My children believe I was friends with Pope Francis. I have attempted to dissuade them from this, noting that I have met him only once, for a few hours while participating in an interview for America.
“But you are laughing with him in that picture,” my 6-year-old daughter argues. “And I laugh with my friends.”
She is referring to the photo of me in Casa Santa Marta, where the wide-ranging interview took place in November 2022. I am doubled over in laughter, with Pope Francis beside me looking bemused. I am laughing at the pope’s reply to my query about his favorite animal, a question I asked at the behest of my oldest son, who was 6 at the time. “A combination of all the animals,” Francis had replied.
I am laughing too hard. But I always laugh too hard. And I had been nervous about this interview for days, and something about the absurdity of his answer reminded me that I need not have worried. That no matter what questions we posed, he would welcome them. That maybe even he did not have all the answers.
The prevalence of Pope Francis images in our home may also influence my children’s belief that Francis and I are friends. His face appears on a mug, a bottle opener, a magnet; on rosary cases and magazine covers; his name frequently pops up in conversations; and of course we pray for him at Mass. If I’m honest, there is a part of me that is disinclined to convince my children that we are but a few of the billion or so “friends” of Pope Francis. I am under no illusion that the pope considered me a pal, but a part of me does see him as a friend. I do not think this because of the time spent in our interview, but because his journey as pope largely overlapped with my own journey as a parent. And somehow, incredibly, this celibate, elderly man often doled out some of the best and most valuable parenting advice I’ve received along the way.
•••
There is another photo of me with Pope Francis, taken on Aug. 26, 2015. In this photo I am wearing my wedding dress and standing beside my husband, who is wearing a tux. It is a few months after our wedding, and we are lined up on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica with dozens of other couples who are also dressed in wedding attire, all of us looking like we have joined a cult. I am pregnant with our first child, although my husband and I are the only ones who know.
We are at the pope’s general audience for the Sposi Novelli, a tradition that allows newlywed couples to greet the pope. My husband and I have been sweltering since the early morning, when security started letting people into the square. For hours, people had been attempting to shade themselves from the sun using everything from umbrellas to strategically placed Kleenex. I am trying to drink enough water to avoid heat stroke but not so much that I will have to use the portable toilet while wearing my wedding dress. It is wildly unglamorous and nerve-wracking.
But then Francis arrives. Before the photo opportunities, the Holy Father offers a reflection. He asks families to pray together, suggesting we examine our motives for prayer, asking: “Do you love God even a little?... If love for God does not light the fire, the spirit of prayer will not warm time.”
I do not yet know what it is like to raise a child. Already I worry I may not have what it takes. Already I wonder how my life will change, how I will handle that change. Francis’ words offer a foretaste and some advice:
We know well that family time is a complicated and crowded time, busy and preoccupied. There is always little, there is never enough, there are so many things to do. One who has a family soon learns to solve an equation that not even the great mathematicians know how to solve: Within 24 hours they make twice that many!....
The spirit of prayer gives time back to God, it steps away from the obsession of a life that is always lacking time, it rediscovers the peace of necessary things, and discovers the joy of unexpected gifts.… In the prayer of the family, in its intense moments and in its difficult seasons, we are entrusted to one another, so that each one of us in the family may be protected by the love of God.
I see now how Francis somehow worked that same magic with his papacy, finding time for more meetings, more phone calls: to Gaza, to transgender people, to the poor and marginalized, to his nurse and his friends. He was the Holy Father, but he also lived his life like a holy father. He entrusted himself to our family of believers and asked that we do the same.
The family atmosphere is not apparent at the Sposi Novelli, however. The rows the couples are placed in to meet Francis become mere suggestions; there is much jostling, which I try to avoid. Some of the couples linger after their turn to shake Francis’ hand, blocking the paths of others. My husband and I are both wearing wraparound sunglasses on our heads, and by the time we are swept forward toward Francis we look like we have just completed an Ironman race in our wedding gear. I lean forward, reach out my hand and immediately start to tear up. The moment is captured by the Vatican photographer. I look like my face is melting as I barely whisper, “Thank you for your example of mercy.”
