In Memory of Pope Francis (2013 - 2025)

The Catholic Church is a web of infinite complexity, every intersecting silken thread an insoluble contradiction. And at its centre is the Bishop of Rome. Pontifex. The Pope. And yesterday, the 266th Pope, the man born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, passed away at the age of 88.

For the final twelve years of life, he was Pope Francis. The first Francis. The first Jesuit. The first Argentinian. And though it would be presumptuous to suggest that he was the first true priest to assume the role, it's certainly true to assert that he was the first in a very long while.

The Pope in the web analogy above resides in the place of the spider. So often a symbol of evil, of malevolence and deception, and so often a creature harshly judged, unfairly maligned and deeply misunderstood. Few figures - contemporary or historical - are called to balance so many contested obligations. Popes will always anger and offend as many as they please. And in the 21st century - a world increasingly polarised by atheistic and theistic zealotries - the papacy is a lightning rod for discontent the world over. Popes are chastised for their irrelevance, often by the same people who wish they would be more ardent supporters of sociocultural progression. At the same time, those who profess (often too loudly) to be committed Catholics decry Popes as borderline heretics for simply affirming the inclusive, loving and rebellious words of Christ. Those who wish only to see the Catholic Church as a bastion of Patriarchal Rule and a bulwark against moral relativism and corruptive identity politics are usually slow to acknowledge that Christ was a revolutionary who stood with the dispossessed, the shunned, the unloved and the broken, and who, in the greatest attempt at collective and timeless love for all, allowed himself to be broken.

For Catholics, Christ is in all of us. Not just all Catholics, but all of us. That ineffable yearning for perfection and those glimpses of a grace seemingly from within us but beyond us, is Christ. He is forgiveness, joy, compassion, wisdom.

Love.

Imagine being charged with the responsibility of representing Christ on earth. And then imagine trying to represent and lead the edifice that has sprung up around Him; an organisation that often bears little to any resemblance to He who inspired it. Such responsibilities must surely require a man with a formidable intellect, an incendiary spirit, and a sublime humility.

This is not a common combination. It's about as rare a form of iconic leadership - and a pope is a living icon - as one can envisage. It's why most Popes fall short in some way. Incredibly, Francis did not.

The regal trappings of the papacy did not sit at all easily with him. How does a humble man adjust to a life in which he is expected to live in a palace? With forthright simplicity: refuse to live there. Shun the red papal shoes. Ring up and cancel your weekly newspaper delivery yourself. Sneak out at night at work with the poor dressed in the plain black of an Italian priest. Striving to remain human in a role that embodies the trappings of a kind of earthly divinity seems logical, but few have the integrity to live it.

Pope Francis infuriated conservatives for no other reason than he challenged the moral validity of their conservatism. Christ lived and preached of life beyond judgement. He called upon people not to judge. When asked about homosexuality, Francis declined to judge. And one of his final acts was to empower priests to bless gay marriages. For some conservatives, this was heresy of the most heinous kind. For others, it was a gesture that seemed pitiably weak. For many who consider themselves progressive and inclusive Catholics, it was monumental. Popes do not play by the same temporal rules as others. There's no point judging them by the rules of a different game.

Pope Francis liked people. And people liked Pope Francis. Those outside of the Church capable at looking at him with anything resembling objectivity acknowledge that he seemed a kind and decent man who spoke out against tyranny, inequality and environmental vandalism all the force he could muster. A drop of social progressiveness in a glacially slow-moving river. As a priest and decent man, he could not also be an authoritarian pope. He could not force his progressiveness onto anyone without compromising the moral virtues at the core of his progressiveness. Despite this, he was still able to reform the papal curia (for the better) more than any Pope in decades, which greatly reduced its bureaucratical insularity and intractability. And whilst it didn't totally muzzle the barking doctrinal judgements that emanated from it, it certainly reduced them.

A cursory glance at America's President in 2025 should remind all of us that being a visible leader is about more than the policies you enact or the words you say, it's about the collateral impact of those policies and the values at their cores; it's about the way you say those words, and it's about who you are. We are a species biologically designed to imitate in order to learn, which is why there are few things worse than ugly, intolerant and mean-spirited leaders, because they validate the very worst of who and what we can be. They silence the presence of Christ within us. Christ is a low-burning flame. A small flame. But a small flame is all that's required to start the very greatest of blazes. In the grand scheme of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has been another small flame in a sequence of many that have kept the fire of Christ and Saint Peter burning for two millennia. And thanks to him, it's burning a little bit brighter.

Truthfully, it's astonishing that the Church and the Papacy has survived this long. Many of those who've served as Pope served only themselves. But by being a genuinely humble and welcoming servant of Christ, Francis has given the Catholic Church the best chance of being an enduring relevance in a world that, as Leonard Cohen once affirmed, needs to offer a holy and broken hallelujah in order to feel the warmth of that eternal flame.

I pray that Francis will be at peace in his eternal rest. I pray that his successor will embody his spirit - Christ's spirit - and seek to challenge those who need to be challenge, protect those who need to be protected, and love those - all those - who need to be loved.