Pope Francis is, undoubtedly, the most influential world leader today. Noticeably, the ‘Francis-effect’ is rhetorical in style and substance. From his first appearance at the Papal window in 2013 to his recent act of kneeling down and kissing the feet of rival South Sudan leaders, the rhetorical genius of Pope Francis has aroused much interest and debate in both religious and secular circles. These and other not-so-few symbolic actions of Pope Francis have occasioned and evoked ‘unending interpretive anxiety’ and ‘hermeneutic puzzle’, as was noted by Paul Lynch, a teacher of writing and rhetoric in St. Louis University, already in a 2015 article entitled ‘The Attractions of Imperfection: Pope Francis’s Undisciplined Rhetoric’.1
Another American teacher of rhetoric, Christopher Oldenburg, has recently come out with an excellent book length study of the deeply rhetorical mindset and communication strategies of Pope Francis in his book, The rhetoric of Pope Francis. Critical mercy and conversion for the twenty-first century. He gives a highly engaging and in-depth analysis of Pope Francis’s visual, tactile and spatial rhetoric from the point of view of mercy and conversion, which the author deems as the prism of Francis’s vision for the Church in the twenty-first century.
This book has a long Introduction, followed by four chapters and a brief Epilogue. It is enriched with References, Index and detailed notes at the end of each chapter. After a thorough analysis of Francis’s dominant rhetorical strategies, which he calls as ‘Pope Tropes’, the author marks Pope Francis as a ‘most skillful practitioner of rhetoric’ (p. 32), who makes productive and transformative use of visual-spatial rhetoric to renew and reorient the Church. According to the author, Pope Francis is a ‘rhetorically intelligent designer’ with a ‘great gift for gesture’ (p. 10) and a clear vision to transform the church hierarchy and the political power centres.
Oldenburg expounds the hermeneutical key employed by him to fathom the rhetorical power of Pope Francis as ‘reinstatement of mercy as the central religious and rhetorical force for conversion’ (p. 18). In his words, ‘with the bravura of a well-trained rhetor, Francis effectively connects the visual rhetoric of space and place to his larger discursive framework of mercy and conversion’ (p. 34). For him, Francis’s ‘enactment of mercy’ is a carefully articulated strategy ‘to effectuate conversion’, which he terms as ‘epiphenomenal and teleological state engendered by transformative encounter with suffering of any kind’ (p. 19).
He lays out his arguments in four chapters, divided into two parts, devoted to describe hierarchical-pastoral and political conversions.
In the first part (two chapters), he accomplishes it through careful semiotic analysis of four widely circulated and highly acclaimed photographs, reflecting Francis’s fashion choices, accessories, travel habits and transportation preferences as well as his personal attitudes towards the marginalized persons. In the second part (chapters 3 and 4), ‘two significant speeches that Pope Francis delivered during his historical visit to America in 2015’ (pp. 30–31) are studied from a spatial and dialogic rhetoric perspective.
In the first chapter, through a careful study of Francis’ deliberate act of carrying his personal bag to the plane and his transportation choices (Ford Focus and Renault instead of Mercedes), Oldenburg argues that Pope has rewritten vertical spatial ordering of papacy and Catholic Church by horizontal acts of humility in a visual topological space. The second chapter ‘Outward Signs’, ‘emphasizes a spatial shift in the church’s social mission’ (p. 33) to the peripheries or frontiers by administering mercy to the outskirts. Here he uses the photograph of Francis washing the feet of juvenile prisoners at Casal del Marmo prison and his embrace of a disfigured man for demonstrating the papal directive to ‘go out’ to the peripheries.
These two chapters illustrate the visual-spatial rhetoric of Pope Francis in the form of incongruous imagery as a critical medicine that invites papal and pastoral conversions. Oldenburg examines the ‘rhetorical relationship among space (para-proxemics), panoptic and religious mimesis’ to establish the visual-spatial rhetoric of papal and pastoral conversion. His usage of phrases like ‘footman’, ‘sole force’, ‘outward signs’, ‘vehicular propensities’, ‘transcendence downward’, ‘transgressive kiss’ are noteworthy.