•••
A few months later I am on a riser at the back of Our Lady Queen of Angels school in Harlem, again awaiting the pope, this time joined by crowds of fellow journalists. Francis will be speaking to an auditorium full of immigrants and schoolchildren. I have been reporting all day long, and this encounter with Francis during his U.S. visit is another sort of endurance test, as I trek around the city talking to people on the street, in church basements, on buses. I am visibly pregnant now and can’t help but marvel about the fact that this is the second time my unborn son will be present in the same space as the pope, can’t help but wonder what else his future holds.
Referring to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Pope Francis addresses the children, saying: “Today we want to keep dreaming. We celebrate all the opportunities which enable you, and us adults, not to lose the hope of a better world with greater possibilities. I know that one of the dreams of your parents and teachers is that you can grow up and be happy.”
My son’s birth is still months away, but standing there in that Harlem gym, I already share that dream of growth and possibility and happiness for him. A dream that will persist through my own postpartum anxiety, through moving houses, through a pandemic and brutal politics, through my son’s stitches and hurt feelings, schoolyards and sports.
“Wherever there are dreams, there is joy, Jesus is always present.”
Ten years later, I have made my fair share of mistakes as a parent. Still, I try my best to hope for a better world, to do my part to create greater possibilities, to hold fast to that dream.
•••
Pope Francis is not a perfect messenger for family advice. In 2015, during his visit to Philadelphia, Francis quipped: “Families will quarrel, sometimes plates can fly. And children bring headaches. I won’t speak about mothers-in-law.”He had made a similarly stale joke about mothers-in-law the year before on Valentine’s day, and the thought of spouses chucking plates has never made me laugh. But the fact that Francis wasn’t perfect and didn’t expect perfection from others was a comfort to me, too.
So much of the parenting advice I found as I prepared for the birth of my first child felt like ingredients for a recipe with two possible outcomes: the perfect dish or a total failure. Every book seemed to offer a seemingly simple solution to every parenting problem, whether sleep, feeding or discipline. Francis helped me to look beyond the headlines and the best sellers and more closely at the heart of the task ahead.
In “The Joy of Love” (“Amoris Laetitia”), Pope Francis wrote: “Keep happy and let nothing rob you of the interior joy of motherhood. Your child deserves your happiness. Don’t let fears, worries, other people’s comments or problems lessen your joy at being God’s means of bringing a new life to the world” (No. 171).
He does not say that you will not be fearful, that you will not worry, that people will not comment on your parenting methods, your life choices. He does not say that the books and the advice are good or bad; he is not weighing in on sleep training or breastfeeding. He simply says that in parenthood there is a joy that goes deeper than all that. It is not dependent on lamaze breathing or labor pains, pre-school applications or prep-school ratings.
Motherhood often is framed in terms of suffering. We want to shield our children from it or feel compelled to take it on to make others happy. And indeed the job is rarely easy. But Francis reminds me that although there will be difficult days, my own happiness matters too, that in fact it is a gift. Your child deserves your happiness. These words offer, forgive, invite. They require me to think about the exterior factors—exercise, work, food, reading, hobbies, friends—but also about my interior life, to remain rooted in prayer, in Christ’s peace that knows no bounds.
Still, it is not easy to stay positive about the future. Wars, famine, polarization, deportation, inflation, environmental degradation…. The list goes on. I now have three children to worry about. I worry I am not doing enough. I worry I am trying to take on too much. I worry about my children’s worries. I try to lean into prayer and to lean on family and friends.
In such times, it helps to have people who support you, who remind you of who you are, who also want you to be happy and who understand you’re not perfect. At his school visit in Harlem, Pope Francis advised the children, many of whom came from immigrant families, that a new home offers a chance to “make new friends.” He described friends as “people who open doors for us, who are kind to us. They offer us friendship and understanding, and they try to help us not to feel like strangers. To feel at home.”
By that measure, Francis was a friend to all.
