Pope Francis laid to rest after eventful papacy

Pope Francis worked at rebuilding and renewing the Church by actually tearing down impediments and walls and barriers that kept us from inviting or being more welcoming and that kept others on the outside from feeling like they were welcome to be among us.”

Archbishop Shawn McKnight

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Archbishop Shawn McKnight thought back to how Pope Francis, when first introduced to the world, asked people in St. Peter’s Square to give him a blessing before he imparted his own upon them.

Some found that gesture somewhat unusual or surprising.

“But I believe that style of leadership is what will save people’s belief in the Sacrament of Holy Orders,” said Archbishop McKnight.

Specifically, Pope Francis set about upholding the unchanging and often difficult teachings of Jesus, while also remaining faithful to Jesus’s pastoral model.

“Sitting down to dine with sinners and the tax-collectors and spending time with them, tending to their needs, healing them — sometimes miraculously — and having that one-on-one time with people,” said Archbishop McKnight.

Francis’s papal motto could easily have been “Make yourself at home.”

“That’s how I interpreted what the pope was doing when he was meeting privately with all sorts of people who would not normally be considered welcome in the Catholic Church,” said Archbishop McKnight.

“He was doing what Jesus did,” the archbishop stated. “There’s a certain orthodoxy to that pastoral style, and we need to start paying more attention to not only being faithful to the teachings of Jesus, but also his example.”

Into Paradise

Pope Francis, 88, the 266th successor to St. Peter, who led the Church since March 2013, died at 7:35 a.m. Rome time on Easter Monday, April 21, during the Jubilee Year of Hope.

He had recently returned to the Vatican after spending several weeks in a Rome hospital being treated for a respiratory infection.

Church bells throughout the Jefferson City diocese tolled 88 times, once for each year the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio spent on this earth.

Schoolchildren in Catholic schools throughout the diocese joined adult parishioners in praying communal Rosaries for the repose of Pope Francis’s soul.

Over three days during Easter Week, hundreds of thousands of people filed past his open coffin to pay their respects.

Archbishop McKnight offered a Memorial Mass for Pope Francis on April 25 in the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Jefferson City, with more than 40 priests of the diocese concelebrating and several hundred people attending.

A small group gathered in Cana Hall at the Cathedral at 3 a.m. local time the following morning to watch the livestream of Pope Francis’s Funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

Additional Masses for the repose of Pope Francis’s soul were to be offered this week in several deaneries of this diocese.

Burial was in a simple tomb in St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, where Pope Francis had offered prayers of thanksgiving many times during his papacy.

A conclave of the College Cardinals will convene on May 7 to begin the work of electing a new pope.

Element of surprise

Monsignor Robert A. Kurwicki often heard people refer to Pope Francis as “the pope of surprises.”

“I think we were all surprised to hear of his death the morning of Easter Monday,” said Msgr. Kurwicki, pastor of St. Peter Parish in Jefferson City, whom Archbishop McKnight appointed vicar general for this diocese in 2018.

“More the suddenness of it than anything,” the priest stated. “Everyone could see that he was fading, but he seemed just a day before to be making great progress in his recovery.”

Not even the abruptness of the late pope’s passing could match his surprisingly disarming accessibility and welcoming manner.

Msgr. Kurwicki traveled to the Vatican five years ago with Archbishop McKnight for an ad limina visit with the Pope.

“When you arrived to meet Francis, he wasn’t at a formal spot in the center of the ornate room,” Msgr. Kurwicki recalled. “He was at the door of the Apostolic Library to greet you — a sign of informality and also hospitality.

“He made everyone feel at ease,” he said.

After personally welcoming everyone present, the pope asked the entire group to pray for him.

“That’s one thing I’ll always remember,” Msgr. Kurwicki said.

An enthusiastic student of Church history, Msgr. Kurwicki can’t think of a previous pontiff to liken Pope Francis to.

“He was the first Jesuit to become pope, and the first from the global South,” the priest noted. “He was truly unique.”

Msgr. Kurwicki believes people will long remember Pope Francis’s emphasis on mercy and charity.

“I’ve heard it said that our past three popes were kind of a tryptic,” the priest stated. “‘This is what we believe’ from Pope John Paul II; ‘Here’s why we believe it’ from Benedict XVI; and ‘Here’s how we practice it in everyday life’ from Pope Francis.

“People get hung up on nonconsequential things, but Francis would not have been ‘Francis’ without John Paul and Benedict going before him,” Msgr. Kurwicki asserted.

He noted that every papacy is complex, molded by the times in which the pope lives and ministers.

