Pope Francis has spoken again of his reason for taking the name of the Saint of Assisi: poverty and peace.  In his address to the diplomatic corps this morning, he drew a link between a certain kind of poverty and a lack of peace.  Taking up the sword of Benedict XVI, he railed against he dictatorship of relativism by which individuals make themselves the measure of all things and thus subordinate the good of others to their own whims:

But there is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the “tyranny of relativism”, which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples. And that brings me to a second reason for my name. Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace. But there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.

In this Pope Francis shows his particular bent of mind as a protector of the poor, but in so doing he shows himself the true successor of Pope Benedict.  The safeguarding of the dogmatic truth of the Church, the deposit of faith, must engage an orthopraxy that extends itself especially to the protection of the weakest and most in need.

This is precisely the kind of evangelization that is bound to propagate the faith in the world we live in today.

Pray for the ministry of Pope Francis.