And Now, We are Orphans
On the death of Pope Francis
Today, I’m writing about the death of Pope Francis. This is not a Catholic piece, though I’m Catholic. You all know the drill: comments are open.
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Dead wood. Cold stone. An empty body in a stuffed casket.
Mourners by the thousands. Teenagers, who’ve traveled the world over to witness the canonization of the first millennial saint—Carlo Acutis—find themselves in the middle of history. There will be no saint-making, at least not in the ecclesiological sense. Instead, they will witness a different kind of celebration—the celebration of the life and death of Pope Francis. Death has done what death does. It came for the vicar, just as it comes for all life.
What marks life but death?
This is my first sticky memory of Pope Francis. In late February of 2020, I sat in an undersized classroom at my local parish sipping stanky Folgers from a white Styrofoam cup that smelled of creosote. The room was that shade of yellow relegated to church classrooms and funeral parlor walls, and in the corner hung a campy faux oil painting of the man whose work we’d gathered to study. It was lent, and we’d gathered to study Laudato si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), Francis’ papal encyclical on the environment.
That acrid styrofoam cup, the small one with the ridges near the top. I’d think about it for almost a year after that night.
Zola, the group facilitator, was a professor of something—statistics?—and she drew a lazy Malthusian curve up and to the right. This is how pandemics work, she said. Gradual at first, then sloping up, then to the moon. She placed a dot at the inflection of the curve, labeled it CRISIS POINT. She dotted the graph again, this time to the right of the first and further up on the graph. We are here, she wrote.
Had we acted sooner, she said, we might have stopped the spread, but in our arrogance (that sweet stench of humanity’s folly), we crossed the threshold. Arrogance, she said again before clicking her tongue and shaking her head. We’ll be in lockdown by our next meeting, she said. She clucked like Chicken Little, I thought, but hindsight as my judge, her certitude was prophetic.
It’d be months before I saw some of those faces outside of a Zoom conference. Others, I’d never see again.
Weeks after the meeting in the yellow-walled room, the world watched as the rotund Argentine pontiff shuffled through an empty and rain-soaked St. Peter’s square. There, the would-be tourists and pilgrims watched, but not from their usual positions behind the short crowd-control fences. They watched from blinkering screens in their apartments, flats, and midwestern ranch homes. They watched from Buenos Ares, Paris, New York City, Saskatoon, Nairobi, Tokyo. Catholic, Protestants, atheists, Muslims, San Francisco Buddhists—they all watched because the world needed a father in the dark night.
In the square, a large crucifix hung behind a makeshift dais. The crucifix, it was rumored, was the only surviving relic of a church fire in 1519, and three years later, it had been carried from town to town when the Black Plague fell on Europe. Supplicants were healed at the foot of the cross, it was said. But on that day in March of 2020, millions looked on that cross, and healing power didn’t flow from the veins of Christ. Instead, rain—or was it sweat and tears—dripped from Christ’s arms, pooling at his feet.
With no small effort Pope Francis—the holy Papa—made his way up to the steps of that dais, where he prayed before this icon of healing for the world. Prayers offered, the Pontiff turned to the cameras and delivered his message. Ubri et Orbi: To the city and to the world.
‘When evening had come.’ The Gospel passage we have just heard begins like this. For weeks now it has been evening. Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice in people’s gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost. Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm. We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat… are all of us. Just like those disciples, who spoke anxiously with one voice, saying ‘We are perishing’, so we too have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this.
…
From this colonnade that embraces Rome and the whole world, may God’s blessing come down upon you as a consoling embrace. Lord, may you bless the world, give health to our bodies and comfort our hearts. You ask us not to be afraid. Yet our faith is weak and we are fearful. But you, Lord, will not leave us at the mercy of the storm. Tell us again: ‘Do not be afraid.’ And we, together with Peter, ‘cast all our anxieties onto you, for you care about us.’1
These were the words from the world’s father: The monsters under the bed hold no power; together we can resist this anxious darkness.
Fathering through anxiety is no easy task. There are things that must be said, even though those things will ring hollow for some. Even though some might die. Even though some might give up. Even though… even though… even though. The best fathers know that neither faith nor truth is contingent upon outcomes. This is life’s hardest truth.
Yesterday, throngs gathered in that same square to celebrate Pope Francis’s life. Papa. I watched the images from that moment, and I remembered the way he fathered the world through the pandemic. I remembered, too, his messages to the world, which can be summed up in a words: Love. And this, I think, was his greatest message.
In the face of arrogance: Love.
In the dark night of fear: Love.
In a world divided: Love.
In all things: Love, love, love.
Whether you’re Catholic or not, the world has lost a good man, a good father. Yes, there are questions about who will become the world’s next Pope, but for now, we are orphans. We are wanderers in a world hellbent on bending hell to its own arrogance. Still, I remember the words of Pope Francis—You, Lord, will not leave us at the mercy of the storm. And so, this is my prayer during these liminal times: Do not leave us orphans for long; we need the words of a good and simple father.
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https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2020/documents/papa-francesco_20200327_omelia-epidemia.html
If you've never read Francis's book The Name of God is Mercy, I highly recommend it! It's a beautiful, generous work.
A beautiful tribute to a beautiful man. Were the world filled with his like.