As we mourn the death of Pope Francis, Sr Silvana Dallanegra, our Development Worker for West London & Spelthorne, reflects on the rich legacy the Holy Father has left us.
‘Christ is risen! These words capture the entire meaning of our existence, for we were not made for death but for life.’ – Easter Sunday, final tweet on Pope Francis’ account
It was a strangely quiet Easter Monday, filled with the saddening, almost unbelievable fact of Pope Francis’ death. On Sunday I had been so moved as I watched what would become this visibly fragile man’s final Easter on earth, and what would be his final public words: a prayer invoking God’s blessing over the world, and that simple greeting, Buona Pasqua, echoing that first buona sera from the same balcony, 13 years ago. Since then, among the many tributes filling my social media feeds, I have read his final written words – his homilies for the Easter Vigil and for Easter Sunday, both filled with Easter’s freshness and joy, hope and new life.
And as with any death, there has been a longing for connection, and for the sharing of loss. On Monday my phone pinged several times with messages from people I only know through work, and I deliberately spent some time praying in a church: not because I cannot pray at home, but because something within me needed to pray in silence alongside others. On Wednesday, several of us joined 500 or so Caritas colleagues from across the world at an online memorial service hosted by Caritas Internationalis, our huge aching loss mitigated by the blessing of togetherness with our global family. And I’m sure that Pope Francis, the Pope of Fratelli Tutti, encounter and relationship, would have smiled approvingly at all this.
Yes, he was the Pope of encounter, but of so much more. He was the Pope of the poor and dispossessed; of migrants, asylum seekers and those on life’s margins. He was the Pope who yearned and challenged and laboured for a poor Church, with and for the poor, and in which there is space and a welcome for everyone: todos, todos, todos. He was the Pope of dialogue, and consistent, insistent calls for peace; the Pope, too, of discernment and synodality, and of God’s infinite mercy and compassion. He was the Pope of the joy of the Gospel, and the joy of every encounter, and of finding God in all people and places… the Pope of Laudato Si’, the care of our common home, and of his final encyclical, on the love of the Heart of Jesus – a timely legacy to a world which seems to have lost its heart.
And through his consistent example and attitude, as much as his words, he was the Pope who inspired us: the Pope of Caritas, and Catholic Social Teaching, and of Love, well and truly in Action!
And he was the Pope of hope, calling us, in this Jubilee Year, to journey together as Pilgrims of Hope, anchored and renewed in a hope that cannot disappoint, in a world so often in despair.
A couple of months ago I started to read Hope, Pope Francis’ memoir-autobiography. I had reached his teens when he was hospitalised – but within a short time I had to stop reading. How could I read a book called Hope, when its author’s life was suddenly, perilously, hanging by such a slender thread, just when we so needed him to be alive?
And if I had the time and inclination to read his book, then I certainly had time to pray for him! – and so I put the book aside. I decided to re-start it a couple of weeks ago, and now feel I need to continue, though with very mixed emotions.
But when I picked it up on Monday, I turned to the brief introduction, entitled ‘All is Born to Blossom’… and I read:
The book of my life is the story of a journey of hope, a journey that I can’t imagine separated from that of my family, my people, of all God’s people… We Christians must know that hope doesn’t deceive and doesn’t disappoint: All is born to blossom in an eternal springtime. In the end, we will say only: I don’t recall anything in which You are not there.
Amen: and may Pope Francis rest in God’s eternal peace, and spend his heaven interceding for a world whose darkness and despair he understood, and confronted with prayerful love, strong faith and joyful hope.
