This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We go right now to Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, editor of Pope Francis’s book, A Stranger and You Welcomed Me: A Call to Mercy and Solidarity with Migrants and Refugees. Robert, thanks so much for being with us. If you can talk about his approach to migrants? We’re beginning the show with a senator who’s calling for a migrant to be brought back to the United States, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And we’re going to end the show with a Palestinian Columbia student who’s been imprisoned in Vermont. But if you can talk not only about immigrants, but also about Indigenous people and the stance that the Pope took? And talk about, overall, his legacy.
ROBERT ELLSBERG: Yes. Thank you, Amy.
It was clear that the subject of migrants and immigrants wasn’t just one topic among many that he addressed, as all popes might. It really was a kind of signature of his papacy. Very ironic that the two people who are most focused on that subject are Donald Trump, on the one hand, and Pope Francis, representing completely diametrical perspectives.
But as Marie mentioned, he signaled that very early. The very first trip he made out of Rome was to this island of Lampedusa, which is a kind of way station where many [inaudible] from — through the Mediterranean and North Africa had tried to make it there, and many had died, drowned along the way, making, he said, the Mediterranean into a giant cemetery. And that was the first kind of speech he made outside of Rome.
And it was directed not just about the suffering of migrants, but about what their condition reflected on the rest of the world, a comfortable world, and what he called the culture of indifference. He made a very pointed challenge when he referred to the story of Cain and Abel, and God says to Cain, who was killed, Abel, who was — excuse me, Cain, who has killed his brother Abel, “Where is your brother?” And he says, “That’s the question that the immigrants are raising to us.” He says, you know, “Who weeps for these people? In a culture of indifference, we’re not even able to see our brothers and sisters as our siblings.” And so, that, for him, was an extremely vital task of the meaning of the Gospel.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about —
ROBERT ELLSBERG: That we could — I’m sorry. Go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert, if you could talk about his beginnings? Talk about how he was chosen, the first Latin American pope, the first Jesuit pope, and also how he even came to take the name Francis.
ROBERT ELLSBERG: It’s, I think, also very significant. He came to Rome for the conclave after the resignation of Pope Benedict. He was at retirement age. He was expecting to return back to Argentina. But instead, he kind of electrified the conclave, which is the meeting of cardinals where they elect the pope, by giving a very short speech of just a few minutes, where he said, “The greatest problem facing the church does not come from outside. It comes from within,” from what he called ecclesial narcissism and introversion, a church that’s focused in on itself. He said an evangelizing church, a church which represents the Gospel, Christ to the world, goes out to the margins and peripheries to touch the wounds of Christ. And that seemed to — that won him the votes to become pope.
And as the votes were being tallied, a cardinal from Brazil whispered to him, “Remember the poor.” And he says it was at that moment that he thought of Saint Francis. Now, no one has ever chosen Francis as a name for pope before, for probably good reason — Saint Francis associated with poverty, simplicity, the renunciation of power, etc. But it was not — it was very deliberate. And he said he thought of Francis as the poor man. He said, “How much I would love a church that is poor and for the poor.”
And that became, really, a signal of the agenda of his papacy — his concern for mercy rather than enforcement of rules and orthodoxy; his openness to the Earth, his care for creation, reflected in his encyclical, Laudato Si’, where he really put concern for the Earth at the center of Catholic social teaching; his embrace of nonviolence and opposition to war; his friendship with Muslim leaders and leaders of other religious faiths; and, obviously, the kind of simplicity and spirit of poverty that he himself embraced. So, all those were very, very significant indications that bare what his papacy was going to be about.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about what are the next steps, Robert Ellsberg, and also what it was like to edit the pope’s book, and then what happens now that he has died?
ROBERT ELLSBERG: Well, the first thing that will happen will be a period of mourning and his funeral. Cardinals will be summoned to Rome from all over the world. And he has appointed about three-quarters of them, and most notably cardinals from the kind of far corners of the world, places that were not usually represented in the College of Cardinals, so many of them don’t know each other very well. They’ll come together to spend some time together talking. And then they will go into the locked conclave within the Sistine Chapel and begin voting for a successor. People are now a little more familiar with that, because of the movie Conclave.
I’m sorry. Your other question? Oh, the experience of editing. I have been at Orbis Books for 38 years, which is a publishing house kind of concerned with global dimensions of faith in the world. We became well known for our publications of liberation theology. So, for many years, we were kind of under a shadow in Rome, many of our authors being disciplined and silenced even. And when Pope Francis was elected, it was clear that we had found a pope who really reflected exactly our kind of understanding of the mission of the church.
So, we published about 20 volumes of his writings and books about him, on all subjects, from war, the environment, the Amazon, mercy, works of mercy, and my book that I edited on migrants and refugees. So, for that, just recognizing what a signature topic this was for him, I simply went through all of his speeches, writings, prayers, and found just extraordinary riches in terms of his reflection on this. You know, the title, A Stranger and You Welcomed Me, comes from the text in Matthew 25 where Jesus describes the conditions of our salvation, when he says, “I was hungry, and you fed me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. When did we do this? Insofar as you did this for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.” So, it went right to the core of the Gospel teaching for Francis about seeing Christ in our brothers and sisters, especially in the poor.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, in this conclave that will choose the next pope, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called SNAP, announced recently the creation of a database known as Conclave Watch. The significance of this, Robert?
ROBERT ELLSBERG: Well, obviously, one of the momentous crises facing the church over the last decades has been the scandal of sex abuse within the church, and all the recent popes have had to confront this in some ways — Pope Francis, I think, more than his predecessors. And yet, still there were those who were critical of him for not doing more. So, it will be, I think, certainly a question that will go in — it was a question probably not asked before. Anybody who could be considered for pope has to have — be very, very scrutinized over the questions, not just their own, perhaps, failures humanly, personally as themselves, that are crimes, but especially bishops who covered up the sex abuse of other priests or were not sensitive to the sufferings of the victims. So, I think that will certainly be, for the first time, probably, a critical question that will be examined in the conclave.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, liberation theology, if you can address, in this one minute — and we’ll have longer conversations about this in the week — his connection to that and the elevation of liberation theology?
ROBERT ELLSBERG: Pope Francis, as you said, is first Latin American pope, also a Jesuit. He came from Argentina, which was the site of the Dirty War and terrible persecution of dissidents of all kinds. He certainly was very familiar with liberation theology, didn’t embrace that per se as a name, but he — it was so much in the bloodstream of the Latin American church, and particularly the preferential option for the poor, which is something that he embraced definitely. He welcomed Gustavo Gutiérrez, the kind of father of liberation theology, to come celebrate Mass with him in the Vatican. He has — he canonized Archbishop Romero. And he made it very clear that the themes of liberation theology, insofar as they had to do with the option for the poor and the defense of those on the margins, and especially the reading of the Bible, the whole church’s orientation should be done from the perspective of those on the margins. So, in that sense, he really brought kind of themes of liberation theology right into the heart of the church and its teaching.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Ellsberg, we want to thank you for being with us, editor of Pope Francis’s book, A Stranger and You Welcomed Me: A Call to Mercy and Solidarity with Migrants and Refugees, also editor of Orbis Books; Reverend Munther Isaac, Palestinian Christian theologian, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, author of Christ in the Rubble, the forthcoming book; and Marie Dennis, director of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative of Pax Christi International.
Next up, we go to an Israeli American Columbia student who is fighting for release of Mohsen Mahdawi. He says, “As Israelis in New York, we’re horrified by ICE’s detention of one of our Palestinian partners in peace.” Back in 20 seconds.
