Grieving for the Holy Father 

I was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore and a man came up to me to say, “Sorry for the loss of the blessed father.” I presume that he was not Catholic but felt because I was in a priest’s uniform that it was an appropriate gesture. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, even though I confess I have mixed emotions about the passing of the Holy Father.

Many people have reached out to me on social media expressing their sympathy to me about the death of the pope. Some seem even surprised that the pope would die, even at his age and with his history of health problems. I suppose emotions are not logical, and perhaps the official statements the Vatican let out and the media generally replicated tended to predict a recovery for the pontiff. 

One priest friend of mine said that official pronouncements from the Vatican reminded him of the good old days of the Kremlin and he did not put much stock in them. The Babylon Bee had a satire of CNN declaring that the pope’s mind was very clear and that he was working normally, including a photo of His Holiness in the casket. Remember, the Vatican did keep churning out “decisions” of the Holy Father when he was still in his hospital room. I don’t trust my own decisions when I have a bad head cold, but he supposedly kept going.

My Hispanic friends have been very expressive in their grief for Pope Francis, and I respect their tender feelings about the pope. I suspect that they would have the same for any pope. I remember a housekeeper in El Salvador who burst into tears and cried out when the news of St. John Paul II’s death was announced on the radio she played in the kitchen. 

The Church should grieve for every member, and “the pope” is much bigger than any individual pope. The grief of people outside the Church for Pope Francis’ death can be motivated by many things, but within the Body of Christ all such grief is holy. Even though I am preoccupied about his legacy, I mourn the priest who probably did as well as he could. The papacy is an impossible job, and he had an existential inability to do otherwise than he did, I suppose. 

But grief should not interfere with serious evaluation of his papacy. Archbishop Chaput said an important thing when he cautioned against an emotional reaction to the pope’s death that refused to see the specific failings of his papacy. 

Since he was elected, I had my doubts about the pope. Time or Newsweek, I forget which, said that one of Cardinal Bergoglio’s friends (probably someone associated with the famous St. Gallen circle) said about his taking the name Francis that perhaps he should have taken “Hadrian VII.” That was a play that was the fantasy of a liberal pope who swept away centuries of tradition with a supposedly “enlightened” attitude. Sometimes it seemed the pope was enjoying his power too much.

I think Pope Francis was no theologian and his “model” of the papacy had serious flaws. I would hope that the Conclave would include some men who realize that the conception of the papacy as a fountain of omnipresent chatter on social media and perpetual news feeds is not necessarily the best way to lead the Church. It is said the pope considered himself the parish priest of the whole world. Leaving aside that he had never been a parish pastor, this has some weaknesses. The first of these is that it goes against the principle of subsidiarity and the second of collegiality.  It is said the pope considered himself the parish priest of the whole world. Leaving aside that he had never been a parish pastor, this has some weaknesses.Tweet This

For all the trumpeting of “synodality,” the pope did not in practice have respect even for his brother bishops. He centralized his authority by dismissing bishops who disagreed with him and (I know of a case) even threatening one with dismissal if he did not accede to a papal demand presented through a nuncio. The reserving of the right to grant permission for the Traditional Rite of the Mass in parishes to the pope infringed upon the bishops’ prerogative. His distrust of bishops, particularly our bishops, was a whispered secret of his papal ministry, whispered for fear of reprisals and of scandalizing the faithful. 

“Synodality” would seem to imply that the pope would consult a bishop about his successor, especially for key sees. Nevertheless, Cardinal George said he was completely left out of the loop about who would follow him as bishop of Chicago. Imagine a CEO retiring in a big company and not being given a chance to express an opinion about who would carry on his work. His insistence of including his own ideas about the communion of divorced and remarried people—an echo of his family trauma about an uncle who became a pariah because he left his wife—overrode the consensus building of the people who had worked the document.

