Sunday, May 4, 2025
Pope Francis and the Church of Mercy
Our attention is on the Eternal City, somewhere between the funeral of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the conclave of cardinals who will elect the 267th successor of Saint Peter from among their number. Pope Francis leaves a legacy not just because he named 80% of the cardinals who will elect the next bishop of Rome, but for his pastoral care, wide travel and letters. He was not always popular because he called everyone to conversion. I think Pope Francis had the ability to read the signs of the time and apply the hope of the gospel to the challenges that confront all of humanity.
He spoke of meeting harshness with tenderness, technology with humanity, exploitation with justice. Leadership at such a level for twelve years helped him to see the big picture. He taught about balance and integral ecology as being at home with ourselves, God and all of creation in Laudato si. He mapped the way forward on how we are to be in right relationship with one another individually and internationally by establishing a culture of encounter in his encyclical on social friendship, Fratelli Tutti : “Human beings are so made that they cannot live, develop and find fulfilment except ‘in the sincere gift of self to others’. Nor can they fully know themselves apart from an encounter with other persons … No one can experience the true beauty of life without relating to others, without having real faces to love” (#87) “Social friendship and universal fraternity necessarily call for an acknowledgement of the worth of every human person, always and everywhere” (#106). Pope Francis, who lived what he wrote, reminds us that “our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected Members” (Evangelii Gaudium, #186).
In Christ,
Rev. Robert P. Capone
