evangelical 360°

Ep. 45 / Holy Disruption: When a Pope Washes Feet ► Michael Higgins (Part 2)

• Host Brian Stiller • Season 1 • Episode 45

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What happens when an evangelical leader and a Catholic scholar engage in honest dialogue about the papacy? In this illuminating conversation, host Brian Stiller sits down with Dr. Michael Higgins, author of "The Jesuit Disruptor," to explore Pope Francis's revolutionary impact on Catholic-Evangelical relations.

Dr. Higgins reveals how Francis fundamentally transformed the papacy through his emphasis on humility, dialogue, and authentic Christian witness. Rather than approaching evangelicals as theological opponents, Francis saw them as "companions along the way" who could teach Catholics about being "alive with the Spirit." This wasn't strategic positioning but emerged from Francis's conviction that Christians share common ground in Jesus and serving the marginalized.

The conversation takes a personal turn when Stiller shares an encounter with Pope Francis. During a private lunch, Francis told the evangelical leader: "I'm not trying to evangelize an evangelical," acknowledging the legitimacy of evangelical faith outside Catholic sacramental traditions. This profound theological recognition demonstrates Francis's commitment to authentic ecumenism that respects different Christian expressions.

Higgins unpacks Francis' preference for the title "Servant of the Servants of God" over more hierarchical papal designations, reflecting his determination to invert traditional power structures within the church. This servant-leadership approach characterized Francis's "penitential pilgrimage" to Canada, where he primarily listened to Indigenous communities harmed by residential schools rather than delivering prepared speeches.

Looking toward the future under Pope Leo XIV, Higgins analyzes early signs of continued bridge-building while acknowledging the tensions within Catholicism regarding women's roles, Vatican diplomacy, and approaches to global conflicts. Throughout, he frames Francis' legacy not merely as institutional reform but as a rediscovery of Christian leadership rooted in encounter, humility, and recognition of Christ's presence across denominational boundaries.

Whether you're curious about Catholic-Evangelical relations, intrigued by Francis's unique papacy, or seeking models of Christian leadership that transcend division, this conversation offers rich insights that challenge conventional boundaries. 

You can learn more from Dr. Michael Higgins through his scholarship and publications. 

And you can share this episode using hashtag #Evangelical360 and join the conversation online! 

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Brian Stiller:

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, brian Stiller, and I'm pleased to share with you another conversation with leaders, changemakers and influencers impacting Christian life around the world. My guest today is Dr Michael Higgins, professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar at St Mike's University. His most recent book was titled the Jesuit Disruptor a personal portrait of Pope Francis, and he's written about the future of the papacy, what he refers to as the emergence of a new Leo XIV. This is the second podcast in a series of two. Now, an obvious question for evangelicals is this why should we care about who the Pope is? What sort of impact does the papacy have on the Protestant Church? Whether you're curious, cautious or simply want to be informed, michael Higgins is here to help us understand and think clearly about one of the most visible roles of the Christian faith. So listen in and join the conversation on YouTube in the comments below, and be sure to subscribe and, when you do, share this episode, always using hashtag Evangelical360.

Brian Stiller:

Michael Higgins, you've written this very interesting book, the Jesuit Disruptor. If you have any interest in understanding the background to Pope Francis, who has crossed the Jordan, you'll want to read this book. Michael is very engaging. You'll want to read this book, michael, is very engaging, very descriptive.

Brian Stiller:

Some wonderful, wonderful quotes. This one quote Francis Lambay's Clericalism, which you have talked about. He said "clericalism is a whip, it's a scourge, it's a form of worldliness that defiles and damages the face of the Lord's bride. It enslaves God's holy and faithful people. And God's people, god's holy, faithful people, go forward with patience and humility, enduring the scorn, mistreatment and marginalization of institutionalized clericalism. And how naturally we speak of the princes of the church or of Episcopal appointments as career advancements. It's enough to go into the ecclesiastical tailor shops in Rome to see the scandal of young priests trying on cassock and hats or albs and laced covered robes." the disruptor.

