Editorial

Remembering Pope Francis

The pope who was full of surprises has once again caught everyone off guard.

Just when it appeared that he was recovering, albeit slowly, from the near fatal illness that had caused him to be hospitalized for 37 days—and just hours after he appeared on a balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday, giving what turned out to be his last pontifical blessing—Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) died. The announcement early on April 21, Easter Monday, shocked the world. After a difficult period of suffering during Lent, it seems fitting that Pope Francis entered eternal life at the start of the Church’s joyous celebration of Christ’s resurrection. May he be welcomed into the eternal joy of the risen Lord in heaven.

Pope Francis was a man who taught using extravagant, sometimes ambiguous and even controversial gestures. Who can forget the earliest days of his papacy when he insisted on paying his hotel bill in person? Or when he decided not to live in the pope’s traditional residence but to occupy an apartment in the Vatican’s guest house? Or when he decided to wash the feet of prisoners on Holy Thursday? Or when he went to the island of Lampedusa to greet refugees in person? Or when he described himself simply as “a sinner” and refused to be considered “an important person” or a “world leader”?

What did he mean when he responded to a reporter’s question about sexual orientation, saying, “Who am I to judge?” Why was he so insistent on welcoming migrants and refugees? Why was he so determined to be “the face of mercy” to the poor and to people “on the peripheries”?

From the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis stressed the importance of sharing with everyone the loving mercy of God, which he said was evident in the face of Jesus. He urged the Church’s pastors (and all of us) to join him on the front lines of the Church’s ministry—to build bridges rather than walls, to consider the Church as “a field hospital” set up to treat spiritually wounded patients, and to be so close to their people that they literally took on “the smell of the sheep.”

In his autobiography Hope, Pope Francis wrote:

The Gospel is addressed to everyone, and it doesn’t condemn people, classes, conditions, categories, but rather idolatries, such as the idolatry of wealth that produces injustice, of insensitivity to the cry of those who suffer. … The holy faithful people of God are (sinners). (The Church) is not a supposed gathering of the pure. The Lord blesses everyone, and his Church must not, cannot do otherwise.

Some have called Pope Francis “the people’s pope.” It’s true he was immensely popular, but it’s also true that he was controversial. Some thought his gestures went too far. Others argued that he didn’t go far enough. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

One of Pope Francis’ most unsettling teachings, ironically, was a concept as old as the Church itself: synodality. In its simplest definition, synodality means coming together as one body. It refers to the unity of the Church in all its diversity, and it insists that the Holy Spirit has the power to bring together and unite people who would otherwise be hopelessly divided, even antagonistic to one another. Pope Francis said repeatedly that he had no desire to change what the Church teaches. But there is no question that he wanted to change how Church teaching is lived day-in and day-out.

Pope Francis invited us—urgently— to pray, to listen prayerfully to God’s word and each other, and to make decisions not based on worldly values or processes, but on the prompting of the Holy Spirit speaking to hearts and minds that are truly open to the grace of God.

What will be the legacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio? It will not be found in the area of doctrine, although he taught us in both his words and his gestures. And it will not be in his many important reforms of internal Vatican policy and finance.

The legacy of Pope Francis will be his insistence that the Church must be one with the poor and the marginalized—regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, social status, economic or political background.

The Gospel is for everyone, Pope Francis insisted, and this emphasis on everyone (“todos, todos, todos”) should never be forgotten or simply given lip service.

It must be at the heart everything the Church says and does. “The Lord blesses everyone, and his Church must not, cannot do otherwise.”

—Daniel Conway