By EMILIO CAFASSI*

Pope Francis has not stripped the Church bare: he has merely reinforced its frayed hems, like someone extending the life of a worn and stained garment, incapable of sheltering the present.

1.

Last week the world's attention was focused on a single scene: the funeral of Pope Francis, the name Mr. Bergoglio chose (qthere is no name imposed, as established by the Latin rite). From the newsrooms of major media outlets to the most modest newsrooms, information was subordinated to this funeral pomp.

In Argentina, where the symbolic weight of the origin was implanted with unusual force, as an emotional reinterpretation of the feat in Qatar, the event took on an almost exclusive character: the public agenda was put on ceremonial pause, relegating any other concern to the margins of oblivion.

The ceremony brought together a diversity rarely seen: under the farewell ritual, while incense swirled in the cold air of Rome, figures with such disparate political and ideological profiles as Trump and Lula, Meloni and Petro, Macron and López Obrador, opposites brought together by the requiem, gathered like pilgrims of a temporarily rented devotion. The contrasts, far from fading, seemed to shine in the twilight of mourning, rehearsing an ephemeral pact between the antagonisms of history. How can a single man, dead, win the respect of such irreconcilable figures?

Carlos Pagni, editorialist for the Argentine newspaper The nation, sought to see in this, from an indulgent perspective, the “exotic value of the encounter,” an ephemeral overcoming of the ideological fractures that separate Argentina from the world. But that postcard, behind its patina of solemnity, hid the raw flesh of politics: the struggle for visibility, the insatiable desire for prominence. From Javier Milei to Cristina Fernández, each made their own calculations, measuring gestures, presence and the projection of their shadow in the incessant race for power.

It was not fraternity that silenced old grudges, but the cold pragmatism of knowing that they were before a global audience. Even in death, Jorge Mario Bergoglio offered a platform too tempting to go unnoticed. And so, under the guise of a false unity, the same old antagonists met before the world, not to heal wounds, but to perpetuate, under new masks, the worn-out dramaturgy of power.

Argentine history, with its surprising capacity to redeem the powerful, has perfected the art of absolution. When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was enthroned as pope, a tacit, unwritten but effective papal bull circulated among the ranks of Kirchnerism: that of instant forgiveness, of tactical oblivion, of the sudden conversion of a cardinal questioned, according to Horacio Verbitsky – perhaps his most systematic denouncer within the ruling party – for his role during the dictatorship, as the immaculate bearer of the Vatican’s peace.

He was proclaimed “Argentine and Peronist,” as if Argentine identity dispensed with indulgences and Peronism served as a redemptive sacrament. Today, with Javier Milei, something similar is happening: yesterday’s heretic, whom he called “the fool of Rome, representative of evil on earth,” is dressed by his own detractors in the garb of a statesman, under the pragmatic logic of circumstantial alignment.

Political opportunism disguises itself as faith, and fidelity becomes a transaction. Just as all critical review of Bergoglio’s past was suspended to facilitate the geopolitical miracle of the papacy, scruples are now suspended in the face of a president who has denigrated human rights, public education, and historical memory. Recent history reminds us that in Argentina, tribunals and inquisitors are not necessary for canonization: all it takes is for someone to take center stage for the miracle of stones transformed into rosaries to happen.

2.

However, it was not only the highest echelons of power who responded to Rome’s call. An anonymous, fervent and diverse crowd also gathered in St. Peter’s Square and in the naves of the basilica, as in an ancient ceremony where collective emotion stifles all critical memory. This is nothing new: death, like coronation, summons the crowds to the old theaters of submission.

In many latitudes, subjects of Western monarchies – although not exclusively – still uncritically celebrate the pomp and obscene luxuries of a parasitic lineage, forged in the shadows of the Middle Ages, which finds in these rituals a mirror in which it recognizes and perpetuates itself. The Church, in its own way, prolongs this fable of majesties and thrones, where myrrh seeks to perfume the rottenness of privileges and ornaments shamelessly cover the cracks of a power that is believed to be eternal.

At Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s funeral, as in every liturgy of domination, magnificence was staged not to honor evangelical humility—if it ever existed—but to remind the humble of their place. Perhaps even against the will of the late Pope Francis, now stripped not only of his original name but also of his persistent hostility to progressive movements, such as the one he exercised against the Kirchnerist governments of the early 20th century in his own country.

