Reading Francis

It’s going to be OK.

It was the election of Pope Francis that got me into all this.

In March 2013, I was in the back of a taxi in Washington, DC, when I heard the announcement that Jorge Bergoglio had been elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI. At that point, I had been Catholic for almost 20 years and had been to Italy once, but I pretty much kept my faith to myself. I certainly didn’t talk about papal encyclicals and stuff like that, although I had spent my graduate school years studying Catholic social thought, which had exposed me to a lot more of the process and politics of the papacy than the average bear. Even so, I had been following the drama around the conclave enough to know that Bergoglio was a total surprise choice.

Over those first few days, as it was revealed that this pope from Argentina, literally the ends of the earth, had chosen Francis as his name, not in honor of his fellow Jesuit, St. Francis Xavier, but for St. Francis of Assisi, and his smile and humility charmed the world (remember that he went back to his hotel to pay the bill after he was elected, he carried his own suitcase, he eschewed the papal palace for a simple guest house, and he asked the crowd gathered to herald his introduction to pray for HIM instead of just the other way around), I saw a lot of people who had paid no attention to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church start to ask questions, like “Who is this guy?” As he started to speak and write, I saw a lot of those same folks, still enthralled with what he had to say, wondering if this guy was really something new.

So I started writing on Facebook and ReadingFrancis.com to try to unpack, as best I could as a non-expert who still knew a few things, what Pope Francis was about, and especially what wasn’t new about what he had to say.

All of which is to say, the passing of this pope means a whole lot to me.

I’ll write a few posts about that over the next couple of days, but the first thing I want to say is this: It’s going to be OK.

It’s going to be OK for Jorge Bergoglio. He clearly knew the reality of death, and from what I’ve seen from those close to him, what we in the cheap seats saw in him was real: he was a man who lived at peace with his fate, not because of anything he did, but because he fully trusted in the merciful love of his Creator. Sometimes Christians will talk about someone saintly by saying “they know where they’re going;” we can discuss Francis’ canonization in a few decades, but for now, I think the clear thing was that Pope Francis was a man who knew his own failings and had hope and trust that God loved him anyway. Jorge Bergoglio is going to be OK.

It’s also easy to pick up a vibe among those who were Francis fans from a distance that I can only describe as ominous. I see a lot of hand-wringing over whether the next pope will undo all the good that this one did. When you look at the whiplashing nature of American politics, it’s easy to see where that comes from. But the Church is going to be OK.

I’ll talk about the various papabile and the politics that I see (as only an enthusiastic outsider, mind you), but the reality is that this is a moment when people learn just how much trust they put in the Holy Spirit. In a little while, up to 134 cardinals will enter the Sistine Chapel to discern who should succeed Francis as the next pope. As much as they are 134 different human beings with perspectives that vary, 134 men whose relationships to God and approaches to the faith are unique to their experiences, I have faith that they will all take seriously the call to discern, not who they personally want as the next pope, but who the Holy Spirit is calling them to elect. 

That person won’t be exactly like Francis, in part because every one of us is one-of-a-kind, but also because Francis leaves the Church different than he found it. I have faith that this conclave will end up picking the one that the Holy Spirit thinks we need right now. Just as the one in March 2013 did, when it picked the wild card from Argentina.

I will miss Pope Francis. But it’s going to be OK.