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Those who do not notice differences will say that it is the challenges of the contemporary that have changed, but the pastoral in migrants of Pope Francis is not that of Benedict XVI.
“Brothers all”, the latest encyclical from the Argentine pontiff, contains more evidence in support of this assumption. Joseph Ratzinger was not and is not a populist, but his words on the management of migratory phenomena are repeated as a mantra by those who believe that hospitality cannot be guaranteed to all, that is, towards everyone. Ratzinger, to be honest, was and is a staunch pro-European. But the “right not to emigrate”, as we read in the famous passage on this subject, must be guaranteed “even before” the right to emigrate. It is around this hierarchical primacy, both legal and cultural, that a substantial difference can be identified between the ideas of the two popes. The “right not to emigrate”, for Benedict XVI, is the first hypothesis on the ground. The one that should be pursued first.
In “All the Brothers”, so to speak, Jorge Mario Bergoglio also write the following: “It is our duty to respect the right of every human being to find a place where they can satisfy not only their basic needs and those of the family, but also fulfill themselves as a person.” And the aforementioned hierarchical primacy disappears. In the encyclical, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires also emphasized the “right not to emigrate”, but the general narrative focuses on that “duty” that Westerners have to guarantee a “right to welcome”, which is absolute. and it cannot stop being so. Also on the communicative level, then, some discrepancies cannot be traced: how many appeals in favor of hospitality has Francis made during these seven and a half years? And how many times, on the other hand, has Ratzinger made migration the center of his interventions?
And then there is the context of the encyclical: the Pope thinks of migrants within a work in which he reiterates his staunch opposition to sovereignty, neoliberalism, and absolute forms of capitalism. In reality, even sovereignty has often criticized the “financialization” of the real economy and, therefore, also sovereignty, in ideological terms, can be branded as an opponent of the “bad” distribution of world resources, but this is another question. For example, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, when indicating the solutions, does not favor the hypothesis of restoring national identities, but rather suggests the need for “global governance”, which also includes the reform of the UN: “The true quality of the different countries of the world – points out the bishop of Rome –it is measured by this ability to think not only as a country, but also as a human family, and this is especially evident in critical periods ”. the multiculturalismin short, it can only represent the only panacea. And this is a reflection that, in all likelihood, you will not find among Ratzingerian texts, which are much more focused on defending individual national traditions.
And if it were not clear enough, it would be enough to read what Pope Francis affirms shortly after, again in the encyclical signed in Assisi on the feast of the Saint of Italy: “No national state today isolated – Bergoglio insists: it is capable of guaranteeing the common good of its own population “. In short, the walls are a counterproductive phenomenon, while the openings guarantee brotherhood. It becomes almost banal to rewind the tape to remember how Ratzinger, on the other hand, distinguished himself by putting a kind of praise of the value of the walls, of the inflated “borders” in white: “… the walls are ultimately ourselves and we can only be to the extent that we are willing to let ourselves be square like stones …”. Attention: supporters of “pastoral continuity” will continue to see similarities between the two approaches. And in part it may even be true, if only because no one knows how the resigning Benedict XVI would have reacted to the challenges posed by this society. But something, as we have seen, we know.