Part 2 is devoted to the discussion of Francis’ call for political conversion, based on two significant public speeches during the papal visit to America in 2015. In this section, the author studies the performative dimension of Pope’s ‘intervention/intercessional rhetoric’ (p. 65), as he calls it. The rhetoric situation in America was unique, namely, a religious leader speaking to a deeply polarized audience accustomed to separation of state and religion. In such a context, Francis used a dialogic rhetoric of reconciliation to supersede the political-economic-ideological divide as well as the cultural historical binaries.
To offer critique and advocate meaning of political representation, Pope invokes four civic servants (Lincoln, King, Day and Merton) who are political and religious exemplars of service, solidarity and dialogue [intercession]. Addressing from Independence Hall, the ‘birthplace’ of America and using the lectern of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, Pope made a serious appeal to renew America’s relationships with immigrants, by appealing to the American spirit and the American way [intervention]. He has succeeded in building a credible rhetorical link between the well-known ‘misericordia’ of Pope Francis and his deliberate but indirect call for conversion.
The author is right in thinking that ‘mercy or compassion has not been a principal theme studied by rhetoricians in public discourse’ (p. 20). He has amply demonstrated ‘rhetoric’s transformative capacity to help us live more compassionate lives’ (p. 20) through the paradigm of the life and discourses of Pope Francis. The visual-spatial presentation of mercy by Pope Francis has initiated a pastoral conversion and re-orientation of the Church’s mission. This is relevant in a world conditioned by indifference generated by self-centredness, power mongering and justice meted out through violence.
The author has indisputably succeeded in showing that Pope Francis employs clever rhetorical strategies to invite the hearers to strive toward the higher ideals he is promoting, without telling them what to do. In other words, the ethos of the rhetor and the institution he represents is dramatized through carefully wielded visual-spatial symbols to create a semiotic-ethotic argument par excellence. In this sense, Oldenburg has accomplished an excellent rhetorical critical work with style and substance coupled with a rhetor’s ardor and adornment.
In this book, Oldenburg displays his own rhetorical critical skills through carefully crafted arguments, drawn from all major scholars of rhetoric from the time of Aristotle. The strength of this book is the meticulous visual-spatial analysis of the self-presentation of the papal protagonist with the precision and perfection of a film critic, who misses none of the details in a mise-en-scene.
This book, however, is not a comprehensive study of ‘the Rhetoric of Pope Francis’, as the title seems to suggest. It is an in-depth rhetorical critical analysis of the visual-spatial communication of Pope Francis ‘within the first three years of Francis’ tenure’ (p. 18) and limited to a detailed study of four photographs and two speeches. It is, thus, an indicative work on the rhetorical ingenuity of Pope Francis. The author utilizes categories and terminologies from Aristotelian to present day rhetorical theories, while very little attention is paid to the biblical and theological significance and symbolism. I feel that the clearly visual-kinesthetic elements of Francis’ linguistic expressions such as ‘the smell of the sheep’ or ‘Joy of the Gospel’, could have enhanced the visual-spatial-artefactual inquiry into the papal rhetoric.
Naturally, the book being a purely rhetorical critical study of the communication strategy of Pope Francis, the religious-spiritual implications of the papal rhetoric is not exactly within the scope of this study. However, being a religious-spiritual leader Pope’s rhetoric extends much beyond carefully crafted strategies to ‘show’ the audience or impress them; his communication comes from the heart of the man, who is enacting with life the core messages in a prophetic style and substance found in the Bible. The Prophet Hosea marrying a prostitute or Jesus shedding his blood on the cross is not just a visual spatial rhetoric, but a prophetic sign and gift, as such a perennial symbol of divine action in history. Stripping papal rhetoric of such spiritual significance cannot do justice to the total impact of papal rhetoric, although it suffices to make a perfect academic rhetorical study, as in the case of Oldenburg’s book.
In this era of ‘the rise of the image’, a visual analytic of papal communication is a great addition to the interpretation of papal teachings.
Joseph Scaria Palakeel
Ruhalaya Theological College, Ujjain, India
Note
Notes
1 Paul Lynch, “The Attractions of Imperfection: Pope Francis’s Undisciplined Rhetoric”, in Present Tense. A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, 5/1 (2015), pp. 1-9.