A year has passed since the election of Pope Francis. This time has been more than enough for the Holy Father to become an indisputable social reference, both for the members of the Church and for the rest of the world, and one of the most mediatic agents of public life. Along the way, he has won many sympathies and some (probably fewer) enmities. Many have tried to put his charisma down to his Argentinian origin, with an anachronistic and not Exempt naive glimmer of the romantic thinking known as volksgeist or spirit of the peoples. Others, especially those who attribute to him a revolution of the Church, in his Jesuit training . There have been those who proclaimed his communist ideology (or at least "leftist" or "progressive"), and those who have praised him for civil service examination with his predecessors.

In most cases, these are mere speculations because it is difficult - as well as unintelligent - to try to demonstrate the undemonstrable, to try to isolate the quality of the particularity and to find the source of the magnetism exercised by the current successor of Peter. Aristotle already said that it is absurd to require the rhetorician to make demonstrations (like those made in the natural sciences). However, it is precisely the rhetorical perspective that can bring us a little closer to understanding the oddities and/or geniuses of the current head of the Church.

Colloquial language

Recently, in an interesting (and very accurate) article by a professor at the University of Chile, the Pope was defined as a man of gestures. It is well known, at least for some time now, that we do not communicate only with words. By "speech" we mean an edifice of ideas built with verbal language, but also with the firm walls of actions and gestures, and without forgetting the vain corners of what is not said, what is understood, what is insinuated and interpreted. It would be disproportionate and grotesque, at least in this context, to attempt an analysis of all that Francis has transmitted to us during his brief, for the moment, papacy. What I propose here, as a much more humble but fundamental goal , are some reflections on the Pope's purely linguistic speech .

In the last century (so close despite the connotations of the expression), linguistic research made a fundamental shift in its focus of study. Gone was the dual distinction between signifier and signified and the conception of language as a mere code to be encoded and decoded. Technological advances and attempts at development of artificial intelligence have constantly collided with the wall of meaning, with the difficulty of interpretation, and have only raised the profile of the real protagonists of communication, the interpreters (both speakers and listeners); no longer mere senders and receivers, simple encoders and decoders.

However, as is often the case, the finding is in fact a revisitation of the past, a new look at what has always been there. Already the early rhetoricians (and again Aristotle comes into the picture) stressed the importance of constructing the speech adapted to the audience, that is, to the interlocutors and to the status of each linguistic utterance. And this is perhaps one of the points for which the Pope's language attracts the most attention. It is not in vain that the charism is, in a transcendental sense, a gift of the Holy Spirit, in the same way as those tongues of fire on the apostles. It has been said that the Pope's language is direct and simple. In some cases he has even been reproached for a childish attitude, unbecoming of the solemnity of position. These observations have always been made in relation to his oral statements (including homilies or speeches), not to his writings (a distinction that is not unimportant); and precisely because of these, he has entered with giant steps into the media system, which is why we are going to focus on them.

Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of the Pope's language, which can already be sensed in the impression of a direct, simple and close style, is probably a tendency to the colloquial, to the form of intimate conversation. In fact, the most prototypical example of oral language is that of conversation among friends, that is, colloquial. The Pope's speech , being often (obviously) prepared (planned and therefore not spontaneous), is much closer to this end of the gradual scale between the oral and the written. Francis himself gave us the core topic of the analysis when, in a meeting with the class leaders in Brazil, he explained that his committee was always the same: "dialogue, dialogue, dialogue". It can be appreciated more clearly by paying attention to the main differences -always gradual- between the oral speech and the written speech .

The oral speech is a spontaneous speech (at least in appearance) and a clear sample of spontaneity are the jokes with which Francis has sometimes surprised his interlocutors, as when he addressed the President of Venezuela with these words: "Pray for me...". But pray for me, not against me, eh?"; or when he spoke of one of his recent readings, a book by a cardinal, and added: "But don't think that I do advertising to the books of my cardinals, eh?". In both cases, as in many others, we observe the direct interpellation to occasional student through the interjection "eh" or with the use of the verb forms of the second person singular, the tú ("Sometimes I am angry with one, or with a... but... forget it, forget it, and if he asks you a favor, do it") or the Argentine vos ("Of course they are going to do 'macana', sabés"). These interpellations to the interlocutor constitute another of the features of spoken language, which is usually reflected in the presence of what linguists call "phatic regulators", such as the aforementioned interjection. Also the redundancies, and some expressions like "really", in the following example, fulfill the task of assuring in this subject of interventions the reception of the message on the part of the occasional student and its acceptance: "In the curia there are holy people, really, there are holy people", he said in one occasion. Perhaps the main reason for this involvement of the participants in the conversation, and another outstanding characteristic of this language subject , is that it presents a closeness between the interlocutors, a conventional symmetry, without hierarchy, between speaker and occasional student, as can be seen in what has been said so far.

