Second Sunday of Easter
May 15, 2025 Column Father De Celles
Pope Francis, Requiescat in Pace. Last Monday, Easter Monday, April 21, the world woke to the news that our Holy Father, 88-year-old Pope Francis, had died in bed at 7:35am Rome time. Later we found out he had suffered a stroke and consequent heart failure after suffering another attack of “respiratory distress.”
For many Catholics this is a time of great sadness and morning. For other Catholics it is a time of mixed emotions, as while they respected and loved the Pope as the Holy Father, many found him, as the New York Times called him, a “divisive” figure.
But we must all now join together in praying for his soul. However saintly you think he was, it is clear that he was, like all of us, a sinner. As he told the other cardinals who elected him Pope when they asked if he would accept his election, “I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So with confidence in the mercy of the Risen Christ we pray:
Requiem aeternam dona Francisco, Domine.
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Anima eius et anime omnium fidelium defunctorum
per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.
Amen.
Jorge Bergoglio. His is a short bio from The Pillar: “Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on Dec. 17, 1936, in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. His parents, Mario Bergoglio and Regina Sívori, were immigrants from Italy.
“The oldest of the couple’s five children, the future pope left school with a chemical technician’s diploma. His passions included soccer …Italian neorealist movies, and the milonga, a dance predating the Argentine tango….
“He was accepted to the Buenos Aires diocesan seminary in 1956. But at the age of 21, he suffered a life-threatening pulmonary illness. …Surgeons removed the upper part of his right lung.
“…He entered the Jesuit novitiate in Córdoba, central Argentina, in 1958….
“He was ordained to the priesthood on Dec. 13, 1969….It was a time of tumult in the Catholic Church following Vatican Council II and the publication of the papal encyclical Humanae vitae. The Jesuit order was in the vanguard of change, especially in Latin America….
“Shortly after he took his perpetual vows as a Jesuit in 1973, he was appointed superior of Argentina’s Jesuit province…
“After he ceased his service as superior in 1979, he was named rector of the Jesuit Colegio Maximo in Buenos Aires. But he fell out of favor with influential members of the Society of Jesus in Argentina and elsewhere, experiencing a period of exile that deeply marked his character.
“He agreed to move to Germany in 1986 to work on a thesis …but felt homesick….Abandoning his doctorate, he returned to Argentina, where …[he was assigned] to Córdoba, a city more than 400 miles from Buenos Aires, where he served mainly as a confessor….
“Reflecting on his …sojourn in Córdoba…he said: ‘…It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.’
“His exile ended in 1992, when Pope John Paul II named him an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, at the behest of Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, ….Archbishop of Buenos Aires …[T]he cardinal persuaded John Paul II to appoint Bergoglio in 1997 as his coadjutor archbishop with right of succession… Quarracino died in February 1998, Bergoglio immediately succeeded him.
“In February 2001, he was given the cardinal’s red hat by Pope John Paul II at a consistory in Rome, along with 36 others, including…Washington’s Theodore McCarrick.
“Bergoglio… [became] president of the Argentine bishops’ conference, …in 2005 and was re-elected in 2008 for a further three-year term.
“In April 2005, he took part in the conclave that elected Benedict XVI. According to later accounts, he drew the second-highest number of votes.
“In 2007, he played a critical role in creating the influential Aparecida Document, a blueprint for renewed efforts to evangelize Latin America. …
“He was elected pope on March 13, 2013, on the fifth ballot. …”
What Comes Next. After 9 days of official mourning the Cardinals will gather in Rome and the conclave to elect the next Pope will begin sometime between May 6 and May 12, 15 and 20 days after Pope Francis’s death. Next week I’ll probably talk more about the conclave, and maybe something about cardinals who are “papabile”—being talked about as possible Popes. In the meantime, this website is an excellent point of reference: https://collegeofcardinalsreport.com/.
“The Church After Francis.” For now let me leave you with the thoughts of probably the most widely respected Bishop in the United States over the last 20 years: Archbishop Charles Chaput, AB Emeritus of Philadelphia [taken from First Things, April 21]:
“I have personal memories of Pope Francis that I greatly value: a friendly and generous working relationship at the 1997 Synod on America when we were both newly appointed archbishops; his personal welcome and warmth at Rome’s 2014 Humanum conference; and the extraordinary success of his 2015 visit to Philadelphia for the Eighth World Meeting of Families. He devoted himself to serving the Church and her people in ways that he felt the times demanded. As a brother in the faith, and a successor of Peter, he deserves our ongoing prayers for his eternal life in the presence of the God he loved.
“Having said that, an interregnum between papacies is a time for candor. The lack of it, given today’s challenges, is too expensive. In many ways, whatever its strengths, the Francis pontificate was inadequate to the real issues facing the Church. He had no direct involvement in the Second Vatican Council and seemed to resent the legacy of his immediate predecessors who did; men who worked and suffered to incarnate the council’s teachings faithfully into Catholic life. His personality tended toward the temperamental and autocratic. He resisted even loyal criticism. He had a pattern of ambiguity and loose words that sowed confusion and conflict. In the face of deep cultural fractures on matters of sexual behavior and identity, he condemned gender ideology but seemed to downplay a compelling Christian ‘theology of the body.’ He was impatient with canon law and proper procedure. His signature project, synodality, was heavy on process and deficient in clarity. Despite an inspiring outreach to society’s margins, his papacy lacked a confident, dynamic evangelical zeal. The intellectual excellence to sustain a salvific (and not merely ethical) Christian witness in a skeptical modern world was likewise absent.
“What the Church needs going forward is a leader who can marry personal simplicity with a passion for converting the world to Jesus Christ, a leader who has a heart of courage and a keen intellect to match it. Anything less won’t work.”
Oremus pro invicem, et pro anima Francisci.
Fr. De Celles