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ACCORDING TO LIZ - With the passing on Easter Monday of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentinian-bred Bishop of Rome for over 12 years, we mourn the loss of a humble man, a powerful advocate for social justice, and a visionary statesman.
Pope Francis took the name of a simple saint, known today for caring for animals but immortalized for his charity and ecological bent. In making that choice, he made Saint Francis of Assisi his own role model in his quest to make the Catholic Church more accessible and more relevant in this, its third millennium.
He pulled back on centuries of an infallible church inserting itself between worshippers and their God, shaking the ossified hierarchy to its core with his humble refrain first uttered in refusing to condemn homosexuality: “Who am I to judge?”
This message of a merciful church defined his papacy, echoing the teachings of Christ, Jesus.
Francis expanded his given mandate to reform Vatican bureaucracy and finances to chart a new course for the Church, angering powerful conservatives and the fiefdoms they controlled but inspiring the love of ordinary Catholics around the globe, gathering many of the lapsed back into the fold, and attracting new adherents at a time of increasing secularism.
He supported more involvement by women, although still keeping them in lesser roles in Catholic “separate but equal” positions. Hopefully with the next generation of prelates, less steeped in the iron-clad conventions of prior centuries, this will be a first step to the greater equality prevalent in many major religions today.
Francis led the worldwide Church through the international and existential crisis of Covid, galvanizing the faithful “to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.”
Camerlengo Cardinal Kevin Farrell who will lead the transition of power during the days to come, announced that “At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church.”
As the Camerlengo also mentioned, the focus of Pope Francis “was always to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people, not to exclude anyone.”
In a church beset by scandal, this pope had the courage to take action and overturn the self-serving doctrines of a bureaucracy more concerned about its own image than caring for its pastoral flock.
Will his loss lead to the intrigues portrayed in books and movies from The Shoes of the Fishermen to The Da Vinci Code to The Conclave? Only time will tell if they will be so dramatic.
With all the anger buried in a bureaucracy where so many were affronted and sidelined by the deceased’s denunciation of wars, nuclear weapons and the death penalty as immoral, his sustained opposition to the economic and political frameworks that pit rich against poor, his critiques of climate change and capitalism, and his embrace of the Muslim world and refugees, of Indigenous peoples and the downtrodden, there is certain to be intrigue aplenty… but by whom and about what and why is as yet unknown.
In the days and weeks to come there will be mourning and great grief among the faithful and admirers alike interspersed with the crocodile tears of those who see the death of the pontiff as an opportunity to seize power and redirect the focus of the Church for their own ends.
Will the Catholic Church take another great step into a progressive and inclusive future fighting for all its adherents, or will it lapse back into the petty backroom political conservatism of the see-no-evil anything-justifies-the-means establishmentarianism so often depicted in novels and on screen?
However it plays out, we will always be grateful for what Pope Francis brought to the world stage in these days of change, reinfusing people with joy and inspiration, and can only pray that his successor is another Vicar of the Holy See who, in following in the footprints of Francis, continues to preach peace and humanity for all.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
