Pope Francis was elected head of the Catholic Church in March of 2013, when I was just pregnant with my second child. I remember the trees were just beginning to blossom, and that the sunlight was bright.
I heard the news while planning for the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council with a group of local Maryland Roman Catholic leaders and organizers at a local retreat center. I learned that Pope Francis had a decades long friendship with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, from their days in Argentina. It was good to be gathering with fellow Catholics, reflecting on not just the legacy of the Church’s moves to “open the windows” in the mid-20th century, but imagining what would come next for the Church and the world.
In March of 2020, during a dark and rainy evening, Pope Francis stood alone in St. Peter’s Square and offered the Urbi et Orbi blessing to the world. I watched him on TV, with my kindergartner and third-grader beside me. We talked about the gospel reading from Mark, Jesus teaching the disciples through parables, and then getting in a boat with his followers and getting caught in a violent storm. After his disciples cry out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus calms the storm, but then says, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?”
The pope reminded the entire world that all of humanity was weathering the dark storm of a global pandemic together—we were in the same boat—vulnerable, afraid, suffering, and dying. He invited the world to faith, and he said:
The storm exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities. It shows us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities…In this storm, the façade of those stereotypes with which we camouflaged our egos, always worrying about our image, has fallen away, uncovering once more that (blessed) common belonging, of which we cannot be deprived: our belonging as brothers and sisters…How many people every day are exercising patience and offering hope, taking care to sow not panic but a shared responsibility. How many fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers are showing our children, in small everyday gestures, how to face up to and navigate a crisis by adjusting their routines, lifting their gaze and fostering prayer. How many are praying, offering and interceding for the good of all. Prayer and quiet service: these are our victorious weapons.
In October 2020, as the pandemic raged on, Pope Francis issued his third papal encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, calling upon the Church and the world to create a new culture of encounter and dialogue centered on fostering friendship, pursuing justice, and caring for creation. Building on his own interreligious friendship with Grand Imam of Al-Ahzar Ahmed al-Tayyeb, Pope Francis invited all people of good will to create and sustain cultures of encounter—grounded in the dignity of each person and realized through practices of dialogue.
Approaching, speaking, listening, looking at, coming to know and understand one another, and to find common ground: all these things are summed up in the one word ‘dialogue’. If we want to encounter and help one another, we have to dialogue. There is no need for me to stress the benefits of dialogue. I have only to think of what our world would be like without the patient dialogue of the many generous persons who keep families and communities together. Unlike disagreement and conflict, persistent and courageous dialogue does not make headlines, but quietly helps the world to live much better than we imagine. Fratelli Tutti §198
Inviting people of all faiths—and no faith—to have “persistent and courageous dialogue” about the urgent matters of the world is necessary and life-giving work that I am honored to be a part of everyday. This relational approach to religion and to life, is central to who we are and what we do at ICJS.
On this gray morning—the day after Christians jubilantly proclaimed “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!”—I awoke to the news that Pope Francis died. My fifth-grader and eighth-grader came down the stairs and I shared the sad news. I have spent the morning reading expressions of condolences from leaders around the world. I turned back to Fratelli Tutti:
Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth, which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of his with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all. Fratelli Tutti §8
As the day unfolds, I have no doubt that the legacy of Pope Francis’ stewardship of the Roman Catholic Church will be explored and considered and analyzed by many—and that is certainly important and worthy work. But right now, I am sitting uncomfortably with both grief and hope. In this increasingly stormy world, Pope Francis invited us to create hearts open to the whole human family, and to practice dialogue that is life-giving. Can we say yes to such an invitation? I hope and pray that we can.