Teachings of Pope Francis

I have just contributed these two sub-sections in Wikipedia in the article on Pope Francis.

Announcing Jesus and rejecting worldliness

In both his first homily as Pope and in his first address to the cardinals, Francis talked about walking in the presence of Jesus Christ and stressed the church mission to announce him. In the audience with the cardinals, he said:

Stimulated by the Year of Faith, all together, pastors and faithful, we will make an effort to respond faithfully to the eternal mission: to bring Jesus Christ to humanity, and to lead humanity to an encounter with Jesus Christ: the Way, the Truth and the Life, truly present in the Church and, at the same time, in every person. This encounter makes us become new men in the mystery of Grace, provoking in our hearts the Christian joy that is a hundredfold that given us by Christ to those who welcome Him into their lives.

In his homily, he stressed that "if we do not profess Jesus Christ, things go wrong. We may become a charitable NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of the Lord." He went on to teach that "When we do not profess Jesus Christ, we profess the worldliness of the devil... when we profess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord, we are worldly".

The theme of rejecting "spiritual worldliness", has been described as a "leitmotif" of his teachings even before he became Pope. Understanding this worldliness as "putting oneself at the center", he said that it is the "greatest danger for the Church, for us, who are in the Church."

Morality as response to God’s mercy

Bergoglio views morality in the context of an encounter with Christ. This encounter is “triggered” by mercy, and the “privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin.”

And thus, he says, a new morality --a correspondence to mercy-- is born. He views this morality as a “revolution”: it is “not a titanic effort of the will”, but “simply a response” to a “surprising, unforeseeable, and ‘unjust’ mercy”. It is “not a ‘never falling down’ but an ‘always getting up again.’”

According to his biography, The Jesuit, he changed his life when, at 17 years of age, he started a day of student celebrations by going to confession. "A strange thing happened to me...It was a surprise, the astonishment of an encounter...This is the religious experience: the astonishment of encountering someone who was waiting for you... God is the one who seeks us first."

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