We now know that when the white smoke finally appeared for Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he accepted the job with humility. “I am a sinner,” he reportedly said, “but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Here was a pastor who seemed to live by the old journalist’s credo: to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That’s my kind of pope.
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I got a better view of his ministry than most. I ended up traveling with him to 10 of the 60 countries he visited. Whether he was atoning for the Church’s past sins in Ireland, trying to broker peace in an African civil war, or visiting some of the poorest countries in Latin America, his charisma always connected.
I had traveled with Pope Benedict, too. I was with him at Auschwitz, a German pope bearing witness to the horrors of the Holocaust. I covered his visit to Turkey, mending fences with Muslims at the height of the War on Terror. Those were significant trips, heavy with history, but scripted from start to finish. Everything was carefully choreographed.
Pope Francis’s trips always left room for improvisation. In Bolivia, a Burger King served as his sacristy. In Paraguay, the altar for the open-air Mass was festooned with corn cobs and coconuts. In New York City, the bars in Madison Square Garden became confessionals. (Probably not for the first time, a friend of mine joked.)
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For him, faith was gritty and real. In his hands, the gospels were a well of metaphors about treating one other with dignity. In an era when technology, commerce, and politics all seem to be optimized toward exploitation, Pope Francis reminded us that fairness and decency matter.
I loved his impulse to accept other people as they are (“Who am I to judge?”), his emphasis on standing up for the most vulnerable among us, and his profound sense of responsibility toward the planet we all share.
My own journey to meet him on that road took time.
During my first conclave, truth be told, my life was a mess. I had recently lost my mom. I had spent several years covering war zones post-9/11. I behaved badly in my relationships. I kept hurting the people I cared about. Thinking back, I have lots of regrets.
Then Pope John Paul’s funeral in 2005 changed my life. I met Victoria, an Irish journalist also covering the pope story, who I would marry later that year. I like to think the Holy Spirit had free time enough to help me find my soulmate.
We got married at Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the oldest churches in Rome, six months after Pope Benedict’s election. The priest who married us was an old college classmate of mine, Father John Wauck. He’s Opus Dei, a strict traditionalist. Our wedding was the full Mass, except that my family and I, as Protestants, couldn’t take communion.
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In his homily, Father John noted that the Italians have an expression: “ogni morte di papa,” which translates to “every death of a pope.” The English equivalent is “once in a blue moon.” But papal transitions are rarer than blue moons, and so was our unlikely rush to the altar. He was aware I had been dodging marital commitment for too long. He teased that our marriage might be Pope John Paul’s first posthumous miracle.
A few years later, we had three daughters, all of them baptized Catholic. It seemed silly for me to hang onto Protestantism, so I called Father John and asked if it was hard to become a Catholic.
“Not at all,” he told me. “People have been doing it for 2,000 years.”
By that time, we were living in Washington, D.C. Father John introduced me to his mentor, Father Arne Panula, who agreed to help with my spiritual formation. We met every week for a year.
In some ways, I went straight to being a bad Catholic. Although I embraced my adopted faith, I didn’t feel very much at home in it. I still secretly preferred my old college preacher Peter Gomes to Pope Benedict. And I was still in need of redemption.
To be clear: I’m not saying the Church magically made everything right. Once we made that commitment, we’ve had to grapple with all the other Catholic teachings about family life. It’s been down to us to work out the details. Hard work, sometimes. We’ve had ups and downs. We’ve lived a life, always with forgiveness at the heart of it.
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Pope Francis had a way of approaching everyone with an open heart, even the reporters who covered him. On the first leg of every trip, he’d make his way down the aisle, greeting each of us individually. On a flight to Nairobi, I struggled to explain what faith has meant for our family. I showed him a picture of our daughters. He understood right away.
Then and there, Pope Francis blessed my iPad.
At a time of bitter division, when what he called “the globalization of selfishness” seems to be on the rise, I’ll miss his moral clarity. And his simple gift of grace.
God knows, we need it, especially now.
