Everything Francis is saying and doing is aimed at pressing this question: Are Christians going to follow Jesus or not? That should be the question on the first anniversary of this new pope. Are we Christians ready and willing to follow Jesus? How can we then serve the world?
Are we ready to love, embrace, forgive, and show mercy as Jesus would have us do and Francis has tried to exemplify? Are we ready to stand with and give our lives for the poor and call the global economy not just to charity, but to justice? Are we willing to take “a preferential option for the poor,” as Catholic social teaching describes it, the way Francis has and apply it to both our personal and public lives?
Pope Francis has lifted up the priority of the poor in ways that are challenging the world from the top to the bottom. I had a meeting with Jim Yong Kim this week, the president of the World Bank. Kim, who has already met with Pope Francis, said that preferential option for the poor is his driving motivation as a “banker,” which is changing the mission of the World Bank. I heard a top political operative on the “religious right” say on a national news show that Pope Francis has placed the poor at the center of the gospel where they belong. My question to the powerful broker would have been, “How is that going the change your life and your public policy commitments?”
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