The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 71

Vatican City, Oct 16, 2018 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, superior general of the Jesuits, said in an interview Monday that Pope Francis consciously calls himself the Bishop of Rome, instead of using grander titles.

"Very frequently we forget that the pope is not the chief of the Church, he's the Bishop of Rome," Fr. Sosa told EWTN in an interview Oct. 15.

"As the bishop of Rome, he has another service to do to the Church, that is, to try to [bring about] the communion of the whole Church."

By convoking the youth synod, taking place in Rome Oct. 3-28, Francis is exercising his role as pope by bringing together a group “of his own peers” to make a “contribution to the communion of the whole Church,” Sosa said.

“Fr. Sosa is certainly correct to say that the pope is the Bishop of Rome, but it would be a mistake to infer from that title that the Holy Father is merely ‘first among equals,’” Chad Pecknold, Associate Professor of Theology at the Catholic University of America, told CNA.

 

Pecknold told CNA that popes often and correctly speak of their “brother bishops,” but that the Petrine office is unique.

The pope “holds an office of supreme authority over every bishop in communion with him, and of course over the faithful too. It isn’t a charism of dominance but of paternal care - the popes traditionally use the title ‘servant of the servants of God.’”