Brian Stiller:

This has been an interesting conversation that we've had up to now, but I wonder well, many of my friends are going to be asking Stiller, why are you interested in knowing about Rome? And I guess the question is, given that evangelicals think of the Roman Catholic Church as a heresy, as I'm sure the Roman Catholic Church thinks Protestantism, and evangelicals are heretics. We see the gospel differently. We do different interpretations of the biblical text. You add the history of your theology of Rome into it. We try to stay with just the biblical text. We somehow think we're purists, as you know. But the question is, the question is Michael, why should I, as an evangelical, have an interest or a concern about the Pope, about Rome and about the 2.7 billion Christians in the world half of it are Roman Catholics why should I be concerned?

Michael Higgins:

I think you know, brian, because we have a lot in common. Number one and that was one of the things that Francis wanted to underscore Not the things that divide us, but the things that unite us. What's the principal thing that unites us? Jesus. Where do we discover Jesus? We discover Jesus in the poor, in the broken, in the sick, in the dying. So these are areas in which, irrespective of biblical hermeneutics, irrespective of systematic and historical theology and the different spiritual traditions that define us, we have this common rootedness in the salvific message of Jesus of Nazareth.

Michael Higgins:

And so, for Francis particularly, evangelicals were appealing. They weren't a body that he felt were either hostile or uncomprehending. He saw them as fellow Christians. And he did so because, in some very fundamental way, bergoglio or Pope Francis's's whole approach was affective and evangelical. He felt very comfortable expressing himself with the freedom of the spirit, with working without the constraints of office.

Michael Higgins:

I remember one occasion I've been to Rome in several years I didn't begin to list them and watching him preside at liturgy, and how unhappy he appeared. You know, his face would light up. He would look at the people in the great Roman Duomo, the great cathedral, the Basilica of Rome, and he would just be full of an evangelist's energy and conviction, and I think he saw in the evangelicals that he met in Brazil and most especially in Argentina. He saw people alive to the Spirit and alive with the Spirit, and although he was not anti-intellectual he was, after all, a Jesuit he was a sharply intelligent man. He didn't see himself in terms of a traditional scholar, in that he always and he makes this clear in his writings that reality takes precedence over ideas, doesn't denigrate ideas, doesn't denigrate those who work with new ideas, but what he says, it's the person in front of you, it's encounter that matters.

Michael Higgins:

The evangelicals they seem to do that. We need to learn from them. So he never saw them as a force to contend with. He saw them as companions along the way, and evangelicals picked that up. They picked up the fact that this wasn't a political move on his part. Well, we better bring the evangelicals in, because we need to make common ground as we struggle in certain areas. No, no, it wasn't strategic. It was deeply pastoral. We should befriend them because they can teach us. This is one of the things that was characteristic of his papacy humility, humility. He goes on and on about the importance of humility with priests and bishops. We learn from others.

Brian Stiller:

Some time ago when I was invited as a guest there. We spent a few of us. We spent an hour before lunch just getting to know each other and I asked him why he had gone to a Pentecostal church about three weeks earlier halfway down Italy on a Sunday morning and he apologized to the church for the way the Catholic church had treated the Pentecostals. And I said why did you do that? And he thought about it for a moment. He said the pastor was my friend and we were wrong. And sometimes in my role, you've got to show humility.

Brian Stiller:

I think, so then we went for lunch and we talked for a two hour lunch and how many would have been there? Oh, there may have been six of us. Yeah, isn't that wonderful. And he, he, he told the waiters, I'll look after them. Yeah, and it was six of us. Yeah, isn't that wonderful. And he, he told the waiters, I'll look after them. Yeah, and and it was an interesting time someone got a picture. He was sitting just about this distance, maybe even closer, yeah, and I saw he was going to do something. I thought, wow, this is amazing. He had told the waiters to leave and he saw my glass was almost empty with water. So he was, he was filling my glass, he was looking after us.