“Francis was formed by his Argentinian background and by being a Jesuit in the years following the Second Vatican Council,” said Msgr. Kurwicki.

In many ways, “the way he viewed the world was through that background,” he said.

Loud and clear

Helen Osman, who grew up in Meta and now serves as a communications consultant to the diocese, believes Pope Francis’s papacy was marked by a revolutionary communication style that transformed the relationship between the Catholic Church and the world.

He opted for direct, accessible and frequently colloquial language, breaking down centuries-old communication barriers.

“It was so authentic and so unique, and such a gift to us at a time when we’re reducing our understanding to memes and soundbites,” said Mrs. Osman.

He prioritized direct encounters — “embracing the sick, dialoguing with prisoners, and reaching out to geographical and existential peripheries, communicating with actions more than words,” she stated.

She said effective communication depends less on sophisticated resources than on authenticity, cohesiveness and a focus on the relationship with the person receiving the message.

The pope from Argentina grew up in a country with a developing economy, and in a region of the world where the Church has often been persecuted for hundreds of years.

“Because immediately, the missionaries sided with the poor and the indigenous in ensuring that they heard the Good News of Jesus Christ and understood what that meant in their lives,” said Mrs. Osman.

“So, we can sit in our places of privilege and say we have a preferential option for the poor,” she stated. “But to have a pope who LIVED that option, I think that changed everything for us.”

Mrs. Osman is president of SIGNIS, the only association of lay media professionals officially recognized by the Holy See, and is serving a five-year appointment as a consultant to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication.

She believes Pope Francis’s Jesuit formation — which included a heavy focus on using all the tools of the heart and the intellect to discern the will of the Holy Spirit — served him and the Church well.

She pointed to his love for literature and poetry, music, sports and other touchstones of human culture.

All of that expanded his avenues for connecting with people.

“He used language that was audially interesting: ‘field hospital,’ ‘who am I to judge?’ ‘smell like the sheep,’” said Mrs. Osman. “Very memorable phrases that had you walking away saying, ‘wow!’”

She did not have conversations with him, but she did get to meet him several times in her various roles with the Church.

“He was a very warm person,” she recalled. “He would look you in the eye. You’d be at a meeting in an audience hall full of people. But he took the time with every person, held your hand, smiled at you, engaged with you.”

She also got to hear personal stories from members of his staff.

“His warmth and humility and authenticity came through with every story they told,” she stated.

She hopes people feel honored and blessed to have lived in the Church during his papacy, “because I think history will look back and say this was a significant moment in the life of the Church.”

“Under his leadership, we really did go deeper into trying to understand what the Holy Spirit is calling us to be as today’s Church in today’s world,” she said.

The day or the hour

Jefferson City native Benedictine Father Patrick Carter noted that Easter Monday is a national holiday in Italy — one that this year coincided with the anniversary of the founding of Rome.

Most people were off work, and many were enjoying a day of leisure in the city.

“I think he caught everyone off guard,” said Fr. Patrick, who’s ministering in Rome as secretary of the Curia and procurator general of the Benedictine Confederation.

“Pope Francis had started attending public events, and people were thinking, ‘Maybe he’s going to pull through,’” said Fr. Patrick.

Then suddenly, the pope is no longer mentioned in the Eucharistic Prayer, because the see is vacant.

“And in Rome, we’re not praying for the bishop, either, because the pope also the bishop of Rome,” Fr. Patrick noted.

Fr. Patrick observed that through the ages, there grew an overemphasis in the Church on the supernatural role of the pope as an authority figure, especially since the First Vatican Council in the 1870s.

“And because of what we might call a more personal style on the part of Pope Francis, the Church has been pushed to move beyond what we might call too absolute or supernatural of a mindset of the role of the pope and the papacy,” the priest stated.

Human nature

Archbishop McKnight believes Pope Francis will be long remembered for his influential writings, including “The Joy of the Gospel,” “Fratelli Tutti,” “Laudato Si’” and others.

“But I would also say, just as poignantly and perhaps even more powerfully, his prophetic gestures,” said Archbishop McKnight. “We all remember his embrace of the sick, the washing of the feet of people who are imprisoned, of celebrating Mass all alone in the rain in St. Peter’s Square during COVID.

“Very, very powerful ways of connecting,” the archbishop stated. “He had such a good instinct as a pastor. He knew how to attend to our human needs as a Church.”

Those gestures were effective enough to change the Church.

“Change for the better,” said Archbishop McKnight. “Change in the sense of conversion that we all still need. We’re never perfect. We’re always a pilgrim Church on the move with the people.”

Pope Francis’s pastoral mindset led him to reinvigorate the ancient practice of synodality in the Church.

