With apologies to WaterGirl for stepping on the On The Road thread, some breaking news: The Vatican is reporting that Pope Francis died early this morning. He was 88.
From the BBC:
From the moment of his election, Francis indicated he would do things differently. He received his cardinals informally and standing – rather than seated on the papal throne.
On 13 March 2013, Pope Francis emerged on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square.
Clad simply in white, he bore a new name which paid homage to St Francis of Assisi, the 13th Century preacher and animal lover.
He was determined to favour humility over pomp and grandeur. He shunned the papal limousine and insisted on sharing the bus taking other cardinals home.
The new Pope set a moral mission for the 1.2 billion-strong flock. “Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor,” he remarked.
Francis was a ground-breaker on a number of representational fronts: the first non-European pope in about 1,300 years; the first from the Americas or the Southern Hemisphere, and the first ever pope who was a Jesuit, a controversial and frequently suppressed religious order within the Catholic priesthood. He tried to be a ground-breaker on other fronts: he tried to drag the focus of the church back toward compassion for the poor and marginalized; he tried to heal rifts between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches; he demonstrated greater tolerance for LGBTQ+ people than other popes had done. He also disappointed: he seems to have accepted the framing that Russia was “provoked” into attacking Ukraine, he declared that contraception destroys families; he failed to take any kind of meaningful action to root out or punish clergy who abuse children.
He’d been in the news the past few days due to his reception of our Vice President, JD Vance. At the last minute, Francis decided not to attend a scheduled audience with Vance, instead sending Cardinal Pietro Paroline to give him a “lecture on compassion,” which was probably about as useful as giving a lecture on gardening techniques to a slug. (Vance and Francis met briefly and informally yesterday.) Vance represents a rising vanguard of right-wing “celebrity” converts to Catholicism: people who want not just the bells, smells, and Latin, but a full about-face on everything Francis tried to promote. This effort, as reported by Kathryn Joyce last autumn in Vanity Fair, had faltered in recent years:
In mid-2021, when conservative members of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) tried to pass a measure denying communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians—effectively excommunicating Biden—the Vatican blocked their plans. Pope Francis began speaking more openly, and derisively, about his American critics, calling them rigid, reactionary, backward, suicidal. He issued new restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass, the dominant form of liturgy before the mid-1960s Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) introduced various modernizing reforms. And the Church hierarchy neutralized some of the loudest voices of clerical dissent. The Wisconsin priest behind a viral video claiming Catholic Democrats would go to hell was removed from his church. Another priest, who’d once delivered a pro-Trump speech with an aborted fetus on his altar, was defrocked. Leading Pope Francis opponent Cardinal Raymond Burke was stripped of his monthly stipend and lavish Vatican City apartment. Strickland, who’d begun claiming that the pope supported an “attack on the sacred,” lost his diocese. In July, the Vatican excommunicated Viganò for fomenting schism by refusing to recognize the authority of the pope and Vatican II.
None of this endeared the pope to his critics or ended the division.
Now these revanchist freaks have an opportunity to install their own reactionary pope, an even more cartoonish version of the conservative cardinal played so memorably by Sergio Castellitto (and his vape pen) in last year’s Conclave. Francis’s pontificate represented a tentative step forward for an institution that still retains incredible power to shape world events as well as the family lives, consciences, and political attitudes of millions of believers. I hope the College of Cardinals will surprise us, but it’s not a very robust hope.
Open thread.
On The Road – Albatrossity – The Chiricahuas week 3
Sandia Blanca
This is sad news, Rose. Thank you for posting this.
Baud
Hopefully the Trump effect that is rescuing other countries from their flirtation with fascism will also make the Cardinals wary of going too right wing.
Princess Leia
I am so sad to hear this. He really tried to bring the spirit of Jesus back to the church. His writings are beautiful. It is too bad that he has beenso resisted by reactionaries. They definitely will be dancing on his grave today. At least Francis has named a majority of the voting cardinals,but who knows. I am not optimistic. Francis’ voice will be missed.
something fabulous
@Baud: hey that’s a thought! gonna hang onto that one, thanks
Depuinize America
Sad – not only was he a decent guy at heart, the conclave undoubtedly nixes my private tour of the Sistine Chapel a week and a half or so away.
Deputinize America
Sad – not only was he a decent guy at heart, the conclave undoubtedly nixes my private tour of the Sistine Chapel a week and a half or so away.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: It might happen. I don’t know how much of a “base” Pope Francis had, but there must have been some since he was, after all, made Pope.
How in hell in hell he got sucked into the idea that Ukraine started the war is beyond me, though. As are the other blindingly obvious issues he remained on the wrong side of. But, he was a step in the right direction for one of the worst bunch of weird and old (mainly) white men to wield power outside of the US Senate.
hotshoe
The best pope of my lifetime, but that is saying nothing.
