One of the things about writing for a living is that a lot of the time you have no more particular insight about a particular topic than your own readers do. My job here is to interpret the world and share a way of thinking about it. Not to understand everything or to pose as an expert.
But then there are the other times, which are when your readers probably know more than you do. Such is the case when it comes to the death of Popes. There will be those of you (not all, but some) who can relate to the reaction of the US Catholic Writer Kathryn Jean Lopez:
This is all a long way of saying: I’ve loved the man since the beginning. He didn’t know it, but we spent some intimate time together during Covid — I would stay up or wake up at odd hours to pray morning Mass with him when I couldn’t go to Mass, I would watch him live on my laptop. Just praying with him was such a help in isolation. His sermons touched my heart and guided me. And it wasn’t the first time. In that Ignatian tradition, his morning homilies early on were challenging to me. I know many priests in the Vatican saw them as rants against their clericalism. But I heard a pastor urging us to get serious about being Christians.
As bizarre as it may sound, I felt shocked this morning when I saw that Pope Francis had died. Sure, he had spent all that time in the hospital, but we were pretending he was rallying. Even as he obviously didn’t look like he was when he met with JD Vance yesterday. Also, file this under way-too-honest: I’m totally jealous of Vance for having been with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday. For all the immigration politics and everything, that’s got to have an interior impact.
I confess I cannot relate to that. I did not have an emotionally intimate relationship with the Pope, nor do I have a particularly intimate relationship with the faith that he led, baptized and confirmed into it though I was.
But it strikes me that religion is important. And further that the Pope is important. And further again that the Papacy is more than simply a religious office, but a position of global significance. Non-Catholics of all denominations look to Rome, if not for spiritual guidance, but for moral leadership, because the Roman Catholic Church is basically good.
It strikes me looking in from the outside at some of the theological debates within the Church that this simple fact is too often overlooked. The Pope is the living representative of Christ on earth, the literal heir to the seat of Saint Peter. He is the living embodiment of faith, as well as for The Catholic Faith, most especially for those who do not share it.
Conservative Catholics – many of whose instincts I share – have had their problems with this Papacy, because like conservatives of all stripes they see beauty and nobility in tradition and tend towards the view that Popes, like all of us, should be custodians of their inheritance rather than spendthrifts. Francis was a Pope who at times seemed hostile to tradition: The availability of the beautiful Latin mass was consciously curtailed under his Papacy, and he was prone to off the cuff comments that appeared to cast doubt on millennia-old Catholic teachings on sexuality.
It is probably telling that one of his most powerful moments – for me, anyway – as Pope was also one in which he arguably rendered the purpose of the Church moot. It was here, when a young boy asked him whether his father – a good man but an Atheist – would be in heaven. The Pope’s answer was not “yes he is” or “no he isn’t”, but it was rhetorical: “Do you think God would leave a man like that far from his side?”
But of course, if being a good man and not being a Catholic is qualification for entry into heaven, then what purpose has the Church? Francis’s answer appears to contradict, amongst other things, John 11:25-26, where Jesus explicitly makes belief in his divinity central – if not explicitly conditional – to the promise of resurrection.
Still, I think this was an example of why Francis was a good Pope, and not a bad one. It is because he focused on that most essential role of a Priest – providing spiritual comfort and guidance to those who suffer.
This was true even on the many occasions I found myself disagreeing with him or found his socialist political instincts to be entirely irritating. I had to remind myself that Priests are supposed to oppose wars, and want the planet cared for, and to speak out about the evils of the very greed that is necessary to power the capitalist system.
Indeed, there have been times when the frustrations of Henry II about Archbishop Beckett have been called to mind: Will nobody rid me of this turbulent Priest?!
But Priests are supposed to prick our consciences, and annoy us. The best ones do it gently, but persistently, as Francis did.
A Pope who started preaching about the importance of appreciating the invisible hand of the market would be an entirely sensible economist, but a pretty poor spiritual leader. His job is and was to speak to the better angels of our nature, even when sometimes a little moral compromise might serve the greater good.
Cartoons have a way of depicting this as the old trope of the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other, perpetually in conflict. Lust or Chastity, Greed or Generosity, Temperance or Gluttony. These are the choices we all face every day – believer or not.
Francis saw the Papacy, I think, as the job of being the Angel on the global shoulder, whispering the case for chastity, peace, temperance, calm, and forgiveness into our ears. This was more important to him than evangelizing about specifically Catholic teachings around certain matters, and perhaps even more important than preserving the traditions of the Church. He was good at it.
He did all this, I should say, without being pious or ever projecting any self-regard for his own morality. He was a humble man – perhaps too much so at times. But the world needs men (and women) like Francis. His place in the rich tapestry of Popes of Rome was well-merited, in the end.
May he rest in peace.