Posted: December 21, 2009
For about half of the church's history, it was common for popes to retain their baptismal names. The first pope to take a different name was John II (533-35), who did so because his birth name was that of a pagan God, Mercury.
In two instances newly elected popes who had been baptized as Peter -- John XIV (983-84) and Sergius IV (1009-12) -- also changed their names, out of respect for the Apostle Peter.
By the 16th century, the custom of retaining one's baptismal name had ended. The last pope to keep his birth name was Marcellus II, who died less than a month after his election in 1555.
The current pope, Benedict XVI, was baptized Joseph. Were it still the custom for a newly elected pope to retain his baptismal name, Joseph Ratzinger would be Pope Joseph I.
In fact, we have never had a Pope Joseph in more than 20 centuries. Given the popularity of the saint and his status as patron of the universal church, it is remarkable that no pope has ever taken his name.
Joseph's feast day is one of the most important on the church's liturgical calendar — so important that it has been transferred this year from 19th of March to the 15th because of a conflict with Holy Week.
What do we know about St. Joseph? Less, certainly, than we know about St. Peter, even though Joseph's relationship with Jesus was much more intimate and long-standing.
Joseph is mentioned as the father of Jesus in John 1:45 and 6:42, in Luke 4:22 and in Luke's genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:23). He appears in the infancy narratives (Matthew 1-2; Luke 1-2), where he is said to be of Davidic descent (Matthew 1:2-16, 20; Luke 1:27; 3:23-38).
Joseph was a carpenter by trade (Matthew 13:55) and trained his son as a carpenter as well (Mark 6:3).
Mary was betrothed, or engaged, to Joseph, but was already pregnant with Jesus before Joseph took her into his house. The Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 22:20-21) provided a harsh penalty (death by stoning) for the infidelity of a betrothed woman.
At first, Joseph, being a "righteous" or "just" man, chose to divorce Mary "quietly" to protect her from shame. But, according to the New Testament, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and instructed him to take Mary into his home, and informed him that the child had been conceived by the Holy Spirit and that his name would be Jesus (Matthew 1:20-21).
In a later dream, after the birth of Jesus, Joseph was told to take Mary and his son to Egypt and to remain there until Herod's slaughter of newborns had come to an end with Herod's own death (Matthew 2: 13-15).
Joseph, however, disappears from the New Testament after the family's pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Luke 2:42-52). He probably died sometime before Jesus began his public ministry.
The earliest evidence for a cult of Joseph in the West is not until the ninth century, in Irish martyrologies. Devotion to Joseph was later popularized by such prominent saints as Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales and Ignatius Loyola.
Many religious congregations, hospitals and churches are dedicated to Joseph, and his name has been exceedingly popular for baptisms and confirmations.
Pius IX declared Joseph patron of the universal Church in 1870, and John XXIII added his name to the Canon of the Mass in 1962.
But still no Pope Joseph.
Father McBrien is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.
Pope Francis (Latin: Franciscus; Italian:Francesco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio,[b] 17 December 1936) is the266th and current Pope of the Catholic Church, a title he holds ex officio asBishop of Rome, and Sovereign of theVatican City.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio worked briefly as a chemical technician and nightclub bouncer[2]before beginning seminary studies. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969 and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina'sprovincial superior of the Society of Jesus. He was accused of handing two priests to the National Reorganization Process during the Dirty War, but the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Airesin 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. He led the Argentine Church during the December 2001 riots in Argentina, and the administrations of Néstor Kirchner andCristina Fernández de Kirchnerconsidered him a political rival. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on 28 February 2013, a papal conclave elected Bergoglio as his successor on 13 March. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor ofSaint Francis of Assisi. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope since the Syrian Gregory III in 741.
