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BY GEORGE - We live in a world splintered by fear.
Nations are polarized. Communities are strained. Even families feel the weight of division. The loudest voices are often the harshest, and the quiet wisdom of mercy is drowned out by suspicion and rage. In such a moment, it’s hard to believe that any one person could be a force for healing, let alone a global religious figure navigating the crosswinds of politics, doctrine, and human suffering.
But Pope Francis was.
Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on December 17, 1936, he entered a world on the edge of chaos. Fascism was on the rise. Dictators were gaining ground. Sovereign nations were being invaded. Economies were crumbling. Faith in democracy — and in each other — was fading.
On Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, he left this world. And once again, we find ourselves in a time that feels eerily familiar.
Autocracy is no longer an abstraction. Even here, in the supposed citadel of liberty, our institutions feel fragile, our principles vulnerable. No system seems immune. No moral compass seems fixed. The disorientation is real.
When Jorge was born, he could do nothing about the state of the world. Now that he is gone, he can no longer help us confront it.
But while he lived, he helped.
He helped by showing up — not for photo ops, but for people. He visited the poor, the blind, the sick, and the brokenhearted. He stood beside orphans, war victims, the mentally ill, and the imprisoned. He washed the feet of the marginalized. He prayed in silence at sites of unspeakable violence. He offered comfort, not condemnation.
He never let his title eclipse his purpose. He spoke truth to power — but also to his own Church, challenging its rigidity, calling it to remember the Gospel’s radical tenderness. He reminded the institution to open its doors not just to the familiar, but to the forgotten.
When he became Pope — the first from Latin America, the first Jesuit, the first to take the name Francis — it felt like a dove had landed on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. From his first appearance on the balcony in St. Peter’s Square, asking for the people’s blessing before giving his own, something had changed.
He did not lead with dominance, but with discernment. He was humble, but never weak. Courageous, but never cruel. Intelligent, but never arrogant. And through that rare blend of virtues, he rekindled something the world was close to forgetting: the moral imagination.
Has there ever been a more humble leader?
Francis reminded us that humility without courage is cowardice, and courage without wisdom is recklessness. That real leadership begins where ego ends.
He reminded the Church that its mission is not to control, but to liberate. Not to wound, but to heal. Not to sit in judgment, but to walk in mercy.
The journeys he made would have exhausted men half his age. But he kept going — fueled not by ambition, but by faith. He made the world believe in miracles again. Not lightning-bolt miracles, but quiet, persistent ones: a word of forgiveness. A public embrace. A softened heart. A table with room for everyone.
His death leaves a hollow space — not just in Rome, but in the lives of those who saw in him a reflection of what the Church could be. Not perfect, but present. Not powerful, but prophetic. Not above the people, but among them.
Francis was not chosen in the traditional sense.
He was blessed to choose.
To choose love over fear. To choose encounter over ideology. To choose wholeness in a world addicted to fracture.
And so I ask you — as Pope Francis so often did:
Let us not be overcome by anger, suspicion, or division.
In times of confusion, we are not called to inflame one another, but to encounter one another. With truth. With mercy. And with a desire for the common good.
Pope Francis taught us to build peace, not with slogans or scapegoats, but with real acts of humility, care for the poor, and love for creation.
May we all find the courage to listen more than accuse, to serve more than condemn, and to heal more than wound.
May God bless you — and guide us all.
(George Cassidy Payne is an educator, counselor, and journalist. He lives and works in Irondequoit, NY.)
