Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018)

Focusing on Franciscan answers to global problems means, on the one hand, that Pope Francis is wholly positive in tone. Whatever tensions exist between Francis’ message and his personal failings, or whatever stumbles, gaffes or controversy have marked his papacy, are beyond the scope of Wenders’ interest.

As Pope Francis talks about the horrific crime of child sexual abuse and the necessity of holding accountable guilty priests and complicit bishops, viewers may think of the still-unfolding crisis in Chile, regarding which the Pope has acknowledged “grave errors” on his part, but the film leaves viewers to wrestle with such tensions on their own.

On the other hand, Wenders’ approach truncates Francis’ thought in various ways.

For one thing, there’s little sense of the theological vision underpinning his preaching. Little is said about Jesus — a reference to Jesus crucified in a discussion of theodicy is a notable exception — and nothing at all about Satan or hell, topics particularly notable in the Pope’s preaching.

Ideological selectivity is a factor. The controversial line “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord … who am I to judge him?” is included, but not Francis’ critical views on gender theory. The environmental and economic concerns of Laudato Si (Care for Our Common Home) are emphasized, but there’s no mention of Francis’ indictment of abortion as part of the “throwaway culture.”

And while viewers will learn that Francis is against “proselytizing,” they won’t hear his positive exhortations regarding evangelization.

The full scope of Francis’ thought has something to challenge almost everyone. The film rightly highlights themes and ideas that are stumbling blocks to some on the right — Donald Trump boosters may bristle at the Pope’s criticism of “building walls,” and Wenders himself adds a dig at “alternative facts” — but the members of U2 (who recently endorsed the move to legalize abortion in their native Ireland) could nod their heads pretty much through the whole film.

Maybe not the whole film. Rare exceptions include dismissive remarks about feminism and men’s movements as “isolated” and opposed to sexual complementarity and reciprosity. Even when Francis goes on to talk benignly about the importance of women in leadership roles, his language may sound a bit jarring to more progressive American and European ears.

Not incidentally, the film paints a similarly selective and even misleading portrait of St. Francis, along the usual lines noted by G.K. Chesterton on the first page of his excellent little sketch Saint Francis of Assisi, as a proto-archetype of “all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the modern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and even of propriety … a sort of morning star of the Renaissance.”

Such hitches and omissions notwithstanding, there’s no avoiding the power of Pope Francis’ genuineness, his expansive Christian humanism and his rapport with people of all walks of life. His celebrated turns of picturesque speech are in evidence: “spiritual Alzheimer’s disease”; “living with the accelerator down”; “globalization of indifference.”

More than once we see tears on people’s faces — and, while one might suspend judgment at the sight of a politician brushing away a tear as the Pope addresses a joint session of Congress, tears on an inmate’s tattooed face as Francis embraces and preaches to prisoners or washes and kisses their (also tattooed) feet on Holy Thursday are another matter.

The mystery of suffering and evil looms above all in a 2014 papal visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and a 2015 multireligious gathering at Lower Manhattan’s 9/11 Memorial.

Similarly, in pastoral visits to a volunteer-run hospital in the Central African Republic, a typhoon-devastated Philippines and a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos, Francis’ active solidarity with those who suffer evokes, however dimly, the Crucified Jesus to whom he pointed when asked about the problem of evil.

Some of the most memorable images emerge from these somber visits: Francis praying silently at Auschwitz or standing in a light rain wearing a translucent yellow plastic raincoat, clasping the hands of an elderly Filipino woman (also in yellow plastic) as she reverently kisses his hands.

There are also lighter moments, such as a droll Q&A with schoolchildren and a gentle papal exhortation to parents to play and waste time with their children.

The film ends with Francis citing a prayer he says he prays daily (ascribing it, following a popular misconception, to St. Thomas More) that includes a petition for a sense of humor. The last shot, of Francis grinning broadly into the camera, lingers long after the credits roll.

If Pope Francis: A Man of His Word isn’t the documentary final word on the 266th pope, in a way it’s something better: It’s a winsome, challenging call to take the Gospel more seriously and to work to make the world around us a little bit better.