Future is in ‘a politics rooted in the people’

In his new book “Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future,: Pope Francis advocates a Copernican revolution in our politics. Instead of viewing politics from the places of political and economic power, he summons us to see it from the vantage point of the peripheries. For Francis, the “often forgotten people” are the true center of the political firmament.

Francis addresses our culture on its own terms to point out its spiritual vacuum. Western conceptions of liberty and equality have become untethered from the idea of solidarity and a vision of a truly common good. The “demagogic populism” of the far Right has germinated in the soil of an atomized and technocratic liberalism. The Left has its own populism, which claims to act in the interests of ordinary people but in reality looks down on their institutions and attitudes as backward and outdated.

Pope Francis is clear that neither the populism of the Right or the populism of the Left is adequate to our situation. “Only a politics rooted in the people, open to the people’s own organization,” Francis writes, “will be able to change our future.” As Pope, just as when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis seeks to encourage the development of leaders who are from within the poorest and least visible communities. Francis asks us to find ways to listen that will help make visible and vocal those who disappear within our urban culture.

Francis’ vision is shaped by Mary, Mother of God. The “Magnificat” articulates the two themes at its heart, as it speaks of a God who is born among the poor and the primary actor in their exaltation. It seems to me that initiatives which place the voices and needs of the poorest at the heart of political decision-making, are the revolution to which Francis is calling us. It has implications for the church as well as for civil society. Those who have “a heart for the poor” need to be nourished and formed in a society with the poorest at its heart. Then they will teach all of us how to act.