“Pope Francis is the pope of the people,” Rosa de los Ríos told America in Spanish before the funeral Mass. “He is very close to the people.... That’s why he was so loved. People felt he was very close to them.”
The day before he died, Pope Francis made one final circuit through St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile. “That’s my last image of him alive,” Gerry O’Connell remembered. “He drove among the people.”
Pope Francis trusted the imagination and regarded it as a gift from God. Instead of being suspicious and fearful of its power, he urged artists to follow its promptings.
I discovered that Catholicism could speak meaningfully to contemporary issues, that it could challenge power rather than embody it. I began to pay attention again.