Brian Stiller:

But in that conversation we were talking about evangelism in a secular Europe and he said, brian, I want you to know that I'm not trying to evangelize an evangelical. And he laughed and he said I know some of my senior people will be very unhappy, but I realized it was a theological statement he had made. It was soteriological. He was talking about sin and salvation. He was talking about God's grace in the midst of failure and he was saying, brian, your understanding as a recipient of the grace of God and the forgiveness of your sins. By the way you confess Christ is is legitimate. You don't need the Catholic Eucharistic meal as a way of receiving grace. Now, I've never heard anybody say that elsewhere and I've never publicly talked about this, but to me it was a remarkable moment when the Pope of Rome looks at this Pentecostal boy from Saskatchewan and says I understand that your coming to Christ is legitimate and God-honoring and biblical, and go for it. That's beautiful.

Michael Higgins:

I did not know this and I think that it's a wonderful. What do you make of that? I make a lot of it because it's a wonderful encapsulation of the fundamental pastoral, theological approach he takes to everything, which is inclusivity. It doesn't mean everything matters at the same level, but it does matter. It is respect. He's saying. Look, your tradition matters, it matters greatly. You come to God, you experience God's grace, you experience the power of God's love. It's outside our ritual and certain aspects of our creed, but it's no less legitimate. It's been your mode of experiencing God's presence in your life.

Michael Higgins:

Now, what he's doing here is taking to the next level what already appeared in the Second Vatican Council's document on ecumenism, in which the Church makes clear that there are ways to holiness and salvation that are outside of the Catholic communion. There are ways in which people can be holy that are not prescribed or prescribed by our reality. But it's one thing to have that as a conciliar document or that statement. You can find holding this in other traditions, other Christian denominations, but also outside of Christ, of the Christian tradition. It's another thing to actually begin to implement it in serious ways, including as the Bishop of Rome. So when he says and he did this when he went to meet Waldensians, the old Protestants of Italy, when he went to other groups his special relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury, his love of working with other clergy in Protestant traditions when they were trying to make political headway in Sudan and South Sudan and Sudan during that horrible war that continues to plague the continent.

Michael Higgins:

Again and again, francis saw his ecumenical partners as companions with him on the way to Christ, that their traditions are not insufficient, they're not weak, they're not diminished, they're not poor versions of Catholicism. They are legitimate ecclesial ways of coming to God. And that kind of ecumenism can be very discomforting for traditional prelates and others who operate and this would be true of evangelicals as it would be true of Lutherans and Anglicans and Catholics that we hold the truth and that therefore, any kind of dialogue in a sense is merely ritualistic, it's superficial, because we're not going to change our position. Francis would say no, no, there is truth Now. There are traditions which we must respect and indeed reverence.

Brian Stiller:

Where is Rome going here? We live in a world of driving secularity in some parts of the world and in the global South, in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, you have a church that is just booming. It's growing. Churches are being planted, people are coming to faith in Christ, people are experiencing healing and the filling of the spirit. It's like we've never known in the world's history. And yet we have wars, we have ecological challenges in that and multi-religious activity. So you have Islam on the rise in some places. So here you have the Roman Catholic Church. You have Christianity two and a half to a set point, seven billion, with the church, the Roman Catholic Church, being half of that. And the power and influence where is? Is Rome leading the larger or is she a player?