Yes he was a good man in some ways but always morally crippled by choosing to adhere to the heinous orthodoxy of Catholicism. The wicked subordination of women, the disgusting attitudes about sex which harm both clergy and congregants … there is no escaping the weight of the Unholy Mother Church’s tradition. Note that he defended Biden against some US archbishops when they wanted to excommunicate Biden about abortion policy — but Pope Francis’s church continues to scheme for draconian laws to punish any woman who needs abortion. So-called “greater tolerance for LGBTQ” means shit when he chose to uphold the immoral traditional doctrine that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.
I’m not glad he is dead, personally — and especially as the psycho reactionaries will be able to use the next pope to harm billions more humans.
There is no good answer as long as the entire edifice of Catholicism exists.
Nowhere in the world should a Catholic church remain standing except, perhaps, as a museum and as a strictly-secular gathering place; nowhere should there be Catholic school allowed to ruin the lives of children who trust in the lies of the priests; nowhere should there be Catholic hospital managers who take it upon themselves to inflict suffering on the dying.
Since the new pope — whoever it turns out to be, whatever good he might aspire to as an individual — will not and cannot heal the world from the damage of Catholicism as a whole: burn the entire edifice to the ground and salt the ashes.
billcoop4
A quick check online tells me that Francis appointed 80% of the college of Cardinals, and the German appointed most of the remaining 20%.
BC
Not that proud
Vance take Pope
raven
@hotshoe: Thank you for this.
chrome agnomen
@hotshoe: amen
Rusty
The Pope carries moral authority, and his moves toward focusing on the poor and those in need, softening condemnation and working toward a form of acceptance of the LGBTQ community mattered. How he chose to live sent a message too. The Catholic church is vast and old,, expecting it to reform in even decades is unrealistic, but he did get it more pointed in the right direction. I’m Christian but not Catholic, and I won’t be converting for all kinds of serious reasons (women not being clergy, LGBTQ acceptance, the whole idea of papal hierarchy and infallibility, etc.) but who gets picked next matters for all Christians because of that moral authority. May they pick well.
Princess
He did good in many directions.
Like his predecessors, he was terrible ion anything touching women. Truly he did not see women as fully human., as anything but appendages to men.
imagine spending your last day on earth talking to JDVance.
MagdaInBlack
Expecting a patriarchal structure to give up their patriarchal structure and authority is, well….not realistic.
RIP Pope Francis.
Princess
The College of Cardinals has a huge block that was chosen by Francis. So I don’t expect we’ll get a full-on reactionary. But there isn’t a liberal progressive among them. Many progressives. But no liberals. Francis was not a liberal. (Where I define liberal as concerned with the rights of each individual, see what I said above about Francis and women)
Steve Holmes
I guess we will now see if Francis was able to stack the Cardinal ranks in just 11 years.
Lapassionara
@Princess: Really a sad way to spend some of your last moments. Wonder what Trump will say.
BrotherCrab
Francis was vastly better than his predecessors, although with the inevitable deficiencies caused by being being part of a badly outdated organization. It will be interesting to see who his successor may be. Let us hope he can move the Catholic church closer to humanity.
Elizabelle
Pope Francis goes out during a Jubilee Year. Thought that would happen. He was a good man in an institution decades (a century?) behind modern life.
I hope that we get another humane pope. No more Ratzingers. Ever.
@Not that proud: Yeah, dealing with JD Vance during his last hours. Poor guy.
Elizabelle
I wonder if he was kind of holding on for Easter. It sure was not for JD Vance’s sake.
And poor guy — being tied to JD Vance in the historic record and many people’s memories. It’s like when Ray Charles died the same week as Ronald Reagan. Bad move.
May the Vatican please select another Francis or John XXIII type.
Snarki, child of Loki
Vance did a ‘hit’ on Francis?
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
oldster
Everything Trump touches dies.
That, and transitivity.
RIP, Pope Francis. He wasn’t as good as he should have been, and he was better than he might have been, and that’s the highest eulogy any of us will receive.
Gin & Tonic
@Lapassionara: Guaranteed to be something tasteless.
Elizabelle
I hope the conclave chooses someone who makes Samuel Alito cry. The Mrs. too.
Rose, thank you for putting this thread up.
Baud
I suppose if I were pope, my heart couldn’t take the knowledge that a tradition that started with Jesus ended up with JD Vance.
Elizabelle
@Steve Holmes: Fingers crossed. Advanced age and retirement age may help there.
Suzanne
I’m not Catholic (insert a joke about being Protestant and working hard here)…. but I am sad to see this news. Francis could have been better, but he also could have been far, far worse. And it’s a scary time for the world right now.
Lapassionara
@Baud: my heart can’t take the knowledge that a tradition that started with George Washington has ended up with Donald Trump. But I’m determined to outlive his reign of error.
