:27In Rome, the pope is taking on powerful forces,
25:30but he too has been under pressure
25:33for what he did back home many years ago.
25:43Argentina is still scarred by the dirty war of the 70s
25:47and the pope, then Jorge Bergoglio,
25:49was a rising star in the Catholic Church.
25:54A right-wing military dictatorship ruled
25:57and thousands of young people, regarded as left-wing radicals, disappeared.
26:02Many were tortured and killed.
26:07Amongst them were some priests sympathetic to the class struggle,
26:11but many in the Church hierarchy collaborated with the military.
26:16It was a very, very terrible time,
26:21a dark time, a time of darkness.
26:24Jorge Bergoglio was head of the Jesuits.
26:29He demanded his priests stop working in a slum.
26:33It was risky politically.
26:35They refused.
26:37A writer on a left-wing paper here accused the pope of being complicit
26:42in the arrest and torture of two priests.
26:45One has since died and the other refutes the claim.
26:48The pope himself has strongly denied the accusation,
26:52saying he did what he could to save the priests.
27:01A friend of the pope's says she owes her life to him.
27:05Alicia Olivero was a lawyer forced into hiding during the dirty war.
27:10Jorge Bergoglio used to drive her secretly in his car
27:14to see her young son at school.
27:19He took a great risk because at the time Jorge was being followed
27:23and he was under surveillance.
27:25It was risky for me too because they were looking for me.
27:28So we were both in great danger.
27:34Alicia took me to the Jesuit school
27:37where Bergoglio brought her so long ago.
27:41All this has been stirred up since he became pope.
27:47I'd say Bergoglio's critics, who are very vocal these days,
27:50weren't quite so vocal at that time because no-one said anything.
27:54There were very few of us who dared speak out.
28:00Jorge Bergoglio helped many people.
28:02Could he have done more? I don't know.
28:05He did what he could. He did a lot.
28:08Maybe he could have done more,
28:10but I'm very grateful for the huge amount he did.
28:16He said, of course, that maybe that we had to do much more
28:24in order to save people.
28:26But when you are living in the middle of the drama...
28:31..you do what...
28:34..what you can.
28:41Deciphering just what he did in Argentina has become important
28:45to understand where the pope is coming from.
28:48Is he on the left or the right?
28:50And what does that mean for the church?
28:54Those who know the pope here say he's a more subtle figure,
28:58not easily categorised.
29:01I think we're making a mistake
29:03if we place him in a specific political category.
29:06He views reality according to the Gospels.
29:09I don't think those parameters exist in his heart.
29:12I think he's a profoundly traditional,
29:14but not at all conservative man.
29:20Francis has neatly sidestepped one issue,
29:23which has tripped up the church many times.
29:26The gay issue.
29:28The hypocrisy, as many see it, of condemning homosexual acts as a sin
29:33while rumours of a gay lobby in the Vatican persist.
29:40Francis gave a remarkable press conference on a plane
29:43soon after becoming pope.
29:45He made it clear that when it came to sexuality,
29:48it was the individual that counted, not church dogma.
29:53It was perhaps surprising,
29:55given the position he took publicly as Archbishop Bergoglio
29:59four years ago.
30:01When the Argentine government legalised gay marriage,
30:04he and the church opposed it.
30:09A theologian and gay rights activist,
30:11he said it was a mistake.
30:15He said it was a mistake.
30:18A theologian and gay rights activist, Marcelo Marquez,
30:22wrote to Bergoglio to protest.
30:25The Archbishop immediately rang him.
30:29So he tells me he mostly agrees with my opinion.
30:32He said he thinks Argentina is not ready for a same-sex marriage law,
30:36but it is ready for people of sexual diversity to have rights.
30:42However, he was in favour of a civil partnership law,
30:46that's what he said to me.
30:53So, privately, Bergoglio was more flexible and more liberal
30:57than his public stance suggested.
31:06I think these gestures and these symbols he's shown
31:09throughout this first year reveal that he is a strategist
31:13in evangelical terms and also political terms.
31:22Gestures and symbols may not be enough
31:25when it comes to tackling the biggest problem of all.
31:30The Pope has acknowledged the sexual abuse of children by priests
31:34has stained the church's reputation
31:36and cost it millions in compensation.
