He lost his balance when his motorcade came to an abrupt halt, bruising his left eye and cutting his left eyebrow which dripped blood onto his white cassock.
The cut was swiftly treated with ice and bandaged up.
Recently, it seems that the Holy Father has suffered a series of metaphorical "black eyes" which appear to have bruised his spirit with wounds which will require more than bandages to treat and heal.
There is no question that Pope Francis has suffered a number of embarrassments and setbacks which have damaged his Papacy.
Clearly, the Pontiff is still reeling from his trip to Chile in January of this year. He provoked outrage when, in remarks to a reporter, he dismissed as slander accusations that a Chilean bishop had covered up sex abuse by another priest.
Even Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Pope’s top adviser on child protection, found it necessary to instruct the Holy Father and admonish the Supreme Pontiff for having caused “great pain” to abuse victims.
Amid the furor, the Pope Francis reopened the investigation.
Within weeks, the Pope was admitting that he had made “grave mistakes” in handling the case and inviting victims to the Vatican to receive his apology in person. A meeting of a likely different sort with Chilean bishops will take place next month.
Simultaneously, there has been the growing prospect of Pope Francis agreeing to let China’s Communist government control his selection of the country’s Catholic bishops, an initiative which has stirred one of the biggest controversies of his reign, with critics denouncing the plan as a betrayal and a capitulation.
“I would make a cartoon showing the Pope kneeling and offering the keys of the kingdom of Heaven and saying, ‘Now, please recognize me as pope,’” Cardinal Joseph Zen, retired Archbishop of Hong Kong, the most prominent critic of the prospective deal, told a reporter recently. “The advisers of the Pope are giving him advice to renounce his authority.”
Pope Francis continues to face a challenge to his authority from some doctrinal conservatives. Under Popes John Paul and Benedict they considered a strong papacy to be a guarantor of orthodoxy, but under a more liberal Pope have emphasized arguments for the limits to Papal authority.
Earlier this month in Rome, a conference heard several talks on the topic,warning that the Pope could be subject to a “formal correction” from Cardinals if he doesn’t make clear how his statements on divorce are faithful to orthodox teaching.
And perhaps, what I personally believe the most critical and important challenge to Pope Francis has been his backing down and removing of a Nigerian Bishop whose 2012 appointment sparked years of protest from the diocese’s Priests.
In the face of that resistance to Pontifical authority, Pope Francis stepped back from a confrontation of eight months during which he had threatened to suspend the Priests should they continue to refuse to accept the Bishop’s appointment.
In a short note on February 19 of this year, the Holy See stated that the Pope had accepted the resignation of Bishop Peter Okpaleke, head of the southern Nigerian diocese of Ahiara, and put neighboring Umuahia Bishop Lucius Ugorji in charge as apostolic administrator.
Okpaleke was appointed to his post by Pope Benedict XVI but was never able to take possession of the diocese because of the widespread nature of the protests.
Pope Francis wrote to the Priests of the diocese last June, giving them 30 days to accept their Bishop or be suspended from ministry.
The Priests had complained that Okpaleke was not from Mbaise, the region surrounding their diocese. They said it has been unfair that there has been no Catholic bishop in Nigeria originally from their region, long known as one of the country’s most Catholic areas.
Little wonder that the Holy Father seems to be remarkably silent these days.
Whether or not Pope Francis has been ill-served by his advisors or purposely subverted to impede needed reforms, one fact is clear: the Holy Father has really taken it on the chin and it seems as though the “wind has been knocked out of him”.
Perhaps Pope Francis has the energy and will to come out his corner again to continue to battle the forces opposing his message of reform and mercy.
That will determine the ultimate impact which his Pontificate will have upon the future of the Church.
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