While the world was busy watching the US presidential election, Pope Francis pulled another surprise in Rome. 

Bringing her chocolates and a bouquet of roses, Francis paid a house visit to Emma Bonino, a 76-year-old Italian politician who successfully fought to legalize abortion in Italy in the 1970s. 

Francis, 87, is one of the world’s strongest voices against abortion. He has repeatedly condemned it as “murder,” much like “hiring a hit man” to solve a problem. 

Why did an anti-abortion Pope enter the apartment of an abortion advocate?

Many of the Pope’s critics in traditionalist circles protested. LifeSite News reported how Francis visited a “notorious abortionist.” NovusOrdoWatch said the Pope “honored Italy’s abortion witch Emma Bonino.” Pointing out how Francis called abortion “murder,” Gloria.tv headlined its post: “Francis visits unrepentant ‘assassin.’”

Why is the Pope friends with a woman like her?

‘Example of freedom and resistance’

Born in Bra, Italy, on March 9, 1948, Bonino is a former Italian senator and foreign affairs minister who also once served as European Union commissioner. She is a staunch fighter for human rights, once described by The Guardian as “Italy’s pro-Europe, pro-immigrant conscience.” 

Bonino battled lung cancer for eight years, but said she recovered in 2023, according to Reuters. She was recently discharged from the hospital after suffering lung and heart problems, prompting Francis’ trip to her apartment in central Rome. 

In a 2016 interview with Corriere della Sera, Pope Francis said of Bonino: “She is the person who knows Africa best. And she has offered the best service to Italy to get to know Africa. They tell me: These are people who think very differently from us. True, but never mind. You have to look at the people, at what they do.”

In 2022, he told the same news outlet: “I respect Emma Bonino so much: I don’t share her ideas but she knows Africa better than anyone. In front of this woman I say, chapeau (well done).”

Bonino, in turn, has described the Pope with the kindest of words.

The veteran Italian politician, in a Facebook post, recounted how “with great surprise and full of emotion, His Holiness paid me a very welcome visit” last Tuesday. “The extraordinary human aspect of Pope Francis always emerges.”

“His telling me that I am ‘an example of freedom and resistance’ filled me with joy,” Bonino said.

US election and ‘a tribal era’

The Pope’s visit to Bonino came to mind after I read a New York Times article on Wednesday, November 6, titled “Trump’s America’: Comeback victory signals a different kind of country.” 

Speaking of the divisiveness caused by the US presidential election, the New York Times said: “As much as anything, the election reinforced how polarized the country has become, split down the middle. It is a tribal era, an us-versus-them moment, when each side is so divorced from the other that they find it hard to even comprehend each other.”

We’ve seen how supporters of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris — and, in the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Leni Robredo — have labeled and demonized each other, in a way that nothing from the other side can ever be “valid.” In this kind of world, only “our side” is totally right, and yours can only be totally wrong or “canceled.” 

In this world divided into social media bubbles, everything is black and white; gray is not a color.

It’s this kind of tribalism worsened by tech algorithms, unfortunately, that gives rise to fascists. In this world of us-versus-them, facts are irrelevant and others do not matter. All hail the Supreme Leader!

The Pope’s friendship with Bonino, long considered an enemy of the Catholic Church, shows us a way to heal divisions and fight the world’s dictators.

The challenge, as the Pope’s example shows, is to look beyond our differences and find our commonalities. We can only achieve this through attention to nuances and appreciation of context.

Francis, while unflinching in his stance against abortion, looked beyond Bonino’s abortion advocacy and saw her defense of human rights, her example of “freedom and resistance.”

Speaking of nuances, the Pope also understood the implications of electing Trump or Harris: It is not simply “angel versus devil” as many would like to portray it. 

On September 13, aboard the papal plane back to Rome after his Asia-Pacific trip, Francis criticized the policies of both Trump and Harris. “Whether it is the one who is chasing away migrants, or the one who kills children,” he said. “Both are against life.”

“You must choose the lesser evil,” the Pope told journalists. “Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone, in conscience, has to think and do this.”

‘The antidote to fascism’

It’s the big picture that always make the difference: What, in the end, do we seek to achieve?

The Pope’s visit to Bonino is part of his wider push for synodality, a way of proceeding that involves more consultation and dialogue, in the Catholic Church. This, in fact, was the subject of a recent monthlong summit at the Vatican, called the Synod on Synodality, to cap a three-year synodal process launched by Francis.

The “synodal” path — derived from the Greek term “syn-hodos,” which means “walking together” — is a way of life he proposes not only for 1.4 billion Catholics, but for a world divided by the rise of fascists.

After Trump defeated Harris, papal biographer Austen Ivereigh said in a tweet on Wednesday, “As the whitelash resumes unleashed (autarky, racism, polarization, unilateralism), the world’s largest and oldest institution, the Catholic Church, is embarked on the opposite path.”

“The antidote to fascism,” said Ivereigh, is “not individualism but synodality.”

On the same day of the US election, in the apartment of Italy’s “abortion witch,” the Pope showed us the way through roses and chocolates. – Rappler.com