31:44But the sex abuse scandal is now about action, not words.
31:49And evidence from Argentina suggests the Pope's
31:52not always tackled this problem head-on.
31:58Sebastian Quattromo was one of thousands of children worldwide
32:02sexually abused by priests.
32:05It happened at the Marianista College in Buenos Aires.
32:10It was here I suffered sexual abuse, by the priests.
32:13And you were quite small at the time, you were 13?
32:16Yes, 13.
32:20Sebastian was brutally abused for years,
32:23by Father Pisiocchi, a teacher at the school.
32:29I was really scared and kept silent, unfortunately.
32:33I was afraid of what was going to happen.
32:36I was really scared and kept silent, unfortunately.
32:39There was a lot of abuse, violence and misuse of power.
32:47The priest was eventually prosecuted and jailed.
32:50Sebastian won a legal battle to get the school to accept responsibility,
32:55but they insisted he should keep silent about it.
32:59Sebastian wasn't happy and took the issue to Bergoglio's office,
33:03but he says the church backed the school on the confidentiality issue.
33:11My experience with the then Cardinal Bergoglio
33:14as head of the church in this city was very bad, very negative.
33:18I had to face a position where they did not acknowledge
33:21the seriousness of a crime such as the sexual abuse of minors.
33:25They minimised and underestimated the scale of the problem.
33:34We contacted the archdiocese in Buenos Aires,
33:38but no-one was available to speak to us about Sebastian's case.
33:48In Rome, Francis has set up a commission on sexual abuse in the church
33:53and his advisers insist there's a new, tough line.
33:59Zero tolerance is really the key word of the policy.
34:02Nobody has made any mistake.
34:04It's got to answer the law of the land, it's got to be penalised.
34:07But now we also have got to look ahead
34:10and make sure it doesn't happen again
34:13and also make sure there are policies for child protection.
34:20But campaigners say Francis's new commission is just a talking shop.
34:24The church is still failing to get to grips with this scandal.
34:29There has been for a long time a mentality, a culture of the secret,
34:35which prevented the church to confront in the right way
34:39these huge problems,
34:41so that the church still now is subject to attacks
34:46by people who say that it is not doing enough.
34:51Francis wants to move forward now.
34:54He's getting the church to consult Catholics everywhere
34:57on how to bring the teachings on the family into line with modern life.
35:02Abortion, birth control
35:04and the rights of divorcees to receive the sacraments.
35:07These are all thorny issues.
35:11For Pope Francis, the real challenges are yet to come.
35:15The faithful love him, but Francis has yet to prove
35:19that he can bring about real, lasting change in the Catholic Church.
35:24He is a very stubborn person.
35:26He will continue working and fighting...
35:34..very carefully, through very clever ways, intelligent ways.
35:41Francis may have sidelined some of the church's most powerful officials,
35:46but they're still lurking in the corridors of the Vatican.
35:50Yes, there are enemies.
35:52They have gone underground because now he's very popular,
35:55but I'm sure that if there are problems, they'll mushroom,
36:00they'll come to the surface
36:02and will point a blaming finger towards Francis.
36:09There's now a precedent for what could happen
36:12if Francis fails in his revolution.
36:14His predecessor resigned, worn out by the cares of papal office.
36:20If he doesn't succeed in bringing about change,
36:23will he resign, do you think? What will he do?
36:26No, he is a fighter. He is a fighter.
36:30He will not resign.
36:35The Pope is still regularly in touch with his old friends back home.
36:40They're all aware of the history of papal Rome,
36:43the intrigues and machinations,
36:45the mysterious end some papacies have come to.
36:52I believe he has strong enemies in the Vatican, cardinals.
36:56There's a lot of power, a lot of money.
36:58In fact, I've told him clearly, be careful.
37:02The Borgias are still there.
37:06But he is aware of the dangers.
37:08Yes.
37:12Yes.
37:16But at the same time, he believes that God will help him.
37:24Pope Francis has millions of the faithful urging him on.
37:28But the Church bureaucracy has hundreds of years of experience
37:32in protecting its interests.
37:35The battle is far from over.
37:45© BF-WATCH TV 2021