Baud
@Lapassionara:
Yes. Good analogy.
Baud
I need to appoint people to elect the next Baud after I die.
lowtechcyclist
@oldster:
Gotta admit, that cracked me up.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
There is only one true Baud. There cannot be another.
Suzanne
@Baud: A Baud conclave could be a lot of fun. I imagine it involves lighting pants on fire.
lowtechcyclist
The Roman Catholic Church is not going away anytime soon, nor will it fix its deep structural defects in my lifetime. So the best we can hope for is someone who can continue Francis’ work to push that structure in a more positive direction.
Elizabelle
The Los Angeles Times has a particularly good and comprehensive obituary up.
Pope Francis, beloved for his compassion and willingness to shake up scandal-ridden church, dies at 88
M31
@Baud: “The Baudal spokesperson came out on to the balcony wearing pants. The new Baud has not been elected”
Betty Cracker
My in-laws are Catholics, so I find myself in Catholic churches occasionally for weddings and funerals. It was a relief to see the Pope Francis portrait within those walls after years of the dour Benedict glowering down at me (and JP2 before him). I reckon the best we can hope for is the next will be a similar improvement.
chrome agnomen
FFOTUS will probably throw his weight behind one of those old-time type of popes. you know, the ones with mistresses and illegitimate children.
NotMax
We can be reasonably assured the next one will not choose the name Pope X.
M31
Glad that one of Francis’s last official acts was to cancel the meeting with Vance and send a cardinal instead to give him a lecture on compassion.
not that it helped, but it was a nice gesture
Matt McIrvin
@Lapassionara: I always tell myself: Washington was a slaveowner and one of the richest men in America (who’d gotten his start farming an addictive drug), and that our Cincinnatus of constitutional government was those things says a lot about the contradictions that lead straight to Trump. We can and should keep trying to preserve the noble traditions that he embodied, but that poison is always going to be at the heart of it.
I rather suspect the situation with religion is similar. A church devoted to a radical carpenter-rabbi who said the last shall be first, whose great booster rocket was the state power of the same tyrannical Empire who’d killed him, a few centuries later? Okay…
Baud
@NotMax:
I vote for Pope Hat.
chrome agnomen
@Baud: soap pope on a rope gets my vote!
Tony Jay
The Vatican. Midnight. A small study off the Papal Apartments overlooking the gardens. Young men in black suits and earpieces guard the door. Inside, three grim-miened Bishops sit around a table, facing the Pontiff. He is slumped in a high-backed Borgia chair, face drawn and pinched, struggling to breathe. A Sister emerges from the shadows holding a glass of medicinal liquid, His Holiness waves her away and fixes pained eyes on the nervous young Monsignor standing in front of him.
“And this… is necessary?”
“Y.. Y.. Yes, Y… Your Holiness.”
“The Oracle… is certain?”
One of the Bishops, a long-chinned Brazilian with pianists’ fingers, makes a face. Beside him the corpulent Italian from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith shuffles in his seat. The Pope eyes them all in turn, pausing at last on the impassive fellow from his native Argentina. Never friends, occasional rivals, a surprise to see him here, though given his closeness to the Office of Antiquities, he probably should have guessed.
“The… Oracle?”
“Your Holiness. Jorge. The Oracle is one of the See’s abiding mysteries. We do not know when it will pronounce, or why it so often does not pronounce on matters that appear to us of great importance. But when it does pronounce, then yes, it is very certain. This man will, if allowed to rise, bring the doom it foresees to the world.”
The Pope sighed. He’d hoped to live longer. Have longer to rebuild God’s Church into an edifice Jesus would perhaps not turn away from, weeping. But the Almighty had chosen this time to call him home, and in doing so placed this last task before him.
“I am… tired. Bring… the… glass.”
The Sister stepped forward again. The liquid was a faintly iridescent orange, thick like mucus. She raised it to his lips and he swallowed. Once. Twice. The Pope stiffened, groaned, a scent like sulphur and cloves hung in the air like a memory. She took the empty glass away, the Pope shuddered.
“Your Holiness?”
Pope Francis opened his eyes. They gleamed faintly as he lifted his hands, examining them.
“And one… touch… will suffice?”
The Monsignor nodded.
“Skin to skin, held for the length of a blessing. By morning your cells will have been fully infected and once you initiate contact, moisture on the target’s skin will allow the molecules to bind and in weeks begin breaking down…” he registered the stares of ten disapproving eyes, blinked, lowered his head. “Yes, Your Holiness.”
“Then send word… to the Americans… I will meet with… their Envoy,” he drew on his white gloves, sighed. “Mysterious ways indeed.”
R.I.P Jorge Mario Bergoglio. A good man in a bad job.
NotMax
From the archives. How to Become Pope.
