I’m hardly the most distraught person on Earth today in the wake of yesterday’s death of Pope Francis. I never saw the man in person; in fact, I’ve never seen any leader of the Church in person to date. When John Paul II embarked on his groundbreaking U.S. tour shortly after he ascended to what would be the third-longest Papacy tenure in history I was hundreds of miles away at college, envious of the many childhood friends I had that took full advantage of the opportunity. It was a lot cheaper than a trip to the Vatican, and the way the Mets, Jets and Yankees were playing that year it was perhaps the most compelling reason to set foot in their stadia.
I vividly remember the Pope of my childhood, Paul VI, as it appeared nary a nightly newscast would go by without some mention of something he did or offered an opinion on. It was wartime, of course, and the images that often played earlier in those newscasts were disturbing and sometimes even dystopian. For many, prayer or at least the discussion of it was about the best way to segue into lighter subjects. I was upset when he passed and not a huge fan of his replacement, John Paul I. For the exceptionally silly reasons that I felt he was uninspired in his mae choice, which combined those of his two most recent predecessors and becoming the first Pope with two names, and because his funeral, which followed a 23-day reign that was the fifth shortest in history, was covered from start to finish on the only radio stations we could receive on my drive home for Yom Kippur weekend, and to me seven hours of Latin hymns was not the road trip I had signed up for.
But in more recent years, I’ve evolved. In previous musings I’ve shared how I was introduced to Jesus by a well-meaning person who noticed a void in my life, particularly when no synogauge was actually open during the earlier days of the pandemic and when even participation by zoom was limited by bandwidth. What I’ve yet to share was how this person’s experience with Francis helped shape my open-mindedness.
I’ve often lamented how I spent Christmas 2019 hospitalized and coming within nine hours of dying after a cholesystecomy necessitated by a sepsis attack that was brought on by extreme stress. At the time the well-meaning person entered my life, those memories were still fresh and my healing was still ongoing. I felt as if I was the only person on Earth who had had such lousy cards dealt to him.
And let’s simply say that given the resume and life experience of this well-meaning person, the fact that religion meant anything at all to them was surprising, to say the least. If the phrase let he who is without sin cast the first stone is appropriate, nary a pebble would have been in play. My first reaction to this person’s offer to have their religion enter my life was concern–was I merely a target for conversion that was based upon some quota system? I had endured such an experience decades earlier with what turned out to be a Buddhist cult, and this person had the same profession as the one who nearly got me to renounce my Jewish faith at a previously vulnerable time. So let’s merely say my antennae were up.
But as I later learned, the year before my near-death experience this person had one of their own, one that had them alone and bedridden during the same holiday season where I at least was lying in Cedars-Sinai Hospital. When this person recovered they immediately scheduled a trip the following year that included a trip to Rome and an opportunity to see Francis deliver a Sunday service. They showed me their video of it–the masses of people of all nationalities and races, sizes and shapes–the sheer multitude of humanity celebrating. When they shared how emotional and special the experience was, how it was a full-circle experience that put an exclamation point on their recovery, this person said “You may not be able to get to the Vatican just yet, but you should at least allow yourself the chance to experience what I did”.
The closest they could offer was an introductory Zoom call that eventually led me to one of the few places of worship that was able to skirt the draconian Covid regulations that had fully disrupted every single synagogue. To be around at least a few people in person at a time I desperately needed that was exceptionally healing to me. And in those worship sessions I learned a little bit more about why these folks in particular loved Pope Francis. CNN’s John Blake brought up a few in particular in an analysis he dropped this morning:
About six months after he was elected head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis made a surprising admission.
A Jesuit priest was interviewing Francis when he departed from a pre-approved list of questions and asked Francis, referring to him by his birth name, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” Francis stared at the fellow Jesuit in silence before answering.
“I am a sinner,” Francis said in the 2013 interview. “This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”
When Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based Catholic group that advocates for LGBTQ+ people, learned of Francis’ response, he was elated.
“For the pope to acknowledge that he was a sinner and that he does not know everything, I’ll always remember that,” DeBernardo says. “So much of Catholic culture is ingrained with this idea that the pope is always infallible. For him to say he was a sinner meant that he acknowledged his fallibility. It was a sign of humility.”
And I learned he was a friend of most Jews, as THE JEWISH CHRONICLE’s Daniel Ben-David reminded in his obituary story from yesterday:
His papacy was marked by a concerted effort to strengthen interreligious dialogue and foster better relations between Catholics and people of other faiths.
To the Jewish people, the pontiff was widely seen as a friend, although his views on Israel were complex, particularly in the last years of his life during the Israel-Hamas war.
Under his leadership, the Church made ongoing efforts to uphold the principles of Nostra Aetate, which calls for mutual respect and dialogue between Christians and Jews, and to combat antisemitism and anti-Judaism, which last year he described as a “sin against God”.
And although the person who brought me to this place of open-mindedness eventually left my life–sadly, as it now seems, for good–I learned why they were such a fan of Francis’ papacy. The willingness to accept people, warts, flaws and all. Something I certainly couldn’t say I’ve even come close to exemplifying.
It was somehow fitting that even in what turned out to be his last hours on Earth, Francis found a way to touch people directly, as CBS NEWS recounted this morning:
Pope Francis thanked his personal nurse for encouraging him to greet the crowds in St Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday, according to the Vatican, which said that these were amongst his last words. “Thank you for bringing me back to the square,” Francis told his nurse, Massimiliano Strappetti, after what would be his final popemobile ride, according to the Vatican News, the Holy See’s media outlet. Francis then spent about 15 minutes waving at the crowd and blessing babies from his popemobile, flanked by numerous bodyguards. He appeared exhausted during the Easter celebrations, but nevertheless greeted the crowd and drove around St. Peter’s Square cheered by thousands of rapt worshippers.
Hey, he even met with Beverly Hillbilly Elegy in those last hours as well. Talk about willingness to accept those with warts and flaws.
I’ve pulled back on my flirtation with Jesus and the Church for now. And given the concerns of those who follow this area better than me, I’m not sure I might like who eventually is named as his replacement. There are strong overtones from all parts of the world to select someone who will return the Church to less tolerant ways–not so much to appease the wishes of heathens like Vance, but to take better opportunity of where the potential for growth best lie–in outlets like Africa, where more conservative mindsets proliferate.
But I know this much. As long they pick someone that that seemingly lost influence in my life is content with, it won’t be a total loss. I’ll try and blow some of that white smoke in their direction when those plumes next get released. Mind if I pray for that?
Until next time…