In March 2013, in the first homily after his election, Pope Francis said: “When one does not profess Jesus Christ, I recall the phrase of Léon Bloy: ‘Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the Devil.’”
For many, the French Catholic polemicist Léon Bloy (1846–1917) approaches prophetic status for his intense concentration on the Crucifixion as the central theme of human experience, along with the acceptance of poverty and the notion of Jesus as an impoverished man. Yet how moral and merciful should our prophets be?
