Monday, April 21, 2025

Editorial: Farewell to a human pope

Opinion Editorial by National Catholic Reporter Editorial Staff

We grieve not just the passing of a pope, but the loss of a holy witness — one who led not with thunder but with tenderness, not with grandeur but with quiet grace. His papacy, marked by gestures of humility, fierce compassion and deep reverence for the human person, has come to a close. Yet in these first days of loss, it is clear that his echo will resound for years to come.

To the very end, Francis continued to teach. He was a man who taught with his hands, extending them in blessing, in washing and in embracing the wounded, the poor and the forgotten. Even as his strength waned, his witness only deepened. In his silence, he continued to speak. In his stillness, he challenged us. His last days became a kind of living homily, rooted in prayer, tenderness and a sacramental vision of life.

Francis' two feet stood firmly on sacred ground: one planted in the long tradition of sacramental seeing — a way of beholding creation with wonder and gratitude, finding God in beauty, fragility and form. The other grounded in sacred Scripture, especially the radical, often uncomfortable Gospel call to justice, humility and mercy. He was never content to leave the Beatitudes on the page. He lived them. His quietness spoke loudly. And now, in death, his silence rings out to bless us — and to challenge us.

Just days ago, one of his final public moments offered a quiet parable. Inside St. Peter's Basilica, beneath Michelangelo's magnificent dome,  two art restorers — Lorena Araujo Pinheiro and Michela Malfatti — stood with hands dusted in marble, restoring the tomb of Pope Urban VIII. Into the hush rolled the wheels of a simple chair. A man approached, draped not in vestments but in humility. A scarf lay across his lap. No entourage. No ceremony. Just presence.

"He thanked us many times for the work," Malfatti said to Associated Press. "Then he asked me if he could take my hand because his were cold. He was very sweet with us."

Pietro Zander, who oversees the basilica's artistic heritage, called it "a blessing of the end of the work." And so it was — an unplanned moment of reverence — a sacrament of encounter.

This was not an isolated gesture. On Feb. 16, too ill to attend in person, Francis still spoke at the Jubilee of Artists — this time through the voice of Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça. It was not merely a homily. It was a summons.

"True hope," he said, "is interwoven within the drama of human existence. Hope is not a convenient refuge, but a fire that burns and irradiates light, like the word of God."

Sagrada Familia in Barcelona by Antonio Gaudi

He addressed the vocation of the artist: "Art is not a luxury, but something the spirit needs. It is not a flight from reality, but a charge, a call to action, an appeal and a cry. Educating about true beauty is educating about hope."

Francis never viewed beauty as a distraction. For him, it was an encounter. Resistance. Gospel. The artist, he believed, stands at the border of mystery and meaning, not to retreat from the world's suffering, but to enter it more fully and help the rest of us see.

This is not a theoretical theology. It is incarnate. In his final days, Francis spoke less but continued to reveal more.  Whether in a basilica encounter or in declaring Antoni Gaudí venerable, Francis elevated sacred creativity as an essential ministry. Not adornment. Not ornament. A core witness.

Gaudí's life was a liturgy in stone. He saw every curve of nature as a divine brushstroke. He poured his soul into the Sagrada Familia, never seeing its completion, because he believed the true architect was God. His sacred architecture, filled with light, form and mystery, reminds us that beauty itself can become a kind of Eucharist.

Francis seemed to grow increasingly comfortable with his diminishing figure. His entire pontificate served as a bookend to the Second Vatican Council, whose documents shaped his papacy. His sense of the sacred and of art itself is found in the first major council document, promulgated in 1963, Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

It said that sacred art must be "worthy, becoming, and beautiful"— because beauty reveals the "infinite beauty of God." It implied that the church must encourage artists whose work uplifts the soul and serves the sanctity of the people.

Francis lived that encouragement. He knew that the Catholic imagination has always been rooted in both form and fire — in the careful beauty of the altar and the raw power of the Gospel. He understood that art is not separate from justice. That the curve of a dome, the song of a cantor, the silence of a sculpture — these are not flourishes. They are forms of prayer.

Bronze Sculpture by Jenny Janssen

And prayer, he taught us, is not always spoken. Sometimes it is the hush of marble dust. The warmth of a scarf in winter. The quiet of a dying pope's last act of reverence.

Now, as we grieve him, we will see again and again the images of St. Peter's Square. The arms of the colonnade will gather the world's sorrow. But if we follow his gaze — if we see not just structure, but sacrament — then we may enter that space anew: not as tourists, but as pilgrims of beauty, not as mourners, but as witnesses of hope.

Dragon of Hope from I Wei Wei

For Francis, beauty was never passive. It was revolutionary. It was the face of God reflected in the dignity of the vulnerable and the rhythm of mercy.  He taught us that to see sacramentally is not to withdraw from the world, but to love it more fiercely. To see, and then to act.