NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER; POPE FRANCIS IS DEAD AT 88
FROM WASHINGTON POST
Pope Francis died at the age of 88 at 7:35 a.m. local time Monday, the Vatican said, ending a historic chapter for the world’s largest Christian faith. The first Latin American pontiff burst open the doors of the Catholic Church to “everyone, everyone, everyone.” Francis shifted the focus of the church away from debates about topics such as divorce and contraception and engaged with modern questions about climate change, immigration and artificial intelligence. He also sought, and sometimes struggled, to impose accountability for clerical sexual abuse. He made his final public appearance on Easter Sunday, when he released a message decrying the “logic of fear.” The coming days will involve a public viewing, a funeral, a period of mourning and, eventually, a conclave to select a new pope and determine the direction of the church.
NEW YORK TIMES
Pope Francis, who rose from modest means in Argentina to become the first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff, who clashed bitterly with traditionalists in his push for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church, and who spoke out tirelessly for migrants, the marginalized and the health of the planet, died on Monday at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. He was 88.
The pope’s death was announced by the Vatican in a statement on X, a day after Francis appeared in his wheelchair to bless the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday.
Throughout his 12-year papacy, Francis was a change agent, having inherited a Vatican in disarray in 2013 after the stunning resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, a standard-bearer of Roman Catholic conservatism.
Francis steadily steered the church in another direction, restocking its leadership with a diverse array of bishops who shared his pastoral, welcoming approach as he sought to open up the church. Many rank-and-file Catholics approved, believing that the church had become inward-looking and distant from ordinary people.
Francis reached out to migrants, the poor and the destitute, to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members, and to alienated gay Catholics. He traveled to often-forgotten and far-flung countries and sought to improve relations with an antagonistic Chinese government, Muslim clerics and leaders from across the fragmented Christian world.
After some early stumbles, he took strong steps to address a clerical sex abuse crisis that had become an existential threat to the church. He adopted new rules to hold top religious leaders, including bishops, accountable if they committed sexual abuse or covered it up, though he did not impose the level of transparency or civil reporting obligations that many advocates demanded.
In his final years, slowed by a bad knee, intestinal surgery and respiratory ailments that sapped his breath and voice, Francis used a cane and then a wheelchair, seemingly a diminished figure. But that was a misleading impression. He continued to travel widely, focusing on exploited and war-torn parts of Africa, where he excoriated modern-day colonizers and sought peace in South Sudan.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him! I'm sad for us, but happy for him.
ReplyDeleteHe served until the very end, blessing the crowds yesterday.
Katherine, you said it perfectly.
ReplyDeleteThere haven't been many public figures whom I hadn't known personally whose passing has touched me emotionally, but this is one. I loved him. I suspect (and fear) that in the coming months and years our appreciation of him and his papacy will be brought into sharper relief. May his legacy be more than memories!
Even though I was on my way out of the Church as he was coming in, I certainly give Pope Francis credit for trying to model compassion in a world that seems especially cruel and thoughtless right now. The fact that so many American Catholics hated or ignored his example is sad. Rest now, Papa. St Martin de Porres is waiting to welcome you home. Pray for us when you reach Heaven.
ReplyDeleteI like the identification with Martin de Porres. Did Francis ever express a devotion to him? I recall him talking admiringly of Oscar Romero.
DeleteI suppose my mind went to St Martin, a South American saint (Peru), a brown-skinned outcast who ministered to outcasts, symbolized by his feeding the mice who ate peaceably with the cats and dogs in his barber shop. Not too many Americans seem interested in feeding mice these days.
DeleteI remember the story about St. Martin de Porres, that his superior told him he had to get rid of the mice that were all over the monastery. So he talked to them and told them that if they went out and lived in the barn that he would feed them. They went, and he kept his word.
DeleteRemember that Francis had his own prejudices. He was not particularly impressed by people who kept pets, such as cats and dogs. I doubt he would have been impressed with a saint who kept pet mice. Of course, all this did not keep him from taking the name Francis.
DeleteFrancis also had a prejudice against deacons. He could not understand why a bishop would turn an outstanding lay leader into a deacon! When he was asked to ordain deacons in his diocese, he would usually pray a long time to Mary until she assured him it was necessary!
