When asked about Pope Francis over these past twelve years, I have enjoyed replying that Francis is my middle name, both in the sense that my name is Simon Francis Lee and in the sense that I hold Pope Francis in high esteem.
It has been touching how many of different denominations and faiths have been offering condolences to Catholics this week. Pope Francis has struck a chord with the wider world.
When I was an undergraduate, we had three Popes in a single year, 1978: Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II. I thought this was extraordinary but those who were not Catholic seemed unmoved. Incidentally, remembering the smiling Pope, John Paul I, raises the possibility that Pope Francis might come to be known as Francis I. It is more fun to guess which name the next Pope will take than it is for those of us who are uninformed to speculate on who will be that Pope.
If not Pope Francis II, perhaps Benedict and Francis will turn out to be the start of a sequence and we might get our first Pope Dominic, to include another founder of a religious order. St Francis and St Dominic are said to have met in Rome in 1216. Pope Francis met a Dominic in 2013, a boy with cerebral palsy, whose parents have wonderfully told the story behind that encounter.
When I was a postgraduate student in the USA, Pope John Paul II’s visit to America led to the immortal line from a Protestant farmer, ‘You sure got a Pope who knows how to pope’.
When John Paul II died in 2005, I was the head of a secular university and said, in response to requests from colleagues, that all staff could, if they so wished, take time out to watch the funeral on screens across our campuses. This occasion of solidarity had a number of unforeseen graces.
When Pope Benedict XVI visited the UK in 2010, he blessed a new John Paul II Foundation for Sport, of which I was the inaugural chair. I was struck by how prominent atheists Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins tried to protest against Benedict’s visit but soon gave up when the crowds showed a love and respect for the Pope. What I remember most from that papal visit, however, is that my priestly brother Martin got to meet the Pope at St Peter’s Residence in Vauxhall, where he was part-time chaplain and ultimately a resident. Martin had claimed in advance not to be that excited about meeting Pope Benedict but the live stream footage suggested that when he did actually meet him, he clung on for some time and was much moved by the experience.
Pope Francis has given us many memorable moments, meeting the most disadvantaged, washing the feet of prisoners, and setting an ecumenical example in meeting Christians of other denominations, rabbis, imams and people of other faiths and of no religious belief. His exhortations began with Evangelii Gaudium in 2013 and his concern for those on the peripheries has been inspirational, but perhaps his best known communication is his Encyclical Laudato si’ from 2015. It is not always clear to everyone what Laudato si’ means and what the Encyclical is about, so it might help to know that the Letter is described in English as ‘On care for our common home’, and addresses environmentalism and sustainability. It begins,
“LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.
Pope Francis’s legacy includes not only this body of work and his vigorous cheerfulness when in better health, but also the witness of him enduring his latest bouts of ill health with faith, hope and charity. His determination to carry on with his duties, on Easter Sunday, is an echo of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s remarkable resilience, her faith and her sense of duty.
Our parish, the Church of Our Lady, Help of Christians, and St Lawrence, Olney, in the Diocese of Northampton, started a Laudato Si’ group, which has spawned other activities. We had Mass this morning for Pope Francis. It is possible to watch the funeral in our parish hall after early Mass tomorrow, twenty years after that Papal funeral for John Paul II. Our parish’s First Thursday Discussion Club after the evening Mass next week, on 1st May, will be contemplating Popes and Parables with special reference to Pope Francis. All are welcome, on the first Thursday of every month.
In the middle of these papal vignettes, there was a time when the death of a church leader did shake me. It was not that the death was unexpected. Archbishop Derek Worlock had chaired the panel, alongside Bishop David Sheppard and Sisters of Notre Dame, in December 1994 appointing me to be the head of the ecumenical merger of colleges which is now Liverpool Hope University, but by the time I took up the post in September 1995, he was in his last illness. He died in February 1996. In The Serendipity of Hope, (published in the USA in 2023 but now available as an ebook) which I co-edited with the Very Revd Professor Ian Markham of Virginia Theological Seminary, I have written about this. When we heard the news of his death, I suddenly felt the burden of responsibility for keeping Hope alive (as Archbishop Derek Worlock was such a fearsome champion of our ecumenical witness that while he was alive we had seemed invulnerable). Two of our chaplains, Sr Phil Doherty and Fr Peter Hannah, understood that intuitively so just came to be with me in my office as an upholding presence, which gave me a glimpse, beyond our daily morning prayer together, of how the chaplaincy team and wider student services would be astute to discern when students and colleague needed support.
I imagine something similar happened to the whole community when Archbishop William Temple died in 1944. Again, it was not exactly that it was unexpected, as he had suffered from gout all his life (yes, you can have gout in childhood and no, gout is not caused only by alcohol – Temple was a teetotaller). But the timing of his last illness, when he had done so much to lift spirits during the War and had done so much to prepare for peace and justice after the War, meant that many people had to rally round the vacant see, so to speak. This Foundation is testament to the fact that more than eighty years later, we keep alive the genius of Archbishop William Temple, and we uphold in our prayers all those disconcerted by the vacant sees of Canterbury and of Rome. People will still be inspired by Pope Francis in the next century and beyond.
Everyone knows that Pope Francis died on Easter Monday. You now know that Sr Philomena Doherty, a Sister of Notre Dame, died just before him, on Good Friday. May Pope Francis and Sr Phil rest in peace.
Professor Simon Lee is the Chair of the Trustees of the William Temple Foundation.
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