以下、翻訳中（どなたか読者の方でお手伝いいただければ幸いです！）
Carolyn Woo, Former CEO of Catholic Relief Services and Distinguished President’s Fellow for Global Development at Purdue University
I think that with his first encyclical, the pope very clearly brings back the joy of the gospel that can sometimes be lost in all of the theology and the teaching. It’s almost like someone singing, particularly with his proclamation of mercy-which, of course, he followed up with a Year of Mercy. It’s a sense that the pope’s priority is for the salvation of people and that he cares most that people have a way to get back to God and that we are all here to help people get back to God rather than stand in the way. He really challenges the Church hierarchy to consider if they are helping people find their way back to God and as shepherds, he asks, do you know your flock?
The two areas I’m disappointed about are the handling of sex abuse problems within the Church and the issue of engaging and welcoming women to the Church. Even though the pope has created a commission and called for an honest and courageous response, for whatever reason, it’s stuck somewhere. I think we still need to get to the bottom of how extensive this abuse is, and we need to own these abuses, we need to provide apologies, we need to do penance, we need to seek forgiveness so that there can be healing, and we must prevent this from happening in the future.
On the issue of women, I am not a person who stands on the need for women to be ordained. I know people care deeply about that, but I actually can accept the Church’s teaching and say that is not in the works. But acknowledging this, I think a lot more can be done to welcome women into the Church. The Church has not really done enough to engage the talents of women, their intellectual capabilities, their administrative capacities. I think much more can be done to recognize women theologians, to put people on advisory councils in a way in which it is not a token, for them to be well represented in Vatican academies, for them to have a place at the table when doctrine is being formulated, for them to staff important pontifical councils and dicastries, for them to have a more recognized role in parish councils-at every level the Church needs to legitimize the gifts of women.
(Credit: Ettore Ferrari/Pool Photo via AP.)
Greg Burke, Director of the Vatican’s press office, former advisor to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, and correspondent for Fox News and Time
In a world that bombards us each day with a growing number of distractions and temptations and false idols, Pope Francis has done an extraordinary job in getting out a very simple message that is at the heart of the Gospel: God loves you, and God forgives you.
And there’s more. There’s joy, the Joy of the Gospel. Francis knows – and shows – that if you read the Gospel and try to live your life following Christ closely, you are going to have a deep, interior joy.
Despite all our faults, all our sins, all of our nastiness, big and small, God loves us, and God forgives us. The parable of the prodigal son plays out again and again in the course of our lives. God is the merciful and loving father, waiting outside to embrace us before we can even knock on the door. Pope Francis has reminded everyone of how God absolutely smothers us with his love, and has challenged us to share that love with others.
As for unfinished business, one of the pope’s main goals is changing a mentality, helping everyone in the Church know that he or she is here for service and not for power. This has been unfinished business since day one, if you look at Christ’s words to the Apostles, and it won’t change overnight. But Pope Francis has certainly helped set the tone for that change.
Paulina Guzik, journalist and professor of communications of Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland
The best thing about Pope Francis that absolutely changed the lives of Christians around the world for me is the example that he’s giving and – by it – making people follow him. We listened to other popes, they inspired us, of course, they crushed deadly totalitarianism, we were happy that they came visit. And then we were coming back to normal life. Pope Francis has made his teachings and deeds so down to Earth and yet so Evangelical that people follow him – on a daily basis. People working in banks devote their afternoons to working for the homeless, doctors are spending their free time in field hospitals for the poor, whole families are peeling carrots that lands later in a soup for the homeless (twice a week for a second season now it happens in Krakow and other cities in Poland) – only because Francis inspired them. He accomplished the mission of accompaniment – come, let’s go together, I’ll show you how to kiss the feet of the refugees, I’ll show you what buying a pizza means for the homeless, I’ll show you what Jesus would do if he was here today. Making people follow his example on a daily basis is for me a great milestone of this pontificate. Living a gospel became real under Francis.
One thing I really want to see him accomplish is the influence on the Global Compact for Migration – he calls migration a sign of the times and improving or rather creating proper global migration policies I would dare to say is a political task as important as the fall of communism for John Paul II. I wish the Vatican structures were able to influence not only the UN but – through episcopal conferences – governments of particular countries to change their refugee policies. I’m not only talking about Poland but also the U.S. and many other countries.
