Requiescat in pace

Purple Catholic Saturday Post

Apr 26, 2025

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Good morning and happy Saturday.

Early this morning, around 4am eastern time, Pope Francis’ funeral began, and he was later laid to rest at the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.

Pope Francis is the only pope that I have any real recollection of. I was in early high school when he was elected and had no real sense of the pontificate of Benedict XVI or St. John Paul II.

Below, I have shared several perspectives on the Pope Francis’ pontificate from a variety of different perspectives. Conservative New York Times columnist and Catholic Ross Douthat discussed the twelve years of his reign with Fr. James Martin, SJ. Mary Ann Glendon, the US Ambassador to the Holy See under George W. Bush, recalls the reforms that Pope Francis tried to undertake. There are several others.

I am not nearly as qualified to comment on the specific outcomes of this papacy as those linked below. What I can provide is my perspective on what I have seen in my life.

There are many in the American Church (and Americans who are not explicitly part of the Church) who want to paint Pope Francis with an extremely broad brush. Progressives love to claim him for his views on the environment, his statements on migration and refugees, and his efforts to evangelize to homosexuals. I have no doubt that in the coming weeks, I will come across numerous columns lamenting that “if Pope Francis just lived a little longer, X would have been changed in the Catholic Church.”

Such a belief is nonsense.

As I was reminded in a homily during a Mass on Monday afternoon, Pope Francis did nothing to change the church’s teaching on any matter. His emphases differed from those of his predecessors, but it was not incongruent.

Francis’ stated goal was to reach out to the peripheries, to the margins, and to do that, he had to undertake some assignments that necessarily meant he would be criticized.

Oftentimes, that criticism was undeserved. His statements were taken out of context, and journalists would do linguistic gymnastics to ignore statements that contradicted their agenda.

Sometimes this would happen with the Church itself. Fiducia supplicans, the Diacastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s instruction on the blessing of couples in irregular relationships and same-sex relationships, was very clear about what was and was not licit. Yet priests (including Fr. James Martin, SJ, who is linked below) openly misinterpreted or, at worst, ignored those instructions.

When speaking on his way back from the Philippines in 2015, Pope Francis explained to journalists that large families are not a requirement for salvation, that every married couple is called to be responsible. As part of that statement, he used an analogy: Catholics don’t need to “breed like rabbits” to be good Catholics. Some traditionalist Catholics decided to take offense at this and declare that he was somehow criticizing large families. Again, within the Church itself, you see individuals try to warp Francis into the man they needed to fit an agenda.

Now, I’m not saying he was always prudent in his speech; Lord knows I am not. What we see here is people assuming what they want and forcing it into their own worldview.

Instead, we need to understand that one of the primary teachings of Francis was to change our worldview.

St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI gave us very clear teachings on faith and morals. We have a firm foundation of what it means to be human in the Theology of the Body, in Spe Salvi we see a fuller understanding of hope, we see how science is not incompatible with our faith.

Pope Francis took this foundation and tried to teach us how to apply it. Because we have an understanding of the human person, we must be sympathetic towards migrants and refugees. Because we understand that hope is in salvation, we must strive to reach out to everyone (including those we may not want to). Because we have advances in science, we must take care of our world and ensure that dignity is not discarded in the name of research.

It is reasonable to disagree on the effectiveness or method of his teachings, but it is unfair to push Francis into one ideological corner or another or claim that he was some great theological reformer. It simply isn’t true.

The first major pope of my lifetime was laid to rest this morning. There is something very final and very complete about a funeral. When a loved one dies, there is this feeling of uncertainty, almost a nebulous feeling, between the moment of death and the conclusion of the funeral.

Once someone is laid in the ground, it is final. To quote our Lord, “it is finished” (John 19:30).

We continue on with the memory of that person. We pray for that person. And we ask them to pray for us.

We know what comes next, literally and eternally. The world will move on, the Church will move on. You and I will move on and continue to live as faithfully to the Gospel as we can.

Pope Francis: Requiescat in pace. Please pray for us who remain here and pray that the Holy Spirit might be sent down on the College of Cardinals so that they might choose a good and holy man to be our shepherd here on Earth.

Divine Mercy Sunday

Tomorrow is the Sunday in the Octive of Easter, also know as Divine Mercy Sunday. The readings will be Acts 5:12-16; Psalm 118; Revelation 1:9-13, 17-19; and John 20:19-31.