I am very sad. It was expected, but still it feels like a huge loss.
DeleteJack, as I recall Francis wasn’t opposed to pets per se, but to people choosing to have pets instead of giving birth to human children.
Hmm, St Martin didn't keep pets, rodents or otherwise. Feeding the mice was a sign of his care for those in humble or despised places in society. That would have included him as a person of mixed ethnicity. Hagiography has its own symbolic language, as it were. It trades in images and symbols that tell a story and make a point about holiness.
DeleteYikes, lookit me. Blood counts under better control, fatigue less, and I'm wasting it health arguing and giving my stupid lectures on here again.
I love the hagiography - more please! And so happy to hear blood counts and symptoms are improving for now.
DeleteJean, I am relieved and glad that the health has improved. I am also very appreciative of your “lectures” because you have a knowledge base that the rest of us lack. I know nothing at all about the symbols and hidden meanings in hagiography and in much literature. You are a teacher at heart and we are grateful students.
DeleteAbout Francis - I find that I already miss him. America reported short versions of his weekly talks, which, based on the number of comments ( mostly zero) , seldom attracted many readers. But there was almost always a thought, a phrase, a word, that I took with me. He didn’t think like the other popes in my lifetime. He was much more human - not hiding his foibles, mistakes , apologies to those he had hurt, and all. I pray a worthy successor is found.
"Improved" health is relative. I need increasing doses of chemo to control platelets, but chemo shreds your liver and kidneys. Stability is all built on an increasing number of meds that will soon be more expensive or unavailable because 90 percent of them come from China. I have written a letter per week about this to my elected reps, and folks in my support group are beginning to also.
DeleteSome days I feel quite sick and depressed, and I don't want to talk to anybody. But TODAY I feel pretty good, it's sunny and 60 degrees, so youse get the "benefit" of my little health respite.
Bill Donohue at the Catholic League wants MTG censured for apparent comments about the Pope.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.catholicleague.org/marjorie-taylor-greene-should-be-censured/
Love the irony. The Catholic League extremists v the MTG extremist
DeleteAlas, I’m still on the same planet with Trump, Hegseth, Homan, MTG, Musk and the other mutants. I hope to live long enough to at least be on a planet without Trump. That would be nice. Losing Francis makes me sad. I miss him already. Like Jim, I feel a personal loss.
DeleteI too feel his death as a personal loss, not something I felt with any other pope in my lifetime.
DeleteA thought that I read once; when a good person passes to the other side, some grace spills through the door. I hope that's true, we could certainly use a moment of grace here below.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, a choir friend died last Wednesday before Holy Week started. We had his funeral yesterday. Another good person, he touched a lot of lives.
I noted above that ancient hagiography had its own signs and symbols. So does modern hagiography. In the case of Pope Francis, his reign is bracketed by the story of his carrying his own luggage immediately after his election as Pope, and the story that he will be buried in a cemetery where immigrants (and a few past popes) have been interred. These are true stories, of course, but they are of a piece with the themes of humility and care for the poor that Francis's admirers want to highlight.
ReplyDeleteI wasn’t following the conclave closely in 2013 as I had pretty much written off the Catholic Church at that point and was happy in our EC parish. When he was elected, I was driving with the news on ( I could still hear well enough then) and was listening to two priests commenting when Francis came out on the balcony and their surprise ( and almost horror it seemed); that he wasn’t wearing the ermine cape. Then his name - Francis - and then asking for the people to pray for him before he gave a blessing. I suspected then that he would be a different kind of pope, one more focused on the gospels, and not on the imperial trappings of the RCC hierarchy. All of his actions that followed, including moving into the apartment house where he could go to mass with Vatican employees, using a Ford Focus instead of a luxury car, etc, etc kept me watching. At last - a pope who seemed to be more a follower of Jesus than of kings and emperors. When he went to Lampedusa I was hooked - - a pope who focused on the gospels, on helping the poor, on desperate refugees, all the marginalized, instead of only the “ pelvic issues” and other hot- button issues. He initially blew it in Chile with his choice of bishop, but he paid attention, went back to Rome, launched an investigation and then demanded the resignations of all the bishops there. Not only did he admit he had made a terrible mistake, he apologized for it and took responsibility for his wrong judgment. When has any pope ever admitted to that?