In the triumphant narrative of modernity, secularization promised to free consciences from the old theological yoke, displacing the sacred to the intimate and relegating churches to the role of moral relics without effective power. But this promise was a trap, and the trap became a structure. The Catholic Church—that purple machine that blessed empires, committed and covered up crimes, and preached poverty in palaces of marble and gold—was not overcome by modernity: it traversed it, deformed it, and absorbed it.

The Vatican, the stony core of a hierarchy that preaches love while excluding bodies, decisions and desires, remains enthroned in the political heart of the West. Under the pontificate of Pope Francis, there have been gestures, but no fractures. They have kissed feet, but not taken off shoes. Doors have been opened, but no one has walked through them. The message has become a symbol, and the symbol, mere consolation.

Meanwhile, royal power remains intact. The finger of a carefully chosen conclave will define a future not very different from the bleak present. Modernity, dreamed of as a rational and emancipatory horizon, still coexists with the institutionalized superstition of forgiveness without reparation or restitution, of inclusion without justice, of poverty without renunciation. Where the world proclaimed itself secular, the Church offered ritual and spectacle; where reason was supposed to undermine dogma, liturgy triumphed.

The death of Francis forces us to take stock: the Church's greatest triumph was not in resisting secularization, but rather in blending into modernity without giving up a single dogma, rite or privilege, or a single stone of its opulent architecture.

This analysis does not intend to ignore other great religions such as Judaism and Islam, which, like the Catholic Church, are – in their structures – misogynistic, patriarchal, disciplinary, violent and objectifying. I refer to their bureaucratic structures and the values ​​with which hierarchies, exegetes – and sometimes armies – seek to discipline and control their followers. I try to reread Karl Marx with the greatest heterodoxy possible, but I still find no flaws in his statement: religion continues to be the “opium of the people”.

3.

I confess that, despite all the reservations I express here, I liked him. Perhaps because of that shared root that is easily recognized: he spoke my language with the same accent as the Buenos Aires. He would say “pibe” and “laboro” even among cardinals, and he made no secret of his passion for football. Just like my father, I would recite San Lorenzo’s glorious formations by heart, as if the sky could also be organized into tactical designs and discussions about a line of three with a sweeper or the traditional two defenders with full-backs.

There was a trace of the neighborhood about him, an echo of a Sunday meal that persisted even in the excessive setting of the Vatican. Although he lived in a space saturated with marble and gold, he displayed gestures of sobriety that were moving: his unadorned black shoes, his renunciation of certain liturgical symbols, which, however, never deactivated the structural splendor that surrounded him.

All the more so because he adopted a slightly progressive discourse, always preferable to the staunch anti-communism of Mr. Wojtyla or the Nazi youth formation of Mr. Ratzinger, whose partial defense could be based on his philosophical training, which led him to debate even with Jürgen Habermas, unlike the rudimentaryism of his predecessors.

In times when opulence is the norm and privilege is shamelessly flaunted, gestures of austerity acquire an extraordinary symbolic density. Both Pope Francis and José Mujica have been recognized for this rare coherence that arises from simplicity: the renunciation of excess, the use of words without euphemisms, the unpretentious appearance. In both cases, these gestures gave them a moral authority that was difficult to challenge, due to the contrast they offered to the everyday obscenity of the elites.

But this exceptionality contains a paradox: that worn-out shoes or a home without luxuries are seen as revolutionary says more about the structure that surrounds them than about the men themselves. The difference, however, is not small: Mujica still cleans his farm, cooks his food, washes his dishes. Francisco, on the other hand, lived in a brutally luxurious environment, from which he cultivated an image of simplicity that never dismantled the mechanisms that made it an exception. Both renounced visible privileges, but neither of them broke the structures that made them so scandalously eloquent.

Perhaps his papacy can be summed up as that of a patient tailor, dedicated to repairing the threadbare cassocks of an institution that refuses to throw its old rags into the fire. Francis did not rip seams or design new garments: he mended, tidied and hid loose threads with sober gestures, while the golden velvet of power frayed under the weight of centuries.

As a couturier with an institutional soul, she knew where to apply the stitch without making the cut noticeable, without altering the shape of the dress. But neither linen nor gold can be renewed with a fine needle: they deteriorate, crack and are eaten by moths. And although her stitches were celebrated – perhaps for their consistency rather than for the results – the truth is that the dress remains the same: pompous, ceremonial, without reforms.

Pope Francis did not strip the Church bare: he merely reinforced its frayed hems, like someone extending the life of a worn and stained garment, incapable of sheltering the present.

*Emilio Cafassi is senior professor of sociology at the University of Buenos Aires.

Translation: Arthur Scavone.

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