Father John Wauck, communications professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome
The best thing about Pope Francis’s papacy so far has been his ability to get a hearing from people who would not have given Benedict XVI or John Paul II the time of day. It has been, quite literally, an eternity since we saw a pope’s picture “on the cover of the Rolling Stone,” and that photo is emblematic of a new openness toward the papacy on the part of sectors of society previously hostile or indifferent. Now, some might suggest that such people pay attention to Pope Francis only because he seems to tell them what they want to hear, but while, as time has passed, that may be true of some people, my own experience immediately after the conclave tells me that the extraordinarily positive response to Pope Francis was not based on an analysis of his stances on particular issues. It pre-dated any knowledge of his views. Recently, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro has insisted that Pope Francis is not a “nice” pope, but I do think that his initial popularity stemmed largely from his apparently natural, approachable, regular-guy persona. He came across as a more familiar fatherly figure than the somewhat professorial Benedict or the larger-than-life John Paul II. Of course, it remains to be seen what the fruit of this expanded attention will be, but the opening and the engagement are themselves clearly a positive development.
It is natural that, after only five years of a papacy, much unfinished business should remain, and this pontificate is no exception: the response to the sexual-abuse crisis, the reform of the Vatican’s finances, communications reform, and the reform of the Roman Curia all fall in the category of unfinished business.
But there is unfinished business of a deeper sort as well.
When he became pope, Francis stressed the need for the Church to leave the sacristy and go out to the world, to resist the temptation of being self-referential and engage the “peripheries” of society and of human experience. After five years, however, the Church seems to be trapped in a divisive internal debate, and an enormous amount of spiritual and intellectual energy, which might have been spent on works of service and apostolate, has been spent instead discussing Amoris Laetitia and, more specifically, the doctrinal and disciplinary implications of a quintessentially in-house matter: communion for the divorced and remarried. As a consequence, the outward-looking Church that Francis hoped for is still struggling to raise its head. On its way out of the sacristy, the Church didn’t get much further than the Communion rail.
Similarly, it was hoped that the first South American pope would be the herald of a vibrant new era in the life of the Church in that vast continent, yet Pope Francis’s recent visit to Chile – described in these pages as “his first could-be flop” – was his least successful trip so far, marred by church burnings, small crowds, and controversy over sexual abuse. Moreover, the trip called attention to the sad fact that the pope has yet to visit his native Argentina, where, for political reasons, he receives less friendly treatment than in the rest of the world. At the same time, in Venezuela and Cuba, the Church still suffers grievously. Here too, in terms of ecclesial “geography,” the high expectations inspired by the pope’s inaugural voyage to Brazil, for World Youth Day in 2013, have yet to be met.
（翻訳「カトリック・あい」南條俊二）
・・Cruxは、カトリック専門のニュース、分析、評論を網羅する米国のインターネット・メディアです。 2014年9月に米国の主要日刊紙の一つである「ボストン・グローブ」 （欧米を中心にした聖職者による幼児性的虐待事件摘発のきっかけとなった世界的なスクープで有名。映画化され、日本でも昨年、全国上映された）の報道活動の一環として創刊されました。現在は、米国に本拠を置くカトリック団体とパートナーシップを組み、多くのカトリック関係団体、機関、個人の支援を受けて、バチカンを含め，どこからも干渉を受けない、独立系カトリック・メディアとして世界的に高い評価を受けています。「カトリック・あい」は、カトリック専門の非営利メディアとして、Cruxが発信するニュース、分析、評論の日本語への翻訳、転載について了解を得て、掲載します。
教皇フランシスコは、福音の欠かすことのできない喜びで人々を奮い立たせる新しい言葉をお使いになり、振る舞いをなさってきました。忘れられた人々－教会と社会の中で軽視されている女性、男性、子供たち―を優先してお考えになり、カトリック信者たちを狭い考えを捨てて、傷ついた世界を受け入れるように促されます。教皇の愛のメッセージとすべての人をやさしく思う心は、さまざまな分裂を、遠く離れ、絶望的な人々をまとめることにつなげます。不協和音とせめぎあいの中に心の交わりを作ろうとする教皇の努力は、偏見を乗り越え、他の人々の根本的な尊厳を認識するように、私たちを動かします。
