by Rev. Dave Dunn
As you all likely know, Pope Francis passed away on Monday, April 21, 2025 at the age of 88 after serving as pontiff since 2013. Best pope in my lifetime thus far.
Perhaps his most famous utterance took place at a press conference in the first months of his papacy when asked about the possibility of homosexuals serving as clergy. He responded, “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?”
Then, in 2015 he published his first encyclical entitled Laudato si’ which called upon the faith to combat global warming, consumerism and punitive capitalism. He eventually came around to allowing clergy to bless same-sex unions. Yet he was a person of his times – as we all are. Such a blessing was to be conferred in a pastoral, and never in a sacramental, way. This often led to confusion and criticism. Frank Bruni of the New York Times wrote that, “…for every advance, there was an asterisk, and for every proclamation of love, a delineation of limits, so that Francis personified the indelible tension in the church’s official teaching about homosexuality, which he never squarely renounced (Frank Bruni, NY Times, April 22, 2025).”
…but there were progressive advances nonetheless; and these advances came at a cost. For the most part, he didn’t substantially change church teachings and doctrines yet gave progressive Catholics around the world the freedom to modernize in way that worked for them. For Catholic conservatives, such actions, at best, sewed confusion regarding the interpretation of church teachings and doctrine; at worst, it riled and emboldened those who saw such actions as blatant disrespect of those teachings and doctrines.
We Unitarian Universalists have our own views on doctrine (be it Catholic or any kind of doctrine), yet I’ve always been inspired by the ministry of Jesus as related in the Gospels and the only doctrine that I seem to carry forward from those texts say, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind….and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40);” and to illustrate the importance of caring for those less fortunate, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40).”
Pope Francis may have had his faults. He may have been an imperfect pope. Yet he was always consistent about that doctrine articulated in the Gospel of Matthew. His ministry was more like Jesus’ than any pope in my lifetime thus far: a ministry to the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, the hungry, the stranger, the migrant.
Francis’ actions, what he actually did, taught us more than any official church teachings and doctrines ever could.
He will be missed.
Nurture our spirit. Strive for Justice. Transform the world.
Dave