DeleteWe haven’t gone to any church since Covid, but in San Jose, the Lectio group at St Francis of Assisi kept me afloat when I was drowning in darkness and fear and loneliness. We met on Wednesday mornings and I often had to miss because of my husbands Dr appointments. But they were there, being Christ to me. At St. Francis. Francis - a sign to me.
I haven’t found a nearby RC parish that hasn’t gone full EWTN, Barron, etc. The Jesuit parish in Georgetown ( Holy Trinity); is too far for Sunday mornings with all the extra time I need to. Get my husband ready, in his wheelchair, into the car etc. So we remain unchurched. The local EC parishes lost many members during Covid, and have not really recovered. I am not crazy about the new rector at our previous EC parish. We watched the Easter liturgy at the Washington National Cathedral at home. The Cathedral is just as far as Holy Trinity in Georgetown - at this point the only two physical parishes I am interested in. Bishop Budde is one of my personal heroes. Two of the local EC parishes went from three eucharists/ Sunday to one and are too early for us to get to.
It will be interesting to see if the next Pope will be more Francis than Benedict or JPII. They helped drive me out of the RCC, and Francis brought me back. Everyone’s spiritual path is different but both Jean and I have had to deal with more potholes than the rest here.
My "potholes" were largely self made. I loved the history and culture of medieval Catholicism, the saints, etc. But I was no more prepared to be a good modern Catholic than I was an Episcopalian. After nearly 50 years of experimenting, bitching abt Church Ladies (though a few may have some things to answer for down the road), and feeling guilty for my failures as a Church Person, I'm happy to just be a baptized follower of Jesus as I understand him and let the rest go.
DeleteDemocracy Now had a show predominately about Pope Francis. Nathan Schneider, frequent contributor to America, gave a nice interview about the Pope, how he tied together environmentalism and social justice. An Evangelical Lutheran pastor from Bethlehem talked of the Pope’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza and saying on his final day that it was not a war that is happening. I subscribe to a young Argentinian environmental writer on a Substack blog called Antarctic Sapiens. The writer called the Pope the foremost advocate for the environment and addressing climate change. He also shared that his grandfather was a friend of the Pope in their youth. I suppose you have to go inside the Catholic Church, unfortunately, to hear anything negative about him.
ReplyDeleteJean “I'm happy to just be a baptized follower of Jesus as I understand him and let the rest go.“. Me too, although I do miss having an in- person spiritual community as I had with CP for years, and with the Lectio group in San Jose.
ReplyDeleteStanley “ I suppose you have to go inside the Catholic Church, unfortunately, to hear anything negative about him.”
ReplyDeleteTrue - and very sad.
Our parish is having a memorial mass for Francis tomorrow night. I've been asked to be the pianist, as our music director had a procedure on one of her hands and isn't able to play. I'll report back if there is anything of interest.
ReplyDeleteI was in the church last night and see we now have a framed photo of Francis on an easel on the steps of the sanctuary.
We'll be getting a new archbishop here at the same time we'll be getting a new pope, which seems like a lot of things up in the air. Though our new archbishop has already been named, by Pope Francis. That in itself was a little unusual. The bishops have to write their letter of resignation at age 75.. But the pattern here has been that their successor is not immediately named and it might be a couple or three years before one is decided on. I think Pope Francis knew his days were numbered, and so did the nuncio. They weren't going to leave it to the new guy to find a candidate.
ReplyDelete"the pattern here has been that their successor is not immediately named and it might be a couple or three years before one is decided on."
DeleteSame.
At the vicariate (subdivision of an archdiocese) level, our auxiliary bishop recently was 'elevated' to become the new Archbishop of Milwaukee. His auxiliary position was backfilled pretty quickly, but I don't think that was direct cause-and-effect; some four or five priests of the archdiocese were ordained as bishops in a single motion, and promptly assigned to open vicariates around the archdiocese.
It's pretty clear the process in place now is that youngish (meaning middle-age) priests who seem promising, have some background in administration and (at least during Francis's reign) show pastoral ability are made bishops, assigned to auxiliary bishop posts in large archdioceses, and then further groomed to step into diocesan prelate roles. Most or all of our new auxiliary bishops fit this pattern, and appear to be an age where they can still be groomed for bigger posts.
