The Origin and Context of Pope Francis’s Forthcoming Encyclical Title
The Vatican confirmed on Saturday that Pope Francis is scheduled to make a trip to the medieval city of Assisi on October 3—the anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi’s death, known as the “Feast of the Transitus” in the Franciscan Orders—to sign a new encyclical letter on “the social, political and economic obligations that flow from a belief that all people are children of God and therefore brothers and sisters to one another.”
Officials announced that the document would be titled “Fratelli Tutti” in Italian, which immediately set off a social-media firestorm about its gender-exclusive construction. The literal translation from the Italian is “All Brothers” or “Brothers all.”
In response, several theologians took to Twitter to ask why the document wasn’t titled “Fratelli e sorelle tutti” in Italian, or “Brothers and Sisters All.” An excellent question indeed!
It is worth noting that Catholic News Service had originally reported that the English title of the document is “Brothers and Sisters All,” and clarified via Twitter that the inclusive English translation of the Italian was from CNS and not the Vatican press office.
But this doesn’t directly address the gender-exclusive title as announced by the Vatican News service. To understand the Italian titular origins, one must first understand the context of the text that inspired the document’s name.
Reports explain that the title comes from the writings of St. Francis of Assisi, the namesake of Pope Francis. The specific line in question comes from Admonition VI, one of twenty-eight exhortations or mini-homilies that St. Francis delivered to his brother friars. Typically, these short texts offer a practical reflection on some passage from scripture.
The scholarly English translation of Admonition VI, in its entirety, reads as follows:
Let all of us, brothers, consider the Good Shepherd Who bore the suffering of the cross to save His sheep.
The Lord’s sheep followed Him in tribulation and persecution, in shame and hunger, in weakness and temptation, and in other ways; and for these things they received eternal life from the Lord.
Therefore, it is a great shame for us, the servants of God, that the saints have accomplished great things and we want only to receive glory and honor by recounting them.
The opening address of this admonition appears to be the primary inspiration for the title of this text.
Like Pope Francis’s earlier 2015 encyclical Laudato Sí, which takes its title from the opening lines of St. Francis’s famous “Canticle of the Creatures,” this forthcoming encyclical follows a similar pattern of selecting an “incipit,” or the first few opening words or lines of a text.
But unlike Laudato Sí, which was written by St. Francis around 1225 in the vernacular Umbrian dialect of medieval Italian, the Admonitions were composed and preserved in Latin.
The phrase in question for this forthcoming document reads, according to the critical edition of the text, as: “Attendamus, omnes fratres” or “Let us, all brothers, pay attention…”
Contextually, the gender exclusivity makes perfect sense given the fact that St. Francis was addressing a community of his brother friars. Again, the Admonitions were an informal and practical form of spiritual exhortation, which were—in their time—written for and directed at a community of men.
However, because the title of the forthcoming document is not a direct quote from the primary source as Laudato Sí was, there is no reason—theological or otherwise—that the Italian title of the text couldn’t be gender-inclusive. Given that the forthcoming encyclical is aimed at a broad, worldwide, Christian audience (beyond St. Francis’s intentionally limited medieval friar-only audience), it would seem to make more sense to offer an inclusive title across the modern languages, which reflects not just the “brothers” (fratres or fratelli) but “brothers and sisters” (Fratelli e sorelle tutti, in Italian).
The general theme of Admonition VI centers on the need of Christians to heed Christ’s instruction in the gospels to follow the “Good Shepherd.” St. Francis challenges his friar brothers to take their baptismal vocation seriously in terms of putting their faith into concrete actions.
The Franciscan New Testament scholar Robert J. Karris, OFM wrote a substantive commentary on the Admonitions and offered a summary of what St. Francis was essentially telling his brothers:
In verses 1–2 [St. Francis] has gotten our attention: Jesus did this; the saints followed his good example. Surely, they present us with much to imitate in our religious lives. And in all honesty, what do we do? We sit around and talk about the examples, or just preach about them from the pulpit, or tell them to our students in the classroom. Indeed, shame on us!
Karris’s modern paraphrase helps us to see the key message: it is not enough to merely admire Christ and the saints, or even recount and teach others about their deeds; we, as followers of the “Good Shepherd” are expected to do more, to put our faith into action.
As Vatican News reports, the notion of the inherent interrelatedness and interdependence among all women and men in the human family has been a consistent theme in Pope Francis’s ministry as Bishop of Rome.
During this time of increasing political polarization and the global toll of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the need to reinforce solidarity and the common good as constitutive elements of Christian discipleship is important. Hopefully, the modern-language titles of the forthcoming encyclical reflect that spirit of solidarity with greater gender-inclusivity.
Daniel P. Horan, OFM, PhD, is a Franciscan friar, the Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, a columnist for National Catholic Reporter, and the author of many books, including Catholicity and Emerging Personhood: A Contemporary Theological Anthropology (2019). Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
