As preparations are under way in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis, inevitably I’ve been thinking over my impressions of him. I met him a handful of times, mostly in the company of many others, a couple of times as part of a small group. This isn’t basis enough to say very much about him, in comparison with friends and colleagues who met him frequently, and I’m not sure I could add all that much to what others have said. But here is my pennyworth. My own impression on first encounter, in 2023, was above all of overwhelming warmth. He was already a bit frail, stumbling and shuffling; more than I had imagined, he had evidently put on weight as his mobility decreased, and he struggled with standing, needing a stick or support by an attendant. After all, he was 86! But his face, voice, gestures, were vigorous and animated, his smile wide, his eyes (cliché I know) twinkling. He’d just had over half an hour’s private conversation with Archbishop Justin, and the warmth and strength of their rapport lingered on into the greetings with the wider group of visitors. He seemed to have bags of emotional intelligence. He was alert to everyone in the room.
I could extend that impression in two ways. First, I got the sense that he really did live the joy of the Gospel. That was the title of his first Apostolic Exhortation, after all – Evangelii Gaudium (2013). He communicated joy, lived it, saw it in other people, even in the saddest of situations, and without in any way diminishing the terrible suffering he encountered in the lives of other people, he didn’t seem to allow the world’s wickedness and tragedy to rob him of a great joie de vivre in Christ. And he saw joy as a central – almost the central – emotion of life in Christ, and so, by extension of the being of the Church. I think for him love and joy were almost interchangeable terms. That is the main theme of another great Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (2016), ‘joy of love’, where, in his opening sentence, he says that the joy of love experienced by families “is also the joy of the Church”. Now admittedly in that Exhortation the life of families, with marriage and childrearing, is placed at the centre of his concern, a traditional Catholic preoccupation with family life which Francis entirely endorsed and encouraged. But even here his delight in situations which he describes as irregular or in some way falling short of that ideal shines through in a concern for a compassion which discerns the action of God in the world at large: “I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the goodness which the Holy Spirit sows in the midst of human weakness”. (para 308). He did, as a human being, let alone a bishop, communicate that awareness of the ubiquity of life in the Spirit, and the joy which it brings.
And that, for me, prompts a second thought. Anyone who has occupied high office or worked closely with those who have will, I hope, admit that the sheer number of people you meet even in the course of a normal working week may be overwhelming. Days packed with meetings, often with groups of people, can be exhausting even for those who are extrovert and draw their energy from social interaction. In such situations, it’s not uncommon to find the trappings of office something of a cushion, or a prop, or a boundary within which it becomes possible simply to keep focus and energy. I think that’s what happened, for example, to Cosmo Gordon Lang when he was Archbishop – a deeply sensitive, private man who acquired the reputation of pomposity and prelacy, but who I think to some extent shielded himself behind the influence and show of office. Like Francis, Lang was a celibate, and did not have the comfort of a life companion. But Francis seems somehow to have risen above the constraints of office. The Vatican is an immense, grandiose, even intimidating building. Its protocols are carefully guarded and controlled by a bureaucracy which some think – who am I to say? – is defensive and self-sustaining. But Francis sat rather light to it all. He joked in the meetings at which I was present about how he would annoy some of his attendants by doing things in a different or unexpected way. He was mischievous, but kind, compassionate and open. That was his charism.
He tried, I think, to embed that spirit at the very core of the Catholic Church. It was exactly what his increasing preoccupation with the principle of ‘synodality’ was all about. This was both a more and a less radical proposal than many of his critics supposed. Much has been made of the linguistic roots of the term in the Greek or Orthodox understanding of ‘together on the way’, syn hodos. It was not a doctrinal proposal. In essence, so far as I can see, Francis remained doctrinally – and I include moral teaching – conservative. That is the source of some of those rather damaging asides, such as the one in which he complained about too much ‘gay behaviour’ or some such term in the Vatican. Yet his pastoral instincts were inclusive and compassionate, and in the end he was prepared to recognise, at least de facto, the limitations of a sheerly conservative interpretation of Catholic life and practice. He was, in this, not unlike his hero John XXIII. So there will be a great deal of weighing up of his legacy in the years to come, as people try to understand exactly where he stood on any one specific issue, how the apparently progressive instinct could sit alongside an equally evident caution and traditionalism. Synodality was not ever intended to be a way of changing doctrine and practice significantly, at least not in substance. That’s why it could never be enough for progressives in the Catholic Church. Rather, it was to be a way of re-engaging the Catholic Church with the life of the world in all its diversity and difference. Francis wanted to show the world that the Catholic Church was not above it, judging it, but walking alongside it, sharing its troubles and sufferings, its aspirations and joys.
But the ‘synodal way’ he endorsed did have – or rather, does have – profound potential implications for the structures and the self-understanding of the Catholic Church. After all the attention the two phases of the Synod of Bishops in 2023 and 2024 have garnered, I’m still not sure that the wider world has sufficiently grasped this. By endorsing and propagating the description of the Catholic Church as synodal, Francis I think wanted to engineer a far-reaching revision of the culture of authority and hierarchy in the Church. And that could have really radical consequences. If authority in the Church is not so much exercised by one person over another – is not a prior exercise or assertion of power, in other words – but is first and foremost something absolutely inseparable from the faith and opinion of all the members of the Church, then it has to entail a genuine dialogue between hierarchy and people. It may or may not eventually imply something akin to ‘democratic’ modes of representation and decision-making – and all the Catholic bishops I’ve met so far seem wary of synods in the sense in which Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans and others know them, with full lay representation – but if it is to be a genuinely synodal way, it must take the culture of the Catholic Church in a very different direction from its present existence. There’s a comparison of sorts with emergent notions of sovereignty in early modern Europe, I suppose, with the contrast between royal absolutism and contractual theories of government. I’m not saying that Francis identified himself with anything as radical as this, at least in terms of practical outcomes. He was concerned above all with pastoral outcomes. But if you’re really serious about synodality, that is potentially where it leads. A genuinely humble exercise of authority, rooted in the consent of all the People of God, drawing on the support of the baptised, and intimately related to their faith, experience, views and life, cannot be adequately expressed in the idea summed up at Vatican I of an immediate, universal jurisdiction over the Church.
Well, it remains to be seen of course whether this is the actual horizon of Francis’s papacy, or whether, like a dream, it is waved away by the next Pope. There are also profound ecumenical implications here. Again, Francis conceded little directly to ecumenical partners on doctrine, though he did continue to support the well-established theological dialogues in which the Catholic Church has been engaged since the 1960s. But in spirit, like John Paul II in particular, he went out of his way to welcome brothers and sisters in faith from other churches, and treat them as partners and equals. I was present at St Paul’s-outside-the-Walls in January 2024, at the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, when Francis and Archbishop Justin jointly commissioned pairs of bishops from the Anglican and Catholic Churches for the work of what is (cumbersomely) called the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission, or IARCCUM. Jointly – that is each commissioned both sets of bishops. And there were women bishops present amongst the Anglicans. What does that say about a conception of ministry in which each church can recognise the other’s reality as similar to their own? Doesn’t it marginalise Apostolicae Curae’s 1896 adverse judgement on Anglican orders? Well, these things will take time to work their way through, in all their implications. But again it does accord with Francis’s great concern to take seriously the faith of all Christians.
We watch and we wait. In the meantime, we can at least commend a great Christian leader to God’s mercy and peace.
Ad fontes 