A New Pope for the World: not a Vatipope

There is a swarm of information and news about the resignation of the Pope. I have been following different sources of news to quench my own thirst for Vatiman; a new man to the Vatican. It has been a surprise for me that the only “power” has managed to resign to the post of Papacy after several centuries. I know well, that this is an august post, which doest even address as post but as a ministry. Well, I do agree with the fact that Jesus assured that He will build his Church on the Rock, Peter. I am sure St. Peter will be surprised to see the pomps and glories of the Vatican. The Chair used by Peter might have been very well a poor foot stool used by the fisher folks of the time. Not to drift into so much history of the Papacy on which my knowledge is trivial. 

Two things occurred to me these days of commotion in the Vatican; firstly, too much energy is spent on who will occupy the Chair of Peter, secondly; in the process of spending our energy on the aforementioned issue, we forget about the pains and sorrows of our brothers and sisters suffering in Quetta, Pakistan. 

I know its somewhat baloney to inter-voice them together because they are separate issues per se. It is painful to hear all about the resignation of the Pope and his successor in all the possible ways. Catholics are too occupied with this at the moment. I am sure its fair to have an able leader who can lead the world and not only the Catholic world. Cardinal Walter Kasper spoke wonderfully to the Italian media recently about the new Pope. He said, “We need a Pope who has charisma and is able to influence faithful. A real shepherd of the people but also a shepherd who knows how to lead the Church. I think what is needed today is experience of the universal Church; knowing about one country or one diocese in particular is not enough.” This makes me absolute sense as why the Church has not progressed. We need man from the world, of the world and to the world. I no longer think he needs to be a shepherd only for Catholics which absurd but its true we are living in a highly secularist world where religion has become a mere ‘old people business’. The new Pope has to know the reality on the ground and send his men accordingly to the mission that Christ intended. He will have hercules task before him. We all know what I mean by hercules task, the issues that bother the Church most at this time. 

Now my worry is, have we forgotten our own innocent brothers and sisters killed on Last Saturday a bomb planted by the group in Quetta, Pakistan killed almost 90 ethnic Hazara and injured 169 others. This was a shocking news for indeed and not so much the Pope’s resignation. I still cannot get my mind around why there is so much violence in the world, particularly in Pakistan. It has always bothered me when I think about violence in Pakistan because they have gone through this suffering for a long time, right from 1948; when Indo-Pak partition took place. Since then my brothers and sisters have suffered so much violence. Everyone should be shocked to hear that and if not act at least feel with the people who are suffering in Pakistan. This will be our ‘new evangelization’ in this era. Just empathizing with the suffering will surely lead to peace and serenity one day if not immediately.