Thoughts On the Death of Pope Francis

Most of you know that I grew up Protestant — Southern Baptist, in fact — and I held, as many Protestants do, a certain cautious distance toward the Catholic Church. When I first began considering conversion, I faced one obstacle more than any other: the Pope.

From the outside, it seemed the Church taught that the Pope was some sort of oracle, infallible in every breath he drew, a man above the reach of error. To my Protestant mind, such an idea sounded not only dangerous, but blasphemous. I knew men too well — and my own heart better still — to believe that any office could cleanse a man of his humanity.

It was only later, through careful study and prayer, that I learned the truth: the Pope is not impeccable; he is not incapable of sin. He is human, and he stands in desperate need of the Savior — just like the rest of us.

Infallibility, rightly understood, applies only in the narrowest of circumstances — only when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he formally defines a matter of faith or morals. It is not personal wisdom. It is not everyday speech. It is not a guarantee of good governance, much less a guarantee of personal holiness.

“The Church is a living thing,” G.K. Chesterton once wrote. “It would be expected to grow and to act; it would be expected to suffer and to sin; it would be expected to do anything but to lie down and die.”¹ This was no excuse for corruption or error — it was simply a statement of reality. The Church breathes with lungs of dust, yet it is animated by the Spirit of God Himself

When I entered the Catholic Church in 2017, Pope Francis had been pope for four years. To be honest, I did not agree with him on everything. I had concerns, serious ones. The Church already felt divided, strained, as if the old beams of Christendom groaned under the tension of too many differing hopes.

And yet — I converted.

Not because I thought the current Pope was perfect. Not because the Church looked shiny and spotless from within.

But because Christ founded it.

“The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it,” ² Christ said — not that the gates of Hell would never press hard against it, nor that they would not sometimes seem, by human eyes, to be winning.
But they would not prevail.

In the last few days, I have seen the news turn into a kind of spectacle: “Who will be the next pope?” they cry. “Here are the top contenders!” And, naturally, I couldn’t help but watch the film Conclave — which managed to make the choosing of a shepherd into something more like a circus.

It is easy to be caught up in it all, easy to think that the Church hangs on the thread of one man’s election. But we must remember — the Church is Christ’s Body, not a democracy, not a business, not even a monarchy in the worldly sense. The Pope matters — oh, he matters greatly — but the Pope is not the Church’s life. Christ is.

“The Church,” Chesterton said, “is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.” ³ And J.R.R. Tolkien, once wrote, “I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament.” ⁴ Not any man — however holy — but Christ Himself, given to us in humility and majesty.

C.S. Lewis, too, knew something of the mystery and tragedy of the Church. In his letters, he once said: “The Church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different, must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.”⁵

With the death of Pope Francis, we mourn a man — a sinner, a brother, a shepherd who tried to guide the flock in a difficult age.

And we pray.

We pray for the cardinals who must now elect a new pope.
We pray for unity, for courage, for fidelity.
We pray that the next shepherd will be a man after God’s own heart.
And most of all, we pray in thanksgiving that the true Head of the Church is Christ, who never dies and who never fails.

“We are not journeying to a merely human city,” Lewis once said. “We are summoned to the City of God.”⁶

Today — even through mourning — we journey on.

1. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925 ↩︎
2. Matthew 16:18 ↩︎
3. G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion, 1926 ↩︎
4. J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to his son Michael, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #43 ↩︎
5. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Preface to the 1961 Edition ↩︎
6. Paraphrase from C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book IV ↩︎