The fact that one of Pope Francis’ last ‘regrets’ was not to be able to wash the feet of prisoners in a Roman jail speaks volumes about the man and his merciful heart. According to his personal doctor Sergio Alfieri, the Pontiff would have liked to wash the inmates’ feet when he visited the jail on 17 April.
“He regretted he could not wash the feet of the prisoners”, said Alfieri, speaking to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. “This time I couldn’t do it – was the last thing he said to me.”
This was not a random desire, as any Catholic would know. The washing of feet is a part of the annual Maundy Thursday ceremony in which the priest, imitating Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, washes the feet of some of his parishioners as an expression of service and humility.
And yet, as any priest could tell you, it is not an absolutely obligatory part of the service and can be omitted, and more than one priest is quite happy to do so. But the Pope’s visit to that jail was an annual fixture for him and washing the feet of those 12 chosen prisoners was an essential part of the visit. In this way he showed his solidarity with these people excluded by society.
For Francis every excluded person was a target of his love. Whether or not this exclusion was their own fault wasn’t a question for him. Love sees need, not merit. And that was certainly how Francis lived it out.
Mercy Revolution
Take, for example, his 2020 document "Fratelli Tutti". In a very long text which often seems more of a cry of pain than a papal document (and Francis’ concern for the poor and excluded did sometimes lead him to righteous ranting, so upset was he by social injustice), at one point he comes out with a proposal which seems almost utopic: “The decision to include or exclude those lying wounded along the roadside can serve as a criterion for judging every economic, political, social and religious project.”
Can someone actually live this? Could a government adopt this as its economic policy? Every decision, every one, made according to whether it includes or excludes those in need: if it includes them, green light; if it excludes, forget it. In these hard-hearted pragmatic times, it was widely deemed totally impractical.
And yet, can you imagine if just some people lived this? If some public authority started to take this to heart? It would create an authentic social revolution, precisely a revolution of mercy. That was Francis all over. In an often impractical way, he called for and expected mercy, confident that, in fact, in practice, only mercy can transform society for the good.
It is my prayer, through Francis’ intercession, that this article might inspire at least some readers to adopt this apparently crazy but actually profoundly realistic policy.
The Good News of Mercy
Let’s be clear, Pope Francis didn’t invent mercy. God got there first. Even in the seemingly tough pages of the Old Testament, mercy inspires all God’s actions towards Israel and through it towards humanity.
The gospels are above all the good news of God’s mercy in Jesus Christ, God made man to take on himself the punishment we deserved. And in a Francis-like way (or should that be, Francis acting in a Jesus-like way?), we see Jesus reaching out to the excluded, even when this scandalised the more ‘orthodox’ and rigorous.
Even among the popes, when it came to proclaiming mercy, numerous pontiffs beat Francis to it. Among these Pope St John Paul II stands out, for whom the promotion of divine mercy was a key to his pontificate. The Polish pope did everything he could to proclaim this mercy, particularly by canonising the great apostle of divine mercy St Faustina and promoting her message.
Lost sheep
Francis was spontaneous and tender-hearted (also at times authoritarian and erratic, because this was true too) but even his most autocratic decisions came from a good place: his sincere belief that by taking a certain action he was serving those in need.
Some of his throw-away declarations scandalised many, like his “who am I to judge?” comment on a plane from Brazil in 2013 when asked about gay people. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”, he told journalists. Francis was not trying to laud same-sex activity. With his merciful heart, he was simply recognising that every person, whatever their inclinations, and even at times in objectively sinful situations (a point explained marvellously in his 2015 Amoris Laetitia), can still show much goodness and openness to God.
Didn’t Jesus teach us this in his encounter with the Samaritan woman, she with her five past husbands and current partner, yet who still was able to announce Christ, to evangelise, to her fellow villagers?
He was a man who sought lost sheep. This made it seem he had less time for those already in the flock. It is therefore not surprising that, by and large, Francis was more loved by non-Catholics or non-practising Catholics than by some practising ones who on occasions felt hurt and, yes, excluded by some of his declarations and actions.
But we have to remember that God’s decision to institute the papacy necessarily involves an institutionalisation of human limitations and partial vision. Though not a pope, this is abundantly clear in St Paul. Like Francis, he had a massive heart and like Francis too his often partial, one-sided vision breathes through everything he wrote.
