When the Holy Father died earlier this week, my Protestant sister texted me her condolences, saying, “I assume you were a fan of Pope Francis.”
That term - fan - gave me pause. Our culture is filled with figures who are esteemed for one reason or another, whether it’s innovation, intelligence, humour, productivity, charisma, athleticism, creativity, or any of the many talents at which one can excel. But with a Catholic mindset, looking towards heaven as our goal, all these things are rather hollow. Being an admirer of somebody, even when that somebody has lived a life worthy of admiration, sets the admirer apart as a judge and arbiter and assessor of the value of a life; it seems to me to be a form of pride. Far better simply to receive Pope Francis as the gift to the Church that he was, and to leave the assessment of his efficacy to Almighty God.
The coverage I’m seeing of Pope Francis’ life is full of analysis based on the perceived measure of the Pope’s adherence to the reviewer’s own code of ethics. Social justice warriors see him as a champion of the rights of the poor and the marginalized. LGBT activists see him as an advocate for change in Church teaching regarding human sexuality. Ecologists see him as a promoter of de-industrialization and carbon taxes. Conservatives see him as the suppressor of the Latin Mass. Progressives see him as a supporter of democratization of doctrine through the Synod on Synodality. But most of his supporters and his critics have not widely read his writings, relying instead on headlines and pundit analysis. Investing time to read his works like Evangelii Gaudium or Desiderio Desideravi or C’est la Confiance or Dilexit Nos will give us a far more accurate picture of who he was, what he believed, the paradoxes he held in tension, and how he was answering his call to lead the Church.
At the end of the day, we all need to acknowledge that he was the Vicar of Christ, chosen by the Holy Spirit for our time, giving the Church the leadership it needed in this season of world history. His pontificate put a renewed focus on the value of the individual. Pope Francis saw hurting people, and saw that the Church was not reaching them. I believe his challenge to the Church to be a field hospital will be the lasting legacy of his pontificate. Field hospitals do their best to be a place that is clean and orderly, but the chaos of the battle around them rarely affords them these perfect conditions. The focus is on the urgent saving of the lives of those who are rapidly dying, and all the energy of a field hospital is directed towards this effort. There is a stark polarization necessary when one is oriented this way. Each choice is a life or death choice. The details of how the life of the saved person is lived are postponed until a later time. There’s a sense of urgency as we are called to recognize, “This person is about to be lost, unless I do something about it right now.”
We can see this in how Pope Francis orchestrated the 2025 Jubilee Year. These Jubilees happen every twenty-five years, and the key thing they offer is a plenary indulgence, which bypasses purgatory and accelerates the soul of a dead person to heaven. Pope Francis gave bishops the authority to multiply the granting of indulgences by designating multiple Jubilee Sites around their dioceses, opening the floodgates for the mercy of God to spill across creation in a way that previous Jubilee Years never did. This Jubilee is filling heaven with souls, in a way that marks an inversion and a completion of how a field hospital is filled with wounded.
Let us honour the life of Pope Francis by continuing this effort.
