1 week Ago By Adeyinka Salami
Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at age 88 All over the world, there has been an outpouring of grief and condolences for Pope Francis who died yesterday morning at age 88. The late Pope assumed the papacy in 2013 and had 12 spectacular (many will say controversial) years of service, during which he displayed unusual courage while trying to navigate some of the most delicate moral dilemmas of the day. It is indeed instructive that he died on Easter Monday, 24 hours after he waved on wheelchair to Catholics on the symbolic Resurrection Morning.
The late Pope was a down to earth realist who sought to exemplify the preferential option of Jesus Christ for the poor, the weak and the public sinner. This led him to denounce what he considered the rigidity of the traditional elements in the Catholic Church who fought on the side of doctrinal purity, especially regarding issues pertaining to divorced and remarried Catholics, the pastoral care of gays and lesbians, and most controversial of all, whether ‘blessing’ by whatever description, and in any form, is appropriate for couples in homosexuality relationships. His position: no human being should sit in judgment over others on matters of faith and choices.
Less controversial, however, were the late Pope’s strong positions against clericalism, and his charge that the leaders of the church – including the bishops and priests – should be real stewards, sharing the sufferings and pains of the people they serve, rather than aligning with the oppressor class in the society. Pope Francis constantly lamented what he famously called the ‘globalisation of insensitivity,’ by which he meant the lack of care and concern about the poverty and destitution of multitudes in the world in which we live, even as a few in the global family live in obscene affluence and conspicuous consumption. The passing of Pope Francis therefore marks the end of a papacy that lasted through a turbulent time in the world.
In so many ways, Pope Francis made the papacy his own by imprinting it with his personal identity. He was the First Latin American pope. On record, he was a self-defining commoner who deliberately shunned ostentation and protocol.
He rejected grand SUVs in preference for a small vehicle. He was in every way, a Pope of the people, an immensely compassionate man who never forgot how he rose from ordinary beginnings as a technician and even bouncer to become a bishop and subsequently Pope. Throughout his life Pope Francis embraced common causes- poverty, refugee crises, homelessness.
The rights of children and the underprivileged were close to his heart and he travelled the world to reach and touch ordinary people whom he saw as his primary constituency. His 2015 Encyclical ‘Laudato Si’ is a landmark philosophical and theological contribution to the global campaign for environmental justice and ecological sustainability. He embraced the great issues of his day: Wars, gender discrepancies, new world order.
He opposed the use of war as an instrument of international resolution and tacitly rejected the bullying of smaller nations by the big and powerful. Pope Francis was a universalist and infinite humanist, advocating the kinship of all humanity and the brotherhood of mankind. So, he freely travelled the world and mixed freely with leaders of all faiths as he did in Iraq and United Arab Emirate (UAE) respectively.
At the end, he carved a niche for himself as a great moral force, preaching harmony and inclusiveness in a world being increasingly torn apart by the rhetoric of hate and division. In the death of Pope Francis, therefore, the Catholic Church has lost one of its most illustrious Popes while the world has lost a strategic mediator and ambassador of peace..
