Pope Francis on crises and conflicts

Photo credit: Kai Pilger

It’s not often you get to look with fresh eyes on words that shape our politics and humanity. That was our experience in reading the late Pope Francis’s reflections on “crisis” and “conflict.” We use these words interchangeably, but Francis draws a sharp distinction. In his view—a view that knocked us back—crisis is a necessary thing, vital to individuals, institutions and societies. Conflict, on the other hand, fractures reality. It closes us off, forces us to pick sides, to seek blame.

For individuals, Francis writes, crises are “moments in life in which we take a step forward. There is the adolescence crisis, the coming-of-age crisis, the midlife crisis. A crisis gets you moving, makes you dance. A crisis is necessarily open; it makes you grow.” A conflict, in contrast, “is a closed thing. Conflict seeks the answer within itself, it destroys itself.”

For societies, “crises are present everywhere and in every age of history…they create a sense of trepidation and uncertainty in the face of decisions to be made.” We see this in the word’s etymology. The ancient Greek krino comes from the act of sifting wheat from chaff. Crises force us to think deeply, weigh options, make choices. But conflict, to Francis, “always tries to find ‘guilty’ parties to scorn and stigmatize [and] ‘righteous’ parties to defend.”

Sound familiar?

As we look ahead, let us embrace crisis as Pope Francis defines it: an opportunity, often painful, for openness and growth. Because the alternative, as we see all around us, is the wasteful, self-perpetuating trap of conflict.