Monthly Archives: April 2025

In late 2014, the redoubtable Anna Sobrepeña, the editor in chief of Lifestyle Asia at the time, asked me to write the cover story for the magazine’s January 2015 issue, to mark Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines. I focused on the phenomenon of a pope who spoke plainly. Allow me to post the story here, in tribute to the extraordinary man the world buried today.

This is an essay on a plain-speaking pope, but it begins in Greek. One solitary word of Greek, which Pope Francis used to great effect. Please bear with me. 

Parresia entered Christian discourse through the example of St. Paul. It means bold or candid speech, but between friends. The New Testament scholar J. Paul Sampley writes: “In Paul’s time … the term’s “social context” was friendship, and parresia is the frank speech delivered by a friend, and its aim is the friend’s improvement …”

Fast forward two thousand years, to October 2014, and Pope Francis’ rousing concluding speech at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family. He is describing the candid exchange that marked the synod, noting the “moments of running fast, as if wanting to conquer time and reach the goal as soon as possible; other moments of fatigue, as if wanting to say ‘enough’; other moments of enthusiasm and ardor.” He lists the “tensions and temptations” that marked some of the discussion, and then he confesses: 

“Personally I would be very worried and saddened if it were not for these temptations and these animated discussions; this movement of the spirits, as St Ignatius called it … if all were in a state of agreement, or silent in a false and quietist peace. Instead, I have seen and I have heard—with joy and appreciation—speeches and interventions full of faith, of pastoral and doctrinal zeal, of wisdom, of frankness and of courage: and of parresia.”

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