The Good Pope … My Pope

      I once gave up bananas for Lent, which should tell you all you need to know about what kind of Catholic I am. 

      Still, just hours after his death was reported, I posted this about the late Pope Francis: 

      “Francis made me proud once again to be Catholic ... hadn't felt that way since the days of the Berrigan brothers and Father Drinan. 

      Rest in Peace, Papa Francesco.”

       The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, a Jesuit priest whose lifelong ministry championed the rights of the poor and the persecuted, was elected Pope—the Bishop of Rome—in 2013 and promptly chose the name “Francis” in honor of St. Francis of Assisi.  

      It was the first time in church history that a pontiff had chosen the name of a mendicant 12th-century friar from what is now Umbria in Italy who rejected his father’s great wealth to minister to the poor. 

      As Pope, Francis, working against the formidable constraints of a powerful, ponderous (and very conservative) Vatican bureaucracy, welcomed all manner of “good trouble,” as the late Congressman John Lewis so eloquently called political dissent, to nudge his church into the 21st century and beyond. [His achievements, or lack thereof, always must be measured in that context.] 

      During his dozen-year pontificate (2013-2025) Pope Francis garnered friends and enemies doing this: 

      --Uttering the literally revolutionary words, “who am I to judge?” on the question of gay priests. (The full quote, during a friendly back and forth with the Vatican press corps, was: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” And in later years, he condoned priestly blessing of gay marriages. And for the record, the walls of St. Peter’s Basilica did not tremble and fall.) 

      --Taking the strongest action to date against pedophile priests, including damning investigations and multiple reforms. He even removed from the priesthood American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick after he had been found guilty of decades of sexual abuse of minors and young seminarians. McCarrick, a popular, charismatic former Bishop of Washington, DC, was the most senior church official in modern times to be “laicized” (defrocked.) This also was the first known case of a cardinal resigning from the College of Cardinals and being laicized for sexual abuse. 

      --Unambiguously championing the cause of  fighting climate change, bringing his multifaceted message to venues worldwide, including a joint session of congress in Washington. 

      --Working during the Obama administration behind the scenes on a number of diplomatic fronts, including brokering détente with communist Cuba, helping smooth the (now-Trump-killed) Iran nuclear deal, and supporting Palestinian statehood. 

      Not since the Vietnam era when antiwar brother priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan and Jesuit Massachusetts Congressman Fr. Robert Drinan gained fame and notoriety with their protests against the war and on behalf of the poor, had a Catholic churchman so publicly challenged the status quo in both world politics and Catholic theology. 

      And as the head of the Catholic church Francis did most of it in public, sometimes from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square. 

      Still, to me, what earned Papa Francesco a permanent place in my lapsed Catholic heart was his obvious loathing of Donald Trump and virtually all he stands for.   

      Even in personal style the two were oceans apart. As a bishop in Argentina, Francis rode public transport to work. As Pope he chose to forego the frankly creepy red leather loafers for regular brogues. (No ermine-bordered capes for him, either.) Donald Trump, as we all know, is addicted to chintzy glitz, having just turned his Oval Office into “Caesar’s Palace on the Potomac,” to quote Maureen Dowd. 

      Now Francis will be buried in the Vatican equivalent of a plain wooden coffin. When the time comes for Trump, now a much-weakened 78, it will surprise no one if he pre-orders a huge monument/mausoleum, preferably on the Mall and near the Washington Monument. (Maureen will have lots to say, I have no doubt.) 

      In February, noted former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, “Francis decried Trump’s deportations of people fleeing hardship as a violation of the ‘dignity of many men and women, and of entire families.’ In an open letter to American bishops, Francis wrote that he had ‘followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,’ adding that any policy built on force ‘begins badly and will end badly.’” 

      Nearly ten years before that, in 2016—when Donald Trump was first running for president—Francis was even more blunt: 

      “Any person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” 

      Said singer and Nobel laureate Bob Dylan this week: 

      “He walked with humility and spoke with fire ….”

Frank Van Riper is a Washington-based documentary and fine art photographer, journalist and author. During 20 years with the New York Daily News, he served as White House correspondent, national political correspondent and Washington Bureau news editor. He also is the former photography columnist of the Washington Post. His latest book, done in collaboration with his wife and partner Judith Goodman, is “The Green Heart of Italy: Umbria and its Ancient Neighbors” (Fall, ’25).