For the Lost, the Doubtful, and the Wandering: A Tribute to Pope Francis

I’ve spent years stepping in and out of faith, pushing against it, sometimes resenting it, other times missing it like a childhood home I can’t return to. But if there was ever one man who made me believe, if only for a moment, that Catholicism could still be a religion of love, it was Pope Francis.

Now he’s gone, and I feel something I wasn’t expecting: grief. Not the polite kind, reserved for distant figures, but something deeper, more personal. Because with him, it felt like there was still space for people like me—the doubters, the questioners, the ones who have wandered too far and aren’t sure how to find their way back. Pope Francis never made faith feel like a test I was failing. He didn’t wield it as a weapon, didn’t turn it into a fortress where only the righteous belonged. He spoke from the dust and the dirt of the world, where real people live. He saw the poor, the forgotten, the ones the Church has too often ignored not just as charity, but as the very heart of faith itself. And for a Church that has, at times, felt more like a system of control than a sanctuary, he was a man who loved first and judged last.

I think about his visit to Tacloban, how he stood in the storm, rain pouring down as he faced people who had lost everything to “Yolanda.” He had nothing rehearsed, nothing scripted. He just wept with them. He stood in their pain, not above it. And for the first time in a long time, I saw a glimpse of what faith was supposed to be: not answers, not power, but presence. But presence is hard to hold onto in a world that prefers certainty. Religion, for all its promises of salvation, has also been a tool of control—a means to police, to dictate, to decide who is worthy and who is not. It has justified cruelty in the name of doctrine, turned love into law, and too often, been a laundromat for the corrupt, scrubbing the sins of the powerful while condemning the sins of the weak. It can be identity, yes, but also armor—a way to divide, to claim righteousness, to shut the doors to anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. Pope Francis, in his way, seemed to reject the rigidity of a single path. He reminded me that faith, at its core, was not about power, but about love. And love does not control. Love does not exclude. Love does not launder sin for the sake of reputation.

I wonder if the Church will go back to what it was before him—distant, unyielding, safe in its certainty. I wonder if it will still have room for the lost, the wayward, the ones who sit at the edges of belief, unsure whether they belong. Or if, once again, faith will become something to obey rather than something to live. I don’t know if I’ll ever make my way back. But I know that if I do, it will be because he guided the way. I learned that faith isn’t about being perfect—it’s about love. And love, at its best, never turns anyone away.