“There is one sin I have come to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.” – From the movie “Conclave.”
In the death of Pope Francis it has been incredible watching the outpouring of love and respect for him. But what has been equally incredible has been the angry reactions to the life of this remarkable man.
From people who felt that his reforms in the Catholic Church did not go far enough, to people who vilified him as being too “woke,” the extremes found their reasons to, in some cases, outwardly celebrate his passing.
But in death as in life, for Pope Francis it was never about him. He came to the United States in 2015 and rode around in a small Fiat car. His “Popemobile” was open and he was accessible to people.
He traveled to places like Iraq and the United Arab Emirates to build bridges to other religions and religious leaders. He opened doors for dialogue with groups who were heretofore seen as outcasts in the Catholic community.
And yet, his life and death tell us more about who we are than who he was.
What emerges in almost every news event and even in the death of Francis is the politicization and certainty of opinion that so many extremists hold.
In America the enemy of a more perfect union is certainty. Call it extremism or play the “both sides are at fault” game. But one side holds the cards of power now: placing value on the ends justifying the means.
Some of these goals run counter to the views of Pope Francis and they are not afraid to state it. How else to explain some of the vitriol against Pope Francis for suggesting that we love all of God’s people, that we do not become indifferent to the plight of the poor, the plight of refugees fleeing persecution, the plight of people who are different and the plight of the planet?
Some of it may just be some old-fashioned anti-Catholic bigotry. There has long been some tension between certain sects of Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church.
More likely is that, like everything else in society, even religion is now viewed through the prism of politics. And when a religious leader speaks on an issue in ways that expose some conflicts between what we preach and what we vote for, we condemn the messenger.
During the U2 song “Bullet the Blue Sky” on the live album Rattle and Hum, lead singer Bono says “I can’t tell the difference between ABC News, ‘Hill Street Blues’ and a preacher on the old-time gospel hour stealing money from the sick and the old…..well the God I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister. And I feel a long way from the hills of San Salvador where the sky’s ripped open and the rain pours through a gaping wound, pelting the women and children, pelting the women and children.”
This song is fitting in 2025 for many reasons. The preachers who drive some of the certainty we see in America are soliciting huge sums of tax-exempt cash, flying on private planes and lecturing us all on the immorality of others.
And “the sky’s ripped open… pelting the women and children,” was a metaphor for the Cold War proxy wars in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua and Central and South America in the 1980s. Today it is Ukraine, Gaza and other places around the world where the sky’s ripped open, pelting the women and children.
But in the age of certainty, even expressing the desire for peace gets you labeled one way or another.
Certainty has destroyed nuance. It has destroyed anything less than total zero-sum views on victory and conquest in every disagreement.
And so it comes back to Pope Francis who embraced the intellectual complexity of difficult issues. Despite what many people think, there is complexity in every issue, even in Israel and Gaza.
Pope Francis knew that. On almost every night he would make a Facetime call with the parishioners of a Catholic Church in Gaza. His reassuring presence on those calls and his unwavering voice to the world was a source of hope, letting those in war-torn areas of the world know that someone was speaking for them.
Through all that happened, the true strength of Pope Francis was not in what he did, but rather how he made so many feel.
Many Catholics in America had begun to doubt their church and their faith. An intolerant face to some groups and a scandal within the ranks of the clergy had shaken the faith of many.
Pope Francis spoke to those who’d felt that intolerance. He was a true “New Testament” Pope extending an open hand to others rather than the thundering self-righteous judgment of division.
It was a Jesuit style of humility before God and man modeled after the example of Christ. Jesus associated not with the wealthy and powerful but rather those we’d consider the dregs of society. Jesus did not seek power and domination, but rather willingly submitted to the will of God, even to being crucified for the sins of others.
Jesus fed the poor, healed the sick and said to us that “whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me.”
That was the same message Pope Francis was trying to send.
But many of us refuse to see that. We resent that message maybe because it calls into hypocrisy the very certainty with which we view all issues in the world through a stark absolutist position.
Pope Francis was confident in who he was. Confident, but also keenly aware of the imperfections of his own humanity.
But in that confidence of a path walked with the ideals of Christ in mind as his guide, he reveals in many of us our foundational values.
In his death we have seen the reactions of some attacking his life’s work and his worldview. But their words cannot take away what he has done, his enduring life example, and they can never lessen this giant of a man.
In the end, it was never about Francis. In the public reactions to his life, we are reminded that his life was about us. His life was about building bridges and extending mercy.
In his death, our willingness to walk the path of his bridge-building speaks more loudly about us than it does about him.