Another of the defining features of colloquial language can be intuited at purpose from these examples: the vocabulary of an informal register, not very specific, because it deals with everyday issues, close to us. We find many examples of this among the Pope's most famous statements, such as "make a mess", "they are going to make a mess", "don't make a mess of reality", "let's give young people an earful", or metaphors of the close, familiar environment (on which we will dwell later), such as "God is our father", "Jesus is our defense lawyer", "the Church cannot be the "nanny" of Christians", or "be shepherds with the "smell of sheep"". A clear example of this last group are the metaphors from the world of soccer that he used in his visit to Brazil: "play forward" or "Jesus offers us something bigger than the World Cup".

This oral imprint should not be confused with an empty or childish message. Nor with the language of political correctness, which tends to be, on the contrary, convoluted, indirect. We must accept that it is difficult to convince non-Catholics (and a good issue of Catholics) to read and learn the doctrine of the Church, to have as bedside reading, on the bedside table, the latest papal encyclical, a guide of Canon Law or, simply, the catechism. To be away from the Church is more comfortable than to be in it and the too specific, sometimes almost hermetic discourses (which are very useful for those who want to go deeper) are not a very convincing claim. The truth must be for everyone, not for a privileged few, and it is not enough not to hide anything, because intellectual remoteness (or even learned social rejection) are sometimes the strongest locks. Of course, it is necessary to deepen the knowledge, but to give it to others (and not only to an elite). It is necessary to simplify the message to adapt it to the non-specialized public, without losing essential content ("Faith is whole, it does not liquefy"). Jesus Christ did not speak to specialists, he did not preach only to the teachers of the Law. He surrounded himself with ordinary people, of little training, and not for that reason his message was childish or simplistic.

We live in the society of immediacy, where answers are sought in the here and now, and better if they can be chewed and digested. The Pope's message is that of the good rhetorician or the good publicist - advertising is not in itself bad or misleading - who trusts in the goodness of his product and knows that he does not need to explain in detail how it works (the product already has its instruction book, to read at home when necessary, and a great after-sales and consulting team), because if the "customer" test, he will not be disappointed. In the classical world this was called captatio benevolentiae, i.e., obtaining a positive interest. The Pope himself summed it up very well when he said that the Christian message should focus "on the essential, which is the most beautiful, the greatest, the most attractive and at the same time the most necessary. The proposal is simplified, without losing depth and truth, and thus becomes more forceful and radiant".

Talking with images

Today's society is largely characterized by a visual culture. Sight is undoubtedly the most prestigious sense and, if we want to reach a wide audience, it is of great financial aid use figurative language, capable of transmitting an image or a concept to the mind of the receiver without the need for great explanations. We have already seen that the Pope has frequently resorted to this subject of language, with references to the most immediate and familiar surroundings of his listeners, such as family relationships, youth jargon ("Are you ready to enter into this wave of the revolution of faith?"), soccer or any other aspect of daily life ("There is orange smoothie, there is apple smoothie, there is banana smoothie, but please do not drink faith smoothie"). However, there is a metaphorical language subject (very visual) that has predominated in the Pope's speech , that of space and movement: "To go out of ourselves to go to the periphery", "Play forward", "I want people to go outside. I want the Church, the parishes, the schools to go out into the street", "We must open up", "Please, do not close yourselves in. [The Church must go out of herself. Where to? Towards the existential peripheries", "The gentrification of the heart paralyzes us", "Don't be a stranger to reality" or "It is important to know how to welcome". All of them point to the same path and are absolutely consistent with the function of colloquial language described above: the Church must bring her message to others, not keep it to herself, and replace belligerent language with welcoming language. Once again, moreover, it can be seen that the Pope has not invented anything new, radically different from the message of the Church since its origins. Jesus also spoke with images and the parable was one of his most habitual forms of teaching.

Amazement in the face of the everyday

So, we might ask, if there is nothing new, why is the Pope's language so striking? In literature, the current of scholars known as the Russian Formalists used the concept of deautomatization to explain the difference between literary language and everyday language. Often reality is so present, for so long, that it becomes invisible. We stop paying attention to what surrounds us and forget about it. We do many things automatically, without being aware of it. In the world of art, the avant-gardes realized this and insisted on the need to rediscover reality, to look with new eyes, as if they were foreigners, at what surrounds us, to become aware of its dimensions, its beauty. The Church is already many years old and perhaps its message has become automated, certain routines have been incorporated and in many cases the enthusiasm, simplicity and clarity of its origins have been lost. It is necessary to rediscover it, to rethink what is essential. This is the Pope's message. It is necessary to take the Church out of its environment and show it again and look at it with new eyes, with simplicity, which is also a form of poverty (how well chosen the name of Francis), of stripping off the superficial and adorned.