Michael Higgins:

I had a friend of mine who worked with me. You might have known him. He was an Anglican priest, taught at Simon Fraser, was pastor of a parish in Vancouver. His name was Donald Grayston and he ran an institute called the Shalom Institute. He was very much involved in peace issues and very much involved in ecumenical issues. And one day he said to me just a few years before he died he died probably in his mid to late 70s conclusion that all the churches in Christianity must find a place for papal leadership because he's our one global leader. He said you know, I'm an Anglican priest and Canterbury matters, but Canterbury doesn't matter like Rome, nor Moscow, nor Constantinople. None of them have that global outreach. And he said we just got to find a way for the Pope to exercise his ministry that's more inclusive. And this was a big dream for him. And I thought often about his, because the Popes themselves have taken initiatives to try to bring Christians who have been separated from Rome back into at least a working partnership with Rome, if not actually inclusion in the Roman body.

Michael Higgins:

And Leo XIV recently said at his inaugural mass the same thing that Francis has said that religion is not about propaganda, it's not about imposing religion on others. It's respecting the faith of others. That's how we witness this is a huge departure from Catholic teaching in Rome in the 19th century, when the standard norm was error has no rights. One of the reasons why you could use temporal authority to suppress or minimize other religions was precisely because they were in error and error has no rights. Churches long since rejected that. But to reject it institutionally and to reject it individually and as part of your cultural inheritance. Sometimes they're different things.

Michael Higgins:

Francis, again and again, asserts the commonality, just like Leda will see about the environment. It's our common home Among Christians. This is our common faith, one of the things that unite us and the Pope. The Pope is supposed to be a principle of unity and harmony. That's one of the things that Pope Leo said at the beginning of his pontificate. I'm here as a symbol of love, of Christ's love. I should be involved as a church in expanding God's love over the universe. Do we do it? Very often, no, but aspirationally. This is what we're called to do and this is what the primacy of Peter is called to do. It's a primacy of unity and a primacy of love.

Michael Higgins:

So my job to witness that.

Brian Stiller:

So why should evangelicals care about the Pope?

Michael Higgins:

Because I think they can look at the Pope not as the whore of Babylon or the scarlet woman or whatever other fancy titles given the Pope over the centuries.

Brian Stiller:

We thought that Revelation was pretty well, pretty descriptive.

Michael Higgins:

Really, yeah, they really revealed it right out of the closet there. But because, as the successor of Peter, his job is to ensure unity, harmony and love among Christians. I think the big problem is we've tended to emphasize the wrong titles of the Pope. For instance, what is the Pope? Well, he's the Patriarch of the West, although Benedict XVI got rid of that because the Eastern patriarchs found it offensive. So, but he's Bishop of Rome. He's the successor of Peter. He's the vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's the primate of Italy. He's the head of the Vatican City State. These are all his titles, but some of those we don't agree with.

Michael Higgins:

No, but here's one you will, and the one he took as the most important the service of the servants of God. That's the title that most he wanted to communicate. My job is to serve, not to dominate, not to control, but to serve, because some of the other tenors and tenors of power head of the Vatican city state it's power, right, temporal power, not just spiritual power. Temporal power but here he's saying I am the servant of the servants of God indicates that you're at the bottom. You're like Jesus. Washing the feet of the servants of God indicates that you're at the bottom. You're like Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. You're not standing over them. It takes a lot to be able to shift that mentality. It's like the inverted pyramid. It takes centuries to put one image in mind, to embed it in how we think. How do you rip that out or disrupt it?

Brian Stiller:

To offset the Petrine claim as a servant is a big jump, huge jump.

Michael Higgins:

It's a huge jump and the Petrine claim, of course, is in Matthew and part in John, but mostly in Matthew, and there have been great debates among biblical scholars and reformers and evangelicals and others about how you read those passages. Yes, and how do you explain? How do you see in the Pope of Rome, peter of Galilee, like, how do we get from a fisherman right, how do we get from a fisherman to a prince?

Brian Stiller:

I mean, how is that possible? And it's something we aren't going to solve here. But what I'd like? I want to talk to you about Leo XIV, the new pope. But before we do, the Jesuit disruptor. He came to Canada, he did and he engaged with the Indigenous people. Unwrap that a bit for us.

