In the town of Vélez Rubio (Almería), they had a system for classifying their inhabitants that wasn’t based on surnames. People usually had a family nickname. If the nickname referred to a surname, like “the Girona family,” the nickname was kept, even if the surname had been lost. If it wasn’t, it was because the opportunity hadn’t yet arisen. In those cases, they would use the location of their home, or the ownership of a vehicle, or their education, even if they weren’t working in that field.

There were also other complementary designations that referred to “nationality.” Those of us who emigrated north, to Barcelona specifically, were called Catalans. This terminology was reversed upon arrival in Catalonia; there, we weren’t Catalans but Andalusians. This classification not only allowed for identification but also, in a way, alluded to the personality of the entire family. There was no need for search engines or directories; each elderly person, especially, was a walking encyclopedia of history. Over time, due to population growth and the lack of collective socialization, this classification gradually faded. Back then, in a small town where everyone knew each other, a “stranger” was an unknown figure who needed to be kept under control through labeling. The first item on the questionnaire was the question: “And who are you related to?” Which, translated, meant: “What family do you belong to?” If you answered with your surnames, all you achieved was to prolong the interrogation. Derogatory names and concepts usually won out: “the cripple”, “the one-eyed woman”…

Labeling is controlling.

This need to categorize in order to control doesn’t disappear; on the contrary, we need to categorize others in order to categorize ourselves. This, which may sound negative, is simply a way of managing relationships, of knowing who we’re talking to, and of interpreting what they say according to their own interpretive framework. The problem arises when, in our need to control through labeling, we make mistakes. It could be said that we always make mistakes. Simply put, no matter how accurate a label might be, a single concept can never fully explain a person. We are more than a label.

That message was conveyed by the Holy Father during his visit to Barcelona, ​​specifically to the prison. With the Pope’s embraces during his visit to Brians prison, he shattered all derogatory classifications. Moreover, he bestowed upon them a new dignity. Montse, the inmate who found faith within the prison walls thanks to the work of the Mercedarian friar, Father Jesús Roy, moved the Pope deeply, and they embraced, transcending all labels.

Labels, or classifications, are simply projections of our personality, not so much based on who we are, but on what others need us to be in order for them to feel more secure. This is what we call a superiority complex.

Younger priests need to reinforce their status in the eyes of the world. Clerical attire and the return of the cassock are becoming increasingly common. The recognition they expect from others is clear.

At a national level, labels are also indicative of the identity one wants to impose on others. For years, being Christian, Catholic, or religious was a sign of truthfulness and superiority. People spoke “in Christian” when they used the language we all understood, for example.

Now we come to the conceptual absurdity of prohibiting religious symbols. A little girl told me that at her school, her teacher had told them to make a Christmas card to give to a randomly chosen classmate. But she said it was forbidden to include any religious figures.

In the early 1990s, with AIDS at its peak, there was uncontrolled panic that led to absurd behavior.

We used to go to schools and centers that requested information about HIV/AIDS, and at the end, we’d give them the “face test.” The idea was to guess, based on physical appearance, who had HIV. Obviously, nowadays we wouldn’t fall for that trick. We know that outward appearance isn’t indicative of having the disease.

Personal labels, in turn, are not a single concept; they are so numerous and varied that they can even be contradictory. The most typical are those of people who come from a certain social status and try to project the image of being poor, of proletarian activists. With honorable exceptions, most end up reverting to the comfortable parameters of their true social class.

But they also assume that being poor is synonymous with having a certain political affiliation. Why do people vote for far-right parties in impoverished neighborhoods, they wonder. As a joke parodying gender ideology goes: “I’m a rich person born in a poor person’s body.” And conversely, wanting to appear wealthy or opulent can be a sign of poverty. When a limousine appears at the parish, it’s usually because they’ve taken out a mortgage for a wedding or first communion.

But I don’t intend to conduct a social analysis, nor an observational study of the ideologies we adopt throughout our lives. Who hasn’t been rebellious in their youth and ended up conservative in their later years?

There’s always the sentinel label, the one that affects all the others. It can be the label others place on us or the one we place on ourselves. For example, the worker-priests—to others they were priests, but to themselves they were workers, to give an example. It’s not the same to think about and interact with someone you know is a priest as it is with a worker who acts as a priest. When I worked as a therapist, many clients came to the parish to verify that he was a priest. The labels were readjusted. From that moment on, the treatment was different.

Labels that allude to peoples or nations are also significant. We have the American pope, who feels Peruvian. The bishop of Chiclayo presented himself that way, speaking in Spanish with an English accent on the balcony of St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. Or Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, with dual Spanish and Paraguayan nationality, who doesn’t hesitate to wear the Paraguayan national team jersey and appear on social media.

The greater the need to label or be labeled, the greater the superiority complex.

Jesus’ society was completely categorized: Pharisees, tax collectors, Samaritans, Sadducees, Levites, men, women, lepers, the blind, the paralyzed, foreigners, rabbis, and so on. It was so impossible to break this order that when Jesus uses the Samaritan as an example, he is breaking down the derogatory label, just as the Holy Father did in the Catalan prison. The embrace with Montse was a visible embodiment of the Gospel.

Break down discriminatory borders.

His encyclical   MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS   addresses this point. “Today, rebuilding means recognizing that, in the plurality of voices and visions that sometimes recalls the dispersion of languages, there is nevertheless a luminous possibility: that of building together, transforming diversity into a resource and making listening and dialogue the common ground in which to cultivate justice and fraternity. And, in this shared work, Christians find their own way of building: orienting action toward God, so that, in his light, pluralism may not dissipate into disorder, but, in the practice of synodality, become the space in which humanity recovers its solid foundations and its ultimate purpose.”