“He led all of us who are in authority to understand that we need to exercise our power and authority as successors of the Apostles, in a human way that people can accept,” said Archbishop McKnight.

“If people have to live under the decisions that we make, they’ll take it a lot better if they really feel as though they were part of the decision-making process,” he stated.

Archbishop McKnight pointed to how “Lumen Gentium,” the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, emphasized how the social structures of the Church serve as an instrument of the Holy Spirit.

“The Second Vatican Council teaches us that it is primarily the realm of the laity to influence the world in terms of our faith,” the archbishop noted. “And it’s primarily the role of the bishops and their coworkers — the priests and the deacons — to teach and to instill those values in the people who have the responsibility of helping to transform the world into the Kingdom of Christ.”

A time to build

Archbishop McKnight is convinced that God sends the Church the pope that is most needed at that particular time.

In the case of Pope Francis, that meant someone who could effectively articulate the need for Catholics to turn their attention outward, taking on a missionary mindset while welcoming and ministering to people on the peripheries and in need of the Good News of God’s mercy.

“Interestingly enough, Pope Francis worked at rebuilding and renewing the Church by actually tearing down impediments and walls and barriers that kept us from inviting or being more welcoming and that kept others on the outside from feeling like they were welcome to be among us,” the archbishop stated.

Pope Francis repeatedly said he wasn’t interested in changing the Church’s timeless doctrine.

“He wanted and he still wants us all to be faithful to the Lord in how we function as his Church,” Archbishop McKnight noted. “And he’s gonna’ want us to be loyal sons and daughters of the next pope!”

“Sic transit”

Fr. Patrick said the death of a pope is a reminder that no matter how much one man is loved, he is not the Church.

“What we have is not a personal devotion to a personal ruler,” Fr. Patrick noted. “It’s a devotion to someone who has a divinely instituted office that will inevitably be passed on to someone else.”

He pointed to a phrase Italian Catholics have been using for centuries, which may seem jarring to people who don’t live there:

“Se muore il papa, se ne fa un altro.”

That is, “If a pope dies, you make another one.”

“There is this understanding that the Church as an institution is much, much more than that of an individual person,” said Fr. Patrick.

“Here in the city, they have this sense that this is an institution that we’ve been passing from one generation to another for the past 2,000 years, and there’s nothing really shocking about it,” he said.

Person to person

Archbishop McKnight joyfully anticipates leading a pilgrimage to Rome during the upcoming conclave this month and possibly being among the throngs in St. Peter’s Square when the new pope is introduced to the world.

He will return to the Vatican on June 29 to receive with all the other new metropolitan archbishops of the world the pallium, a vestment that symbolizes their special role in governing the Church.

He said Pope Francis will always have a special place in his heart, “because he’s the one who asked me to be bishop of this diocese.”

But being in communion with the Holy Father, whoever he is, comes with being Catholic.

“They’re all different,” the archbishop noted. “And you know, you might like some things about one and other things about another. But all of them are our pope, and I hope to be a faithful son of every pope we will have while I’m alive.”

Being among the last archbishops to be assigned by Pope Francis and among the first to receive their pallium from the next pope, Archbishop McKnight hopes to help serve as a bridge between the two papacies.

He noted that it’s unnatural for the Church not to have a pope and for a diocese not to have a bishop.

“There is a reason why there are only two names of living human beings that are always mentioned in every Eucharistic Prayer,” he said. “Because those two persons, the pope and the bishop — their very persons — embody our communion as the Church.”

Connection to the bishop and to the pope is what makes someone Catholic.

“That’s how personal everything is,” said Archbishop McKnight. “It’s not just ethereal. It’s not just ephemeral. It’s not a thing of the mind. It’s a real network of relationships that Jesus started, and it continues to this day.”

Strong currents

Fr. Patrick recommended praying for the cardinals of the world, who will meet in conclave to elect a new pope.

“The Church has a human and divine aspect,” he noted. “So, there will be give and take, discussions from different sides on who should be pope.

“We pray for them as they’re talking, discerning and coming to a consensus,” he said. “Pray that their work toward electing a new pope goes well.

“We also need to be praying for the next pope and the challenges and opportunities he will face,” said Fr. Patrick.

He suggested that it would be particularly appropriate to take up the Rosary and seek the Blessed Mother’s intercession in this time between popes.

“We recall how on that first Holy Saturday, Our Lady and her faith sustained the whole Church in its moment of loss, in its moment of sadness,” said Fr. Patrick.

“We should be standing with Our Lady, who is the great sustainer of the work and looking to her for assistance and intercession at this time,” he stated.