Michael Higgins:

Well, he came to Canada at the request of the Indigenous and he did not define it as a state visit. It wasn't actually a state visit. It wasn't even a particularly pastoral visit to the Catholics of Canada. It wasn't even a particularly pastoral visit to the Catholics of Canada. It was a over to Canada and to enflesh it in their land, on their land, on their sacred land. One of the things I noticed because I've covered papal trips before, not by mediation, by television, radio and commentary, rather than by being on a plane with the Pope. And what I noticed about this one very quickly, is how Francis actually spent less time talking John Paul II. All he did was talk.

Michael Higgins:

Benedict never seemed terribly comfortable in the role, but Francis listened. He listened most of the time he was in Canada and the indigenous leaders loved that. They loved that about him. They loved the fact that he reverenced their traditions, that he listened to them. He didn't argue with them. He didn't have a clear program saying this is what we're going to do and we will admit so much of this, but they're not going that. No, no, there's nothing pragmatic about it.

Michael Higgins:

It was a pastoral, moral connection with the people who had been damaged by various Roman Catholics who had attempted to assimilate them, wipe out their religious culture, create not intentionally, but to create what we now call intergenerational trauma. He accepted that. He didn't argue with it. He accepted it and the fact that they gave him the headdress was one of the most moving moments. It and the fact that they gave him the headdress was one of the most moving moments, right, because you could see that he brought such a deep affection for them.

Michael Higgins:

And I've talked to several of the Indigenous leaders who were with him in Rome and were with him in Canada and the thing they remember most is the genuine affection he had for them and the sorrow and remorse for the institution that had caused the pain. They believed him because they believed in the integrity of his witness, and why? Because what you saw is what you get. That pilgrimage was in many ways magnificent, but it was not without its difficulties, and some of the difficulties were internal ecclesiastical difficulties, and some of the difficulties were internal ecclesiastical, political power things going on amongst some Canadian bishops?

Brian Stiller:

Francis had, and how did that disable the impact?

Michael Higgins:

Well, I think there were a couple of cases where the church that welcomed him, the Canadian church, mishandled it significantly. One was a major liturgy that was done in Latin. This would have been an ideal opportunity to have used several different languages, latin with an indigenous body. I know People were outreached, including indigenous Catholic priests. Why was this happening? And this would not have been Francis, see, when the Pope comes. So was there logic to that? It was just extremely bad taste and it was a bad judgment call. Nobody knows.

Michael Higgins:

It was done by some functionary in the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, because the Pope doesn't set his retinue and he comes as guests of the country, guests of the church in that country. So even when he speaks, a good deal of what he says has already been crafted by the bishop. He has to agree with it. He won't say anything he doesn't agree with. But he doesn't know every individual situation in every country, so he depends a great part on their feeding him right. This is what every political and religious figure does, but he gives it his own tone, he gives it his own careful signature. So I think what you found in that penitential pilgrimage was a real determination on Francis's part to make an end, to bring, to ask for mercy and at the same time, it's only a beginning. It's not the end.

Brian Stiller:

So give me a summation of his papacy.

Michael Higgins:

Well, I think I mentioned it almost at the very beginning, brian, he humanized the papacy. He made it less an office of monarchy and more the office of the fisherman. He went out of his way to embrace people from different traditions religious traditions or indeed none in his pursuit of trying to find the common ground that unites us. Because he presided over a church that is riven. I mean, I have been covering Francis, I've written about Francis in a book and articles and everything else, and I realize his flaws as much as I realize his strengths. But I also understand what many evangelicals and others may not fully appreciate, that opposition to Francis was mostly from within the Catholic Church, that if you go outside the Catholic Church you'll find people who don't particularly even like the Catholic Church but they like Francis.