Bishop Robert Barron might be an example folks here are familiar with; while still a priest he had earned a doctorate in theology, served as rector of the local seminary and, of course, started the Word on Fire ministry. He served as an auxiliary bishop in LA for a few years, and then was given a diocese of his own in MN. According to Wikipedia, Barron is 65 years old; he may have one more 'promotion' in his future, but probably not more than that. Our current archbishop, Blase Cupich, was 65ish when he was made archbishop of Chicago.
I suspect Barron has enough fund-raising connections that he will be a prime candidate for a large diocese or archdiocese that is in financial trouble. Of course he might turn down the offer.
DeleteI gather that in recent years there are a lot of people who are turning down offers of becoming a bishop. It is probably easier to turn down the offer of becoming a bishop of a diocese than of being an auxiliary bishop.
For sure there are a lot of headaches connected with being a bishop. And if one's preference is to actually do ministry, maybe being a bishop is not all that desirable of a promotion. I don't know about Barron, but I'm not getting a vibe that pastoral ministry is his strong suit?
DeleteBarron came out of the tradition in which diocesan administration, e.g. running a seminary, was the road to becoming a bishop.
DeleteCardinal George tasked him to doing something about evangelization in response to JP2.
Barron became very successful at doing YouTube presentations which led to his founding Word on Fire.
In some ways he is very traditional, doing what his bishop and the Pope wanted, being a seminary rector, a great emphasize upon an intellectual approach to religious experience, and that Catholicism has the answers to the world's problems.
But in other ways he is progressive, the use of modern media such as YouTube and beauty to attract people to Catholicism. His model is to attract people with Beauty, engage them in the Good, then solidify them with Truth.
A good model except that the Beauty that he presents is mostly traditional Beauty such as the art of Renaissance and Medieval Cathedrals, the Good is focused on life and marriage issues, and Truth is mostly Aquinas and other philosophical approaches to theology.
He is critical of what he considers the beige/bland Catholicism that followed Vatican II in church architecture, music, and thinking that diminished the contrast of Catholicism with the world.
The thinking is the Cardinal Cupich wanted a more progressive administration at the seminary, and sending Barron to Los Angelos, a media center of the country to do his thing was a good solution.
Becoming a bishop of a small diocese probably offers him the opportunity to do more of his own thing.
More recently he has talked about developing an order of religious priests to further his work. Given the history of the Legionnaires and Opus Dei, I suspect the Vatican is likely to put a lot of roadblocks in his way unless we get a relatively conservative Pope. Under Francis they had already tightened up the rules that allow bishops to approve new religious orders at the diocesan level.
My thoughts about a new order of priests are, do we really need more orders? We have some perfectly good ones which would like to have more new members. There are charisms for just about anything you could think of, including evangelization and media. The Paulists are one that springs to mind in that area.
DeleteWe were talking about the Harrowing of Hell story in my Old English group last week and the way stories, feasts, and entertainments were inextricably linked to early conversion efforts. And Pope Benedict said, "Art and the saints are the greatest apologetic for our faith." Bishop Barron seems to be in that groove, tho as Jack mentions, he seems locked into the past in his presentation. My guess is that he's mostly preaching to the converted who want some idealized version of the preVat2 Church back. However, he is doing more than pestering people for money and complaining about too many deacons and not enough priests.
DeleteI was thinking of the Harrowing of Hell lately, and the line in the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into hell..." I thought that was referring to "Limbo of the fathers" rather than the hell of the damned. Limbo is an archaic concept which doesn't seem to be talked about nowadays. In my school kid catechism days they said it was a place of natural happiness. Lately I have thought that a place of natural happiness maybe isn't a bad concept, for those who weren't bad people, but for one reason or another didn't want to go to heaven.
DeleteBut I think the hell referred to in the Apostle's Creed happened on earth, and Jesus was there before he died, during his passion.
Just speculations.
You can see a modern version of the Harrowing performed in York here. Jesus and Satan engage in some lengthy debate. The core of the story shows up in the Old English Gospel of Nicodemus, which morphed into the Middle English dramas, and are no occasionally rendered in modern English. So it's been popular way longer than Shakespeare. Can't keep a good story down.
