Reading Francis

Better him than me.

Before I dig into something Pope Leo XIV said to the College of Cardinals over the weekend in another post, I just wanted to take a moment of gratitude that I don’t have his job.

Today he had a meeting with some of the 6,000 accredited media who have been covering the funeral of Francis, the conclave, and Pope Leo’s election. This is a traditional thing modern popes have done, to thank the media for communicating to the world about these events, and it’s not a press conference. The pope gives a few remarks, shakes some hands, and leaves. 

Pope Leo gave a speech specifically focused on journalism and freedom of the press, especially speaking out against the imprisonment of journalists. I’ll link to the English translation, because my journalist/comms friends might be interested in what he said.

After his remarks, he shakes hands with a few rows of what I assume are the ranking members of the Vatican press corps (or otherwise deemed important; I saw that ABC News got to shake his hand. I’ll link to the video so you can watch how this unfolds. (Side note: a few still kiss his ring, which just reminds you how recently the papacy has gotten away from some of the trappings of monarchy.) A couple of these folks don’t really read the room well and try to commandeer more of his time or give him something they want him to promote or whatever, all of which he handles with grace. He signs a baseball for one guy, which I’m sure is on EBay by now. Another guy is wearing a Chicago Blackhawks cap. But mostly people are respectful.

Then the pope leaves the VIP section and leaves through the general crowd in the hall, and it’s sort of like the State of the Union address where a President is walking through the seats of the Members of Congress. Except it’s like Taylor Swift is the President and the Members of Congress are all teenage girls. It is bananas. People with babies and Bibles and all kinds of other stuff for the pope to touch, to bless, to somehow connect with.

When our daughter was a toddler, she would sign and say “All done” when she was finished with something, like, “All done, bath.” Ever since, our family of introverts recalls that when, burned out on unruly crowds, we say to each other “All done, people.”

I would have been “All done, people” before I got to the dude with the baseball, much less the madness in the cheap seats.

That’s not really why I’m glad I’m not the pope, though.

In his opening blessing, his Sunday message, and now this talk with journalists, he has begged for the cessation of wars and violence. In fact, the beautiful phrase “disarmed and disarming” from his opening appearance makes a return in his plea to journalists to be witnesses to peace. 

When Robert Prevost was head of the Augustinian order, or when he was bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, or the Cardinal head of the office for bishops in the Vatican, the wars of the world weighed on him, I’m sure, as they should on all of us. But when you are Pope Leo, the leader of a 1.4 billion member global religion whose divine founder preached peace, peace, peace, the heaviness of the “third world war, fought piecemeal,” as his predecessor called it, weighs more squarely on your shoulders. As Leo begs for a repentance from violence and an embrace of peace, everyday that his message falls on deaf ears, every new death toll, must strike his heart more sharply than it did a few weeks ago.

If what I am learning about the Augustinian tradition’s emphasis on fostering unity is right, maybe Pope Leo has a chance to bring peace where others have failed. All I know is this:

Better him than me.