Michael Higgins:

I was at a meeting of a number of a dinner in honor of the publication of the book by senior editors, producers. You know, in the cognoscenti, the chattering class, they don't like the Catholic Church. For some reason they're like maybe they don't like the Catholic Church, they love him. And I said I don't know how I mean. Well, you do understand he was the head of the Catholic Church. I was kind of. You know it was kind of a flaw, but the real important thing was they loved him and I think that that's one of the things when you say what defines him. I think what defines him is that fragile, sometimes vulnerable, openness and love. You remember, very early in his pontificate he embraced a man like Francis of Assisi, embraced a leper, and this man had a particular disease that so disfigured his face that he was repugnant to look at like you, just you're repelled by it. Francis embraced him, kissed him, held him. This wasn't a media moment, this was an expression of his ministry.

Brian Stiller:

Thank, you, michael, but you've written about the new Pope. I have Leo XIV. Leo XIV Not a book. Not a book, not yet.

Michael Higgins:

A couple of articles.

Brian Stiller:

So give me your best introduction.

Michael Higgins:

But I think at this point it's still very early. As I said in one of my Global Mail columns, the proof is in the paper pudding. We'll see what happens, what appointments he makes to the Curia, who are going to be heading the offices, how he's going to follow up on synodality, what's up when his first encyclical comes out. So I mean, it's still kind of a honeymoon phase. But here's something, because you're always looking for signs and structures. That's how it works in the Roman world Not necessarily what you say, but how you say it. Only what you say, but how you say it and what symbols you employ in saying it.

Michael Higgins:

Recently, he approved the appointment of three bishops of American seas or diocese, all of them born immigrants one from Nicaragua, one from, I believe, ghana and one from Vietnam. And they were born outside the country. So they're immigrant born. They're immigrant children who are now bishops in a very anti-immigrant country under President Trump. This is a symbol, this is a sign of Neil saying to his fellow Catholic, jd Vance this is not the way we work. We don't isolate and we don't incarcerate immigrants and strangers. We welcome them. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put bishops in major Cs, or even minor Cs. I think one of them is San Diego. I'm going to put them in positions as bishops, and they are themselves Not the sons of immigrants, but immigrants themselves. That's a pretty powerful message.

Brian Stiller:

Michael Higgins, author of the Jesuit Disruptor that's quite a choice of words. Disruptor it is, as we conclude today, michael. Both of us confess our love for Christ, our love for his church, the bride of Christ, we want our lives to count for him. We love the world, as he's called us to love the world. What would you say to my evangelical brothers and sisters?

Michael Higgins:

Well, I would say, using Francis's approach in dialogue, that when we enter seriously in dialogue and reverence the other as other, we move to an experience of encounter, and that experience of encounter is the discovery of Christ in the upper.

Brian Stiller:

On the issue of women women in ministry at various levels? Did he disrupt the past of the Church with respect to women?

Michael Higgins:

In terms of sacramental ministry? No. In terms of governance yes, what he did is he appointed more women to positions of senior governance and responsibility in the Catholic Church than has ever been done by any pope combined. And so at this moment, right now, the head of one of the dicasteries, that is, the department, is a woman. In the past, women might be secretary. A dicastery would be what A dicastery would be like a ministerial department.

Michael Higgins:

Like a ministerial department, so liturgy, evangelization, orthodoxy, teaching, so very senior in an administrative role, very senior, always held by bishops beforehand.

Michael Higgins:

So there's a woman doing that, there's a woman serving as a secretary, I think, in the same congregation or ducastery, and there's a woman running the governorate, which is the body that has responsibility for the oversight of the entire Vatican City State. It's now run by a woman and there are women in all kinds of other areas within the governance structure, including his friend Emily Chukuda, who is the president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, married, woman and children. And there she is, you know, right there, close to Pope Francis, and holding a senior position that would have not been held by a woman before. So in matters of governance, leadership, modeling, witness, he moved the role of women in the Catholic Church at an accelerated rate In terms of orders, sacrament, ministerial work. In that regard, no, he did not move on the ordination of women to the deacons, to the diaconate, and he was firm that women would not be ordained to the priesthood and he was firm that women would not be ordained to the priesthood.

