BEYOND THE LEONINE

Remembering My Boss, Pope Francis

A year after his death.

(Photo: Vatican Media)

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Pope Francis’s death. My heart was filled with joy for having known and served him.

But most of all, I couldn’t help but recall how much the former pope suffered. Anyone who has nearly drowned or been struck with a severe bout of altitude sickness knows the terror of not getting enough oxygen.

This became part of Francis’s daily life, often from the moment he woke up. Yet he carried his cross with dignity and a deep realization that suffering has immense value for the Church and for the world. Just days before his passing, during his last celebration of the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, the Argentinian Pontiff extolled meditation on Jesus’s passion and death as the privileged way of turning “towards the love from which nothing can ever separate us.”

That’s exactly how he treated others: as if nothing could separate them from God’s love. He viewed everyone as loved by Christ, no matter what.

This undoubtedly made many uneasy, just as Jesus caused a lot of unease by saying “your sins are forgiven” rather than “pick up your mat and walk” (Mark 2:1–12). The Pharisees were scandalized because only God can forgive sins (and thus Jesus was claiming God’s power); Francis caused scandal because he believed Jesus has the power to forgive not only all sins, but everyone’s sins.

Such a message brought much consolation to Emanuele, a six-year-old Roman boy distraught over the thought that his recently deceased father might be in hell and he would never see him again. An atheist, Emanuele’s dad loved his four children enough to have them baptized.

Pope Francis embraces Emanuele (Photo: Vatican Media)

After embracing Emanuele and whispering words of encouragement into his ear, Pope Francis asked the crowd whether they thought God was capable of driving a man like Emanuele’s father away from his presence forever. “No!”, came the reply. “There’s your answer, Emanuele,” Francis said to the boy wiping away his tears. “God was certainly proud of your father, Emanuele, because it’s easier to baptize your children when you’re a believer than it is to baptize them when you don’t believe.”

Not a conventional claim. Indeed, no less scandalous than Jesus’s declaration to the paralytic or the woman caught in adultery, “Your sins are forgiven.”

How tempting it would be to think Emanuele’s father found it easier to have his children baptized because he didn’t believe. “The ceremony doesn’t really mean anything, so what the heck!” But in Francis’s mind, a real atheist would have serious problems just going through the motions to satisfy the rest of the family.

How tempting it would have been to say to Emanuele, “well, we really don’t know whether your father is in heaven or not. We’d be more certain if he had been a believer. But God is merciful, so perhaps he’s in heaven.”

Such a response would have arguably been safer and more correct. But Francis knew well that he was talking to a six-year-old, not a sixteen- or sixty-year-old. Francis also knew divine providence had given him a pastoral opportunity to challenge the crowd and make them think more deeply. He purposefully posed a challenging question to remind them that they cannot stand on the sidelines. They cannot mindlessly depend on pre-packaged, doctrinally impermeable responses.

In that sensitive moment — a moment that probably determined the entire future of that boy’s faith life — Pope Francis relied on his conviction that everyone was loved by Christ, no matter what. The pope’s daily physical suffering — his way of participating in the Way of the Cross — turned his gaze again and again “towards the love from which nothing can ever separate us.”

If there is one place such total separation seems inevitable, it’s in a women’s prison. Female inmates feel particularly ostracized when they are convicted and sentenced to a detention that deprives them of the little dignity they already feel after committing a crime. Excuses come easier for men because of their natural competitive mentality and the general societal consensus that fatherlessness automatically leads to behavioral problems at a young age. But for a woman, misbehavior seems entirely inexcusable and contrary to their feminine and maternal instincts.

Pope Francis at the Rebibbia correctional facility (Photo: Vatican Media)

Such were the insights that drove Pope Francis once again to the margins on Holy Thursday in 2024, a year before his death. Celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at the correctional facility in Rebibbia, Francis was wheeled from one inmate to the next, ceremonially washing and kissing their feet.

He had already been criticized in former years for not celebrating this prominent liturgy in his own cathedral with his own priests and washing their own feet to convey the full symbolism of Jesus’s actions in the Upper Room with his Apostles, but, by that time, those squabbles mattered little to Francis.

His message to the women inmates was straightforward and clear: “We all have our small or big failures. Everyone has their own story. But the Lord always awaits us with open arms. Jesus never tires of forgiving; we are the ones who tire of asking for forgiveness.”

Tears shed by those women were a sure sign that, perhaps for the first time in their lives, they felt forgiven. They felt dignity. Francis tied that forgiveness and dignity directly to the humble service signified by the simple foot-washing gesture: “I did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28).

Francis, once again reflecting on his own dependence on God for every additional breath to keep him alive despite weak lungs and his ongoing respiratory struggles, realized that nothing makes us more certain of God’s inseparable love than suffering.

I was reminded of Francis’s extraordinary teaching skills this past Holy Week when my children asked if we could perform the foot-washing ceremony at home. Our oldest received his First Holy Communion last year and our second will receive hers next week, and their understanding of and devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist will only continue to grow.

But the experience of having your feet washed has an immediate impact, especially on children. The moment my kids had their feet washed in an “open” celebration of the ritual at one of our former parishes, they immediately wanted to wash the feet of others. And they did. Most memorable was my son’s eagerness to look directly into the eyes of the person sitting before him after he had washed their feet. Pope Francis knew the power of this gesture and was compelled to use it to its full effect, even if that entailed using it unconventionally.

I learned many lessons from my former boss, but remembering him in prayer yesterday brought to mind again his final words at his final celebration of the Stations of the Cross: “We have turned towards the love from which nothing can ever separate us. Now … let us pray … for the gift of heartfelt conversion.”

What ultimately causes conversion? The knowledge that there is a love from which we can never be separated. There is a God whose very nature is to love us. And he sent his only begotten Son to make this known.

I am not arguing that every pope has to be like Pope Francis, and I’m certainly not arguing that he was perfect.

I am not arguing that Francis was a better pope than John Paul II, Benedict XVI, or Leo XIV, and I am certainly not arguing that a pope should spend every Holy Thursday washing the feet of female inmates at a correctional facility.

But as I have argued before, and as I will continue to argue, for one Successor of Peter at one specific moment in time, that was exactly what the Holy Spirit wanted.