Amid a world with growing rancor and discord and hate and war, we have lost a needed voice for peace and human compassion with the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, leaving behind a church marked by the imprint of his humble and caring character.
“Blessed are the peacemakers” says the Gospel of Matthew and Francis was a world leader whose message most often transcended the particulars of his own faith.
While his views and public sermons were, of course, always rooted in his vision of his Catholic faith, it was his constant theme of respect, of acting always with a view towards the least among us and the beaten-down, that resonated across and beyond religious belief.
His message of understanding that none of us are ever all that removed from the plight of the poor, the outsider, the disabled is one that could land for Protestants, for Jews, for Muslims, for people with no religion at all.
He had no problem delivering this sermon to all, whether crowds of believers or directly to powerful business interests and world leaders he felt were not upholding this moral imperative. His flock was all 8 billion members of the human family.
Anger and resentment seep through politics in democratic societies all over the world, poisoning the dialogue. Francis said no to such debasement of the debate.
The pontiff’s pursuit of fairness and criticisms of the powerful preying on the vulnerable didn’t just extend out past the church’s own walls but also turned inward, including with perhaps the institution’s most delicate issue, the scandals involving the abuse and cover-up of children by clergy.
While some advocates criticized aspects of Francis’ response as insufficient, he was the first pontiff to make explicit changes to church rules encouraging victims to come forwards and took the historic step of defrocking a cardinal that had been found guilty of sexual abuse, unimaginable in an earlier era of the church.
The pope reversed historic stances condemning LGBTQ people and instead preached acceptance, with the instantly memorable line, early on in his tenure: “ who am I to judge?”
Francis also expanded the roles of women within the institution’s hierarchy, moving the institution into some aspects of modernity.
At base level, the one-time Argentinian Jesuit priest of modest background never let the trappings of the papacy change his worldview, which remained committed to global peace and humility.
It’s also a message that, unfortunately, increasingly became an against-the-grain one as elements of our society became coarser and more ruthlessly individualistic over the dozen years of his leadership.
As the years went by, countries around the world hardened to humanitarian migrants and embraced extreme right-wing leaders that promised to take things back to bygone eras without such concerns for the marginalized.
In this country, we’ve now reached the point of a group of billionaires slashing social services from the poor, restricting the rights of women and LGBTQ people and terrorizing immigrants.
There is war in Europe for the first time in eight decades and the globe is staring down the impacts of a changing climate.
Yet Francis reminded us all that everyone from a common priest to the leader of a global religion can continue to forcefully defend peace, respect, compassion and equality until the very end.