The pope did not appear to respect even cardinals. Never responding to the dubia four prelates sent him, he behaved as an absolute monarch. He never said “L’eglise c’est moi,” a la Louis XIV, but he acted like it. 

Cardinal Zen was left standing outside the Vatican because the pope would not receive him to talk about the prelate’s worries about the Communist government in China. Because of his own miscalculation, he had all the bishops of Chile resign in what is an act of humility on their parts, but humiliation on that of authority. He permitted that Cardinal Burke be punished about his opinions, not just by removing him from his official post with regard to the Knights of Malta but also even evicting him from his residence. 

His authoritarian streak was most obvious with those whom he knew had to suffer it. With worldly authorities, secular journalists, admiring folk in general, he was Fr. Make Nice. He certainly did not confront Biden and Pelosi as he did some of the clergy—think of his snarky Christmas greetings to those who worked in the offices in the Vatican, which was summarized satirically as “Merry Christmas, Hypocrites.” This contrast of sweetness and light in the eyes of the world and bully within the Church was hidden from the faithful, and most faithful responded to the pope in terms of the innumerable photos that spun virally around the Internet and news programs. 

The image was the message: washing the feet of prisoners instead of those of his priests in Rome (the prisoners he could have had always with him; I wonder how the priests of Rome saw him); the warm hugs for people with disabilities, the audiences for special cases; the visit to the circus specializing in the participation of people with somewhat confused sexualities; the handwritten notes to media influencers who immediately posted them to Facebook. Even at the beginning of his ministry, when he was pictured with his suitcase in hand on his way to the Vatican after his election, his photo opportunities always struck me as calculated.

The soundbites were another story and caused controversy, but nobody, especially not the bishops, bothered to demure in public. The Atlantic published a commentary pointing out the crudity of some of the pope’s remarks while also expressing surprise at how many times the pope spoke about the devil. 

The so-called plainspoken quality of the Holy Father’s obiter dicta were embarrassing. Take your pick: Catholics having babies like rabbits, a canard given papal approval, “faggotry” in the priesthood (in remarks to the Italian episcopate), “women priests” about young clerics who give attention to the symbolic value of old vestment styles, “diabolic EWTN,” and other characterizations of conservative “enemies” really. The pope’s off the cuff remarks, often given on airplanes—when he wasn’t celebrating the sacrament of marriage for attendants (admittedly only once, but with no consultation with local pastoral authorities and no premarital prep)—immediately became viral and lent themselves to many possibly erroneous interpretations.  

The man had many good qualities, principal of which for me was his love for the Blessed Virgin Mary. I have no doubt that he tried his best, but his ideas handicapped him. The catch phrases he is famous for are really very limited in scope. He had a good heart when he wasn’t reacting, as they say in Spanish, “con su higado,” which is “with his liver” but would be translated as “spleen.”

Much has been said about the pope’s call for messy creativity in Church renewal, the famous, “hacer relajo.” I have more problems with what was presented as a controlling image of the Church as a field hospital. It was a cliché so often repeated but never examined. Instead of the army of Christ in the battle against Satan, which would be familiar to anyone who reads St. Ignatius’ Exercises, we are presented with the Church as a MASH unit, with some of the cynicism and skepticism inherent in such an environment. 

While it is true the Church is a mother to all and must care for the most marginalized, there is much more to the Body of Christ than tending the wounded and the dying on the outskirts of war. The Church is Mater et Magistra, mother and teacher, the regnum Christi, as the Second Vatican Council said, an instrument of salvation, not only a hospice for the postmodern world.

Perhaps despite himself, or because of pushback, Pope Francis did not fulfill the “Hadrian VII” prophecy. He was a complex man, more conservative in some ways than even he would admit, I think. But, to use another of his metaphors, he ended up being very much a pastor who smelled like his sheep—in this case, the odor was confusion. A prelate I knew in Latin America, shortly after the rollout of some of his misfires, said, “Our first and last Jesuit pope.” I suppose we will see about that.