Pope of humanity
Humanity has lost one of its finest. Pope Francis has joined mankind’s pantheon of immortals, whose contemporary ranks include Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, and several others. The life he lived and the many teachings he gave will timelessly resonate with meaning and forewarning whenever the world skids close to the precipice of inhumanity.
His death comes at a most regrettable time. The world is engulfed in so many wars—military, trade, and even a war on truth, with people bombarded daily with massive disinformation worldwide. The forces of prejudice, greed, and apathy are at their most resurgent strength, breeding the kind of lifeless lives that blight the earth. It is a time when the world is in dire need of leaders like Pope Francis who rang the bells of moral values and upright principles to chastise wicked leaders and to shake us from our stupor of inaction.
Social media and mass media are swimming in an ocean of tributes and recollections of unforgettable quotes from a spiritual leader who transcended the stifling rigidities of his conservative church and instead preached a “universal faith” in mankind’s common Creator. This is the reason why the loss of Pope Francis is mourned not only by Catholics but even by other Christian denominations, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and even atheists.
One of the unending sources of conflict in the world is the competing beliefs of superiority by followers of different religions. As a result, religion has become an instrument of prejudice and persecution. Because of this, the most crucial teaching of Pope Francis is his reminder to people of different faiths that “God is God for all, and if God is God for all,” he said, “then we are all sons and daughters of God.” “All religions are paths to reach God,” the pontiff stated. “There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian,” he declared.
Moving tributes abound extolling Pope Francis. A Malaysian Hindu netizen had these words for the pope:
“He chose love over doctrine. He chose compassion over judgment. And most remarkably, he chose action over applause. He walked with the poor. He knelt before the discarded. He challenged the powerful not with anger, but with moral courage. And he did all of this with a smile that felt like a prayer.
“He understood something many religious leaders forget: that God doesn’t reside only in temples or churches or mosques. That holiness isn’t a place—it’s a way of living. A way of seeing others. A way of choosing kindness, over and over, even when it hurts.”
On social media, there’s this video of a young boy whose father just died. The boy confided to the pope that his father was an atheist, but that he was a good man, and he had all his four children baptized in church. Sobbing, the boy shared with Pope Francis his doubts about whether his father could be accepted in heaven. The pope answered the boy by saying “It is God who decides who goes to heaven. But how is God’s heart with a father like that? … God has a dad’s heart, and in front of a dad who even if not a believer, has been able to baptize his children and pass them his goodness, do you think that God could leave him far from him? Does God abandon his children? Surely, God was proud of your father. Because it is easier to baptize children when you believe (in God) than when you do not believe (in God). And God loved this for sure.”
In a message that should resonate with censure for Christians who demonstrate hostility toward oppressed people displaced by wars, tyranny, and economic hardship, Pope Francis pronounced these words: “It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help … If I say I am Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.”
In a world that allows the accumulation of obscene wealth among the few, but turns a blind eye to the subhuman poverty of the multitude, Pope Francis said: “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”
Pope Francis demonstrated moral courage when he did not shirk from confronting an issue that’s controversial and sensitive among ultraconservative members of the Catholic congregation when he said: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” He showed even more bravery when he said on another occasion: “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family … What we have to create is a civil union law.”
Pope Francis saw the artificial fences of faith, race, and borders that have become sources of so much suffering the world over. He worked tirelessly to dismantle these superficial fences by making people see their common humanity. He was the pope of humanity.
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