Deletehttps://youtu.be/N3J8WjHDbBU?si=OqnAJsyLBDl1J-73
I'm a lit tle embarrassed to admit that I'm not all that plugged into the Word on Fire ministry (well, if "not all that plugged in" can be understood as "not plugged in at all"), so I don't claim to be an authority on Barron and his ministry. I can report that, when I was in deacon formation, we did read a book of his which included his explication of a William Faulkner short story, "The Deer", aka "The Old Folks". I mention this as one data point that Barron is not solely rooted in the medeival arts, literature and culture. I think he finds sacramentality in contemporar
DeleteSorry, somehow I hit "Publish" before finishing my thought: Barron is able to find sacramentality in more modern / contemporary works as well.
DeleteI don't know how many people in the world today would be likely to read Faulkner if it doesn't appear on an assigned reading list. For that matter, I don't know if Faulkner (a white pre-civil-rights Southerner) is likely to appear on any assigned reading lists these days. I'd be astonished if any of my children have read him in any high school or college classes - I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't say who he is.
Where I'm going with this is: I don't think most people these days are exposed to the sort of fine arts exemplified by a work of literature by Faulkner. To be sure, there are more broadly popular examples of literature today, e.g. popular musical artists, who would have a broader audience reach, although even those examples would be a fairly 'targeted audience'. Is it possible to find sacramentality in the lyrics of Taylor Swift? I'm not the person to answer that question, but I'm open to the possibility that the answer is "Yes".
I suspect that Word on Fire appeals to a particular kind of person - a seeker with a sort of sacramental imagination, which I suppose presupposes a certain amount of education/formation. It's not a bad thing to target those folks! If the last 10 years have taught us anything, especially in the realm of progressive culture and politics, it is that the liberal arts majors wield enormous influence. But I think there are limits to using classical concepts of Beauty to appeal to seekers. Most people who hear a classically trained singer either snicker or stop their ears. And relatively few of us go out of our way to read a sonnet.
My own tastes run more to the Great American Songbook than Taylor Swift. Could "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" be a portal to the divine for someone who is in a certain frame of mind (or perhaps experiencing a crisis)? Who am I to say No?
DeleteThis is William Shakespeare getting the Broadway treatment, ca. 2015, in "Something Rotten". The conceit here is Shakespeare was to the Renaissance what Taylor Swift, or perhaps Mick Jagger, is to our day.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ_PhU0vyMw
Is Faulkner "contemporary"? Probably not now. He's "modern Southern gothic," which is to say early 20th century Southern with a dollop of horror and insanity as the academy classifies these things.
DeleteI read all of his novels one summer when I was about 26. It was a transformative experience. But not in a good way.
Is there "sacramentality" in it? I'd say "yes" to "The Sound and the Fury," which has stuck with me all this time because it recognizes the humanity in the emotional life of a mentally retarded child. Does that mean anybody wants to read it now or would see the same heartbreak in it as me? Dunno. These things are kinda idiosyncratic.
Chris Hedges draws parallels between Trump, Inc. and Faulkner’s degenerate Snopes clan, moving in to fill the power vacuum in a collapsing society. I guess that makes Faulkner contemporary for me. I’m warming up to try “The Sound and the Fury” in my Audible bin.
DeleteI'm finishing up "Everything Must Go" by Dorian Lynsky, a look at end-of-the-world literature first shaped by Revelation and later fed by various idiocies and catastrophes down the centuries. A bit of a junk drawer, but he covers a lot of fascinating ground.
DeleteStanley, meant to add that it might be of interest to you, esp the intersection between tech and morality. Would make a good Audible read.
DeleteThanks, Jean. I’ll check it out.
DeleteI'm reading a biography, "President Garfield", by CW Goodyear. He was an interesting cat, and the book is highly readable. One thing I've decided I like: the footnotes contain nothing but the citations - no fun nuggets, amusing anecdotes or authorial wry comments. I don't mind that sort of content, but get annoyed at having to manage two bookmarks and constantly flip back and forth.
ReplyDeleteI read a book on preaching a few years ago by the fam9us negachurch pastor Timothy Keller, which had footnotes that could be several pages long - essentially mini-chapters in their own right. The footnote content was quite good, but it sort of repurposed footnotes from citations of other works to something else - the hardcopy equivalent of 'click here for more details'.
Delete