In every Pauline epistle you can’t help thinking, “but what did the other side think? And maybe they also felt that the apostle’s radical openness was excluding them?”
In reaching out to all, Francis put more than one nose out of joint. His frequent harangues to priests not to turn the confessional into a torture chamber upset many – especially those priests who spend more time hearing confessions, with a real concern to be merciful. But I guess Francis felt he had to say this because the very thought of someone being wounded by what should be the sacrament of mercy hurt him so deeply.
Traditional
Francis loved popular piety and devotions. He deeply admired the simple piety of ordinary people. His inclusion of a mention of St Joseph in all the Latin-rite Masses is one of his great gifts to the Church. But during his papacy quite a few of the new lay movements and organisations within the Church, as well as some new religious orders, felt less than welcome and at times under suspicion.
But this was mercy too, in part dealing with some problems which John Paul II, with his merciful heart, had created. It does seem that John Paul II, in his openness to all he thought was good, was on occasions too welcoming to people who later on turned out to be problematic.
Benedict XVI first and then Francis had to deal with a number of new institutions whose founder had committed various acts of abuse, cases which, alas, were not few. I think the possibility that under the guise of fervent spirituality somebody might be abused by a wolf in sheep’s clothing wounded Francis profoundly.
Faced with such situations, Francis’ pontificate seemed somewhat hesitant towards new ecclesial realities.
Francis and the laity
Francis’ encouragement of synodality – as much as it seemed one big talking-shop to its detractors – also came from a place of mercy. Francis had a horror of clericalism, whereby clerics lord it over lay people and reduce them to passivity, and spoke against it often.
He encouraged lay sanctity, not least in his 2018 document on the call to holiness Gaudete et Exsultate. And the synodal way is precisely a means to foster greater lay involvement in the Church, especially that of women. In other words, to integrate more those who might previously have felt excluded.
Likewise, Francis’ clamp-down on old rite forms of liturgy came from mercy. Initially, he tried to show leniency to these forms but probably eventually felt the time had come when tough love was needed (and Francis never shied away from tough decisions): sometimes Mother Church knows best. Tough love and also good theology: ultimately liturgy is a question of obedience to the Church.
The next Pope
What do we need from the next pope? I have little doubt that cardinals of both extremes will be busy trying to get their man into office. While liberals will be aiming for a Francis on steroids, reactionary conservatives will be pushing for a pope whom they hope will put a brake on Francis’ reforms.
It is my hope that common, and supernatural, sense will prevail. We need a man who will retain all – so much! – that was good in Francis’ pontificate, including his eminently practical view of faith as something which needs to be lived out and lead to real deeds of mercy, but who will also confirm his brethren in the faith (Lk 22:32).
It is a question of stress: John Paul II and Benedict XVI also encouraged social action. But Francis encouraged it especially. I hope and pray the new pope will keep encouraging this – I certainly need to keep on hearing it. I often say that, in a sense, it is easy to be orthodox, to have clear ideas about one’s faith. What is difficult is to put them in practice in daily life, so that real love inspires our actions.
The Church is the barque of Peter but this boat often moves more like a very sluggish super-tanker than an agile yacht. She changes her course slowly and clunkily and no one pope can encapsulate every quality. But I pray for a pope who will give us a chance to breathe, who will heal wounds also inside the Church, who will reach out to the lost sheep while also making the larger flock, and the assistant shepherds, feel valued.
And the new pope must take steps to ensure that what was good in Francis might not become distorted. An example of this is the above-mentioned synodal way which, for all its possible benefits, has one big danger: it could actually lead to deeper clericalism by reducing lay involvement in the Church to involvement in diocesan or parish committees.
As much as the Catholic laity should be involved in Church decisions, they should be even more involved in ordinary civic and social life, witnessing to Christ and seeking to transform society according to Christian principles.
Maybe it’s time to go beyond left-right and conservative-liberal labels in the Church. One is not liberal for encouraging radical mercy and reaching out to the marginalised. It’s only what Jesus did. One is not conservative for teaching the truth faithfully: Jesus did that too.
If wanting all this is asking for a miracle, well, that is just what I pray for. And I do so through the intercession of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and very much, very much indeed, the beloved Pope Francis.
This article was originally published in English in Adamah Media and is reprinted in Omnes with permission. You can read the original article HERE.
