Pope Francis says “Speak the Truth in Love”. But will he be honest with the early history of the papacy?

In the Twitter feed this morning, I found an article in the CatholicHerald.co.uk entitled Speak the language of truth in love, Pope urges faithful.

In it, Bishop of Rome Bergoglio says:

Catholics should speak “the language of truth in love”, not the language of hypocrisy, the Pope said at Mass this morning.

In his homily in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae at the Vatican, he said: “Hypocrisy is the very language of corruption. And when Jesus speaks to his disciples, he says: ‘Let your language be ‘Yes, yes! No, no.’ Hypocrisy is not a language of truth, because the truth is never given alone. Never! It is always given with love! There is no truth without love. Love is the first truth.

I have the first comment:

I am wondering, will this pope speak the truth about the early papacy? Vatican I says that “a primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church of God was immediately and directly promised to the blessed apostle Peter and conferred on him by Christ the [L]ord” and that that primacy was “continual”, “permanent”, and “in every age”.

And yet, as historical research has better understood the early history of the church at Rome, it is clear that for the first 100 years of its existence, that church was fractionated, was led by a network of elders who frequently “fought among themselves as to who was greatest” -- that what we know now as the papacy “developed” from the ashes of those disputes, and didn’t take form until the fifth century.

What is held today as “the primacy of the successor of Peter” is not a historical reality; rather, it is a theological pre-commitment, that can be show to be seriously out of touch with the actual evolution of the church of the first three centuries.

Further, it should be noted, it is agreed that this “office” has led to more contention and division in the history of the church as a whole than any other theological disagreement. Its claims to authority have been rejected every time they have been made, whether Tertullian rejects the claims of Callistus, Cyprian and Firmilian reject the claims of Stephen, or Photius rejects the claims of Nicholas, or the Reformers who rejected the claims of the Medieval papacy.

This pope prefers the title “Bishop of Rome” and goes by his family name, Bergoglio. I wonder if he will remain true to his own calls for truth?