Joyful Witness / Kimberly Pohovey

Like Jesus, Pope Francis embraced a mission of compassion and love

I’m not a fan of the word “woke” because I don’t think most people understand its definition. The term refers to when one is “awakened” to facts or issues they previously did not know or understand.

In my mind, that is a good thing, right? To be more aware? But in today’s culture, the word has become a political weapon used by many to denounce liberal thought. People use “woke” and “liberal” interchangeably, but they are not necessarily synonymous.

You can be woke and not be liberal. You can also claim to be liberal but not woke.

In the days surrounding Pope Francis’ funeral, I read an article that called him the first “woke” pope. It also labeled him a radical.

At the end of the day, I don’t think the labels matter. Pope Francis’ enduring legacy will not be that he was woke, liberal or conservative, as some have also labeled him. It will be that he was kind. He provided a witness of kindness, love and mercy to the world. And he begged us to do the same. Ultimately, his mission was one of compassion. For the life of me, I’ll never understand how people can feel threatened by kindness and compassion.

There are groups of Catholics who rejected the pope. For some conservatives, he went too far. For some liberals, he didn’t go far enough.

Pope Francis just strove to follow the path of another leader of the Church who had an enormous impact on all of humanity.

His name was Jesus, and he would definitely have qualified as woke. He treated others with dignity and equality, mercy and respect. He associated with Samaritans, lepers and women. He preached revolutionary ideas like “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” He didn’t seek to preserve the status quo. He came to transform it. Jesus challenged oppressive structures and invited a new way of living rooted in love, equity and mercy.

I think you can draw a straight line from Jesus’ behavior to the same of Pope Francis. The late pope simply modeled Jesus and the ways of the early Church. He preached the values of the Gospel and ushered in a new direction for the Church centered on pastoral accompaniment.

He greeted people with humility and modeled a Church that listens and reaches outward. He stressed economic justice, care for the environment and cajoled us to serve those on the margins—the poor, the imprisoned, the immigrant.

The Church does not exist to be conservative or liberal. It exists to bear witness to the kingdom of God. But if the Gospel instructs us to protect the vulnerable, eradicate injustice and live with radical openness to others, then perhaps we should not be afraid of the word “liberal” when it describes a Christ-like way of engaging the world.

Both Jesus and Pope Francis invite us to a wider mercy, a deeper bond and a more courageous faith. In this light, a liberal stance is not a threat to the Church—it’s a living expression of the Gospel.

Well done, good and faithful servant.
 

(Kimberly Pohovey is a member of Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Parish in Indianapolis. She is the director of major and planned gifts for the archdiocese.) †