Brian Stiller:

I was in Ukraine when Pope Francis made his statement about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I got to tell you, michael, there was deep disappointment as to the lackluster approach that he took to that issue. There are wars all over the world, but it seemed at that point I don't know whether it was because he was trying to ameliorate his relationship with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church or what, but there just seemed to be a lack of strength in making clear what had happened.

Michael Higgins:

You know, he's received a fair bit of criticism for his position on Ukraine, his position on Beijing and his position with Tel Aviv, gaza and Hamas and, without attempting to in any way justify his positions on these issues, which he tried in many ways to achieve some reconciliation, I want to talk just very briefly about the framework of his political thinking on this. When you look at some of his work Fratelli Tutti, which is one of his encyclicals and you look at other things that he has done, partly again shaped, to go back to an earlier point, when we're talking about his experience in Argentina, particularly with the generals, with the colonels, the Dirty War what you discover there is that Francis was a profound believer in dialogue. He felt, no matter how hostile the adversary, if you're not at the table, peace and reconciliation is impossible because dialogue is the precondition for encounter. So, no matter how antipathetic they may be, you have to be at the table. That's one of the reasons why he was persistent in relation to Beijing and Hong Kong, greatly annoying Lord Patton, who was the last governor of Hong Kong and a devout Catholic, as well as Cardinal Zen, the Archbishop of Hong Kong, who had experienced direct Chinese persecution, marxist persecution. But he said no, no, no, direct Chinese persecution, marxist persecution. But he said no, no, no, we have to work with the reality on the ground. Similarly with Ukraine and Russia. He didn't believe that there was more equivalence in this, but he realized that you can't come to a resolution until you come to the table.

Michael Higgins:

Now there would be many who say, and not unjustifiably. How can you come to the table with Putin when Putin calls the shots, or Z? How do you make commerce with Z or work out some kind of intercourse and negotiation, when he can't trust what he's doing? He's trying to sinicize everything, including religion. Francis would say well, we can't enter it naively. What we have to do is we have to chip away. Enter it naively. What we have to do is we have to chip away. We can't eliminate our presence there.

Michael Higgins:

This, in part, is the continuation of a policy called Ostpolitik, which was crafted by Cardinal Cassaroli, who was Secretary of State to Pope Paul VI, and he worked on a classic Vatican diplomacy of conciliation. John Paul II changed that. With John Paul II and his secretaries of state, they moved to a more adversarial position. Communism is the enemy and John Paul II was a major figure in helping to bring down the Soviet empire. So one operates in a more direct, confrontational, perhaps prophetic way, the other operates in a diplomatic way. Let's win them over. Dialogue, yes, is extremely difficult. Nonviolence, yes, is overwhelmingly difficult. But we can only move forward as disciples of Christ if we come to actually listen to the other. So the impatience that people in Ukraine and elsewhere have for Francis because he didn't come out and condemn unequivocally one side only, is understandable. But if you put it within the framework, the political, ecclesial framework that he used, he was incredibly consistent ecclesial framework that he used.

Michael Higgins:

He was incredibly consistent,

Brian Stiller:

michael.

Brian Stiller:

Thank you for being a guest on Evangelical 360.

Michael Higgins:

See you 40 years from now, thank you.

Brian Stiller:

Thank you, michael, for joining us today on part two of the two-part series in this podcast, and thank you for helping us grow in understanding as we seek to bridge the chasm between our two sides of the Christian global witness, and thank you for being a part of the podcast. I'd be so grateful if you would subscribe and share this episode, and remember always use hashtag Evangelical360. If you'd like to learn more about today's guests, be sure to check the show notes or description below, and if you haven't already received my free e-book and newsletter, just go to brianstillercom. So thanks again for joining us, until next time.

Brian Stiller:

Don't miss the next interview.

Brian Stiller:

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