Who will be the new pope? After Pope Francis' progress, expect a course correction. | Opinion
Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday at the age of 88, seemed to embody not the church that existed, but the church that wayward Catholics like me could admire.
Although I’ve spent most of my life as a lapsed Catholic, and have generally regarded the mother church as a corrupt institution, the selection of Pope Francis was, to me, a bit of a miracle.
Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday at the age of 88, seemed to embody not the church that existed but the church that wayward Catholics like me could admire.
And that was no small feat. Big institutions tend to be calcified and moribund – frozen against course corrections and impervious to self-reflection.
And yet, in March of 2013, after five rounds of voting over the course of two days, a papal conclave bestowed its blessings upon a radical Jesuit cardinal from Buenos Aires, a humble man named Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Cardinal Bergoglio took the papal name “Francis” after the 13th century nobleman St. Francis of Assisi, who shunned the material wealth of his family to live in a hovel among the lepers and the poor.
Pope Francis practiced humility throughout his leadership
The newly elected Pope Francis wasted no time in living up to his name. He turned down the opulent lodging reserved for him in the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican to live instead at a guest house there.
And when he first appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, he wore a simple white cassock rather than the jewel-encrusted bright colored vestments worn by previous popes.
Meeting with church leaders, he symbolically stood in front of them rather than perching himself above them on his ornate throne.
In the following 12 years, Pope Francis continued to embody that simple humility right down to one of his final requests, to be buried in a simple wooden coffin beyond the walls of the Vatican.
Pope Francis broke with the Catholic Church for the right reasons
Along the way, he preached tolerance for others, sometimes to the point of breaking with church orthodoxy and surprising his own followers.
When asked by reporters about the church’s position on homosexuality as a sin, Pope Francis said: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge? We shouldn't marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society.”
He broke tradition in the church by going outside the Vatican to wash the feet of prisoners, women and the disabled as an Easter ritual.
Although he failed to admit women into the priesthood, he spoke about expanding the roles of women in the church.
“A society that is not capable of (allowing women to have greater roles) does not move forward," Pope Francis told reporters three years ago. "I have noticed that every time a woman is given a position (of responsibility) in the Vatican, things improve."
He was an environmentalist who warned about the dangers posed by climate change in an encyclical he authored.
His advice on the waves of immigrants showing up at the U.S. southern border was to welcome them.
“For an immigration policy to be good," Pope Francis said, "it must have four things: for the migrant to be received, assisted, promoted, and integrated. This is what is most important, to integrate them into the new life.”
Who will be the next pope? Expect change in Catholic Church.
He was an unapologetic socialist who opined in a magazine article that Jesus was closer to a communist than a capitalist.
“If I see the Gospel in a sociological way only, yes, I am a communist, and so too is Jesus. Behind these Beatitudes and Matthew 25 there is a message that is Jesus’ own. And that is to be Christian," Pope Francis said. “The communists stole some of our Christian values.”
I suspect that in the coming days, the secretive conclave of cardinals at the Vatican will pick a new pope who will serve as a kind of course correction from Pope Francis.
The church, I'm guessing, will swing back into its pre-Francis state.
And that will be too bad.
Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, where this column originally appeared. He can be reached at FCerabino@pbpost.com.