Francis was my Pope
I'd been watching parts of Pope Francis' funeral today.
Francis will be fondly remembered by many of us, as the leader who gave a kinder, more human face to the Catholic faith, and as a leader who had much to say about the marginalised. He was one of the reasons I took my faith more seriously, for a while.
Ostensibly there was a lot of ambiguity about his leadership, though, as a Sky News headline summed up perfectly:
'Pope Francis showed a willingness to welcome those who'd felt shunned by the Catholic faith. But he faced huge criticisms from conservatives within the church, as well as those who questioned his liberal credentials.'
Most the criticisms from the conservatives was unwarranted, in my opinion. It came largely from tradcons wanting a Church that's more exclusionary, and also from grifters, LARPing as traditionalist Catholics, who made a career of fuelling controversy. And, of course, there were converts who looked to a rigid expression of the Catholic faith for simulacra of identity and meaning.
But, anyway, the Church, under Francis' leadership, was no more or less conservative than before. What was different is that Francis encouraged us to put compassion ahead of doctrine, to put the dignity of the human person ahead of rules, and to understand that something's fundamentally wrong if we're rigid in our faith yet do nothing to help the least among us.
Pope Francis also had the unenviable job of leading the Church in a world that's so damn polarised and stumbling from one crisis to another.
The choice of Pope Francis' successor, I think, will decide the future of the Church in unprecedented ways, because popes do carry enough influence to shape the world. Their voices certainly carry more weight among practising Catholics than the Corporate Media does.
With the world increasingly under the control of the far-right, there is still a danger of the Church becoming irrelevantly conservative. Would the Church distinguish itself by speaking out more forcefully against the oppression of the marginalised, or would the Chuch be seen as complicit in that oppression?