Throughout his public life, Pope Francis has been noted for his humility, his emphasis on God's mercy, his concern for the poor, and his commitment tointerfaith dialogue. He is known for having a humble approach to the papacy, less formal than his predecessors, for instance choosing to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthaeguesthouse rather than the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palaceused by his predecessors. In addition, due to both his Jesuit and Ignatianaesthetic, he is known for favoring simpler vestments void of ornamentation, including refusing the traditional papal mozzetta cape upon his election, choosing silver instead of gold for his piscatory ring, and keeping the same pectoral cross he had when he was cardinal. He maintains that the Church should be more open and welcoming. He does not support unbridled capitalism, Marxism, or Marxist versions of liberation theology. Francis maintains the traditional views of the Church regarding abortion, euthanasia, contraception, homosexuality, ordination of women, and priestly celibacy. Francis opposesglobal warming, consumerism, andirresponsible development, a focus of his papacy with the promulgation ofLaudato si'. In international diplomacy, he helped to restore full diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on 17 December 1936 in Flores,[3] a barrio ofBuenos Aires. He was the eldest[4] of five children of Mario José Bergoglio, anItalian immigrant accountant[5] born inPortacomaro (Province of Asti) in Italy'sPiedmont region, and his wife Regina María Sívori,[6] a housewife born in Buenos Aires to a family of northern Italian (Piedmontese-Genoese) origin.[7][8][9][10][11] Mario José's family left Italy in 1929, to escape the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.[12] María Elena Bergoglio, the Pope's only living sibling, confirmed that their emigration was not caused by economic reasons.[13] His other siblings were Alberto Horacio, Oscar Adrián and Marta Regina.[14] Two great-nephews, Antonio and Joseph, died in a traffic collision.[15][16]
In the sixth grade, Bergoglio attended Wilfrid Barón de los Santos Ángeles, a school of the Salesians of Don Bosco, inRamos Mejía, Buenos Aires. He attended the technical secondary school Escuela Técnica Industrial N° 27 Hipólito Yrigoyen,[17] named after a past President of Argentina, and graduated with a chemical technician's diploma.[18][19] He worked for a few years in that capacity in the foods section at Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory[20] where his boss wasEsther Ballestrino. Before joining the Jesuits, Bergoglio worked as a bar bouncer and as a janitor sweeping floors, and he also ran tests in a chemical laboratory.[21][22]
In the only known health crisis of his youth, at the age of 21 he suffered from life-threatening pneumonia and three cysts. He had part of a lung excised shortly afterwards.[17][23] Bergoglio has been a lifelong supporter of the San Lorenzo de Almagro football club.[24]Bergoglio is also a fan of the films ofTita Merello,[25] neorealism, and tangodancing, with an "intense fondness" for the traditional music of Argentina andUruguay known as the milonga.[25]
In art, neorealism was established by the ex-Camden Town Group painters Charles Ginnerand Harold Gilman at the beginning ofWorld War I. They set out to explore the spirit of their age through the shapes and colours of daily life. Their intentions were proclaimed in Ginner's manifesto in New Age (1 January 1914), which was also used as the preface to Gilman and Ginner's two-man exhibition of that year. It attacked the academic and warned against the 'decorative' aspect of imitators of Post-Impressionism. The best examples of neorealist work is that produced by these two artists and also by Robert Bevan, whose short-livedCumberland Market Group they joined in 1914.[1]
The Japanese New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague (ヌーベルバーグ Nūberu bāgu?, cf.French New Wave), is a movement of Japanese filmmakers and their work from the late 1950s through the early 1970s.
HistoryEdit
David Desser in his Eros plus Massacreplaces the marginal comment:
"Superficial comparisons between the Japanese New Wave cinema and the French New Wave, typically to imply greater integrity to the latter, have served the cultural cliché that the Japanese are merely great imitators, that they do nothing original. (...) To see the Japanese New Wave as an imitation of the French New Wave (an impossibility since they arose simultaneously) fails to see the Japanese context out of which the movement arose. (...) While the Japanese New Wave did draw benefits from the French New Wave, mainly in the form of a handy journalistic label which could be applied to it (the "nūberu bāgu" from the Japanese pronunciation of the French term), it nevertheless possesses a high degree of integrity and specificity."[1]
Unlike the French nouvelle vague, the Japanese movement initially began within the studios, albeit with young, and previously little-known filmmakers. The term was first coined within the studios (and in the media) as a Japanese version of the French New Wave movement.[2] Nonetheless, the Japanese New Wave filmmakers drew from some of the same international influences that inspired their French colleagues, and as the term stuck, the seemingly artificial movement surrounding it began to rapidly develop into a critical and increasingly independent film movement.
One distinction in the French movement was its roots with the journal Cahiers du cinéma; as many future filmmakers began their careers as critics and cinema deconstructionists, it would become apparent that new kinds of film theory (most prominently, auteur theory) were emerging with them.
The Japanese movement developed at roughly the same time (with several important 1950s precursor films), but arose as more of a movement devoted to questioning, analyzing, critiquing and (at times) upsetting social conventions.
One Japanese filmmaker who didemerge from a background akin to his French colleagues was Nagisa Oshima, who had been a leftist activist and an analytical film critic before being hired by a studio. Oshima's earliest films (1959–60) could be seen as direct outgrowths of opinions voiced in his earlier published analysis.[3] Cruel Story of Youth, Oshima's landmark second film (one of four he directed in 1959 and 1960) saw an international release very immediately in the wake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and François Truffaut's The 400 Blows.
Pope Expression into Japan Pigs and Battleships (豚と軍艦 Buta to gunkan?) is a 1961 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura. The film depicts the mutually exploitative relationship that exists between the U.S. military and the lower elements of Japanese society at Yokosuka. It is based on the novel by Kazu Otsuka.[1]
Again lower elements of Japanese society such as Homeless that The United States Backs Pope Francis doctrine on the Poor.