Trivia Man
@Rusty: may they pick well, amen
I think there is a potential litmus test right out of the gate. If the opposition priests and cardinals mentioned above get welcomed back – that’s a bad sign.
Trivia Man
@Betty Cracker: at least benedict can’t come back for a bon-consecutive term.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Step one: be male.
Matt McIrvin
@Trivia Man: I had to check to remind myself that he died.
NotMax
Trivia:
Traditionally an assigned person retrieves a sacred silver hammer, firmly tapping it several times on the body’s head to confirm a Pope is really dead.
hotshoe
Ahh, that is actually a lovely thing to say.
More than I deserve, I’m sure, being no better myself.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: And then there’s a bit with Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery saying he must go free.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Uhhuh.
Baud
@NotMax:
I wonder if that test has ever produced a negative result.
rikyrah
RIP, Pope Frankie 🙏🏽😢
Radio Dave, Lurker
@Princess:
As a heretical excommunicant, I call this a goddamned nightmare
prostratedragon
Long ago, a bouncer in a tango bar.
“Introducción al Ángel”
Trivia Man
Waiting to see what Popehat has to say
Ben Cisco
@Lapassionara: I’m going to go off the grid and predict “something stupid.”
NotMax
@Baud
I’d not object to Pope John Paul George Ringo.
randy khan
@billcoop4:
Some of this is the natural aging out of Cardinals, but it seemed that Francis made a conscious effort to reshape their ranks over the years. Of course, history shows that it’s very hard to predict what will come out of a conclave.
Nelle
@Princess: Anything Trump or Vance touches dies
ETA – I see Oldster got there first.
PaulWartenberg
Me, A Librarian: (puts up memorial display of Pope Francis books and missives)
Me: (includes DVD copy of “Conclave” movie with the memorial display)
A Catholic co-worker: BRO! TOO SOON!
Trivia Man
@Matt McIrvin: me, too. I was halfway through my comment and checked before posting. There was a funny trivia question with a very narrow window of use. “How many popes per square mile in the vatican?” I think it was about 3 while we had 2 living.
JML
After the wreckage of Benedict and ruinous conservatism of JPII, Francis was a breath of fresh air and a desperately needed turn from the perspective and ideology that made the Catholic Church and increasingly angry, insular, reactionary institution more concerned with conserving power than caring for it’s people.
He wasn’t perfect (his failure to embrace women as equals in the Church is a continuation of one of the Church’s greatest failures) but he began turning a large and slow institution to a new direction that hopefully will be hard to reverse. He certainly tried to do better, in the face of a great deal of resistance. May the College of Cardinals continue his work and improve upon it with the next leader of the Catholic Church.
Of the post- WWII Popes, Francis rates pretty highly. Ahead of Benedict, JPII, Pius XII for sure. Behind John XXIII, but possibly ahead of Paul VI.
rattlemullet
I know it is not true but from this point on but it should be said to point he has to deny it publicly.
JD VANCE KILLED THE POPE
Very sad that he has passed. The world will be worse off without him.
The ironic indignity of having to see JD Vance just prior to his passing cannot be overlooked.
Nelle
@Matt McIrvin: I appreciate the phrase “always the poison at the heart of it.” We’re sure in another flare of that poison now. This country is exceptional in its self-deception that it is the most excellent country ever.
prostratedragon
@PaulWartenberg:
Talk about too soon, ever see an Italian movie called Todo Modo [All Paths]? About an Ignatian retreat for business and political leaders, held in an obscure underground location and conducted by a rather intense Jesuit father. The litany of the Rosary is quite something. JDV put me in mind of it. Clip is around, but not now from me.
PaulWartenberg
@rattlemullet:
Huge Liz Truss vibes.
Now we get to see if Hegseth lasts longer than a head of lettuce.
SiubhanDuinne
@Lapassionara:
Well, Joe Biden just released a lovely tribute, so the Orange PINO will probably feel morally obliged to be insulting and scornful in his remarks. I wonder how he’ll make the death of a pope all about him.
PaulWartenberg
@prostratedragon:
I actually *liked* The Pope Must Die(t). I found it a brutal spoof of Godfather Part III but also a genuine call towards Catholics to break up the financial corruption of the Vatican Bank, and a decent focus on the virtues of Christian grace and confession.
Trivia Man
@JML: The most aggravating thing about JPII was the fawning over him by US media and the assumption that his words were ALWAYS correct and ALWAYS trump the constitution and US laws. “But the pope says…” as treated as a mic drop and not subject to question.
The last few years we got “He’s not a real catholic, i don’t care what he says.”
Scout211
@rattlemullet:
Your meme might work even better knowing that JD Vance did meet with the pope yesterday.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Trivia Man: Vance, Alito, and their ilk are of the more Catholic than the pope faction. At least they were with Francis.
Conclave is a good movie if you haven’t seen it.
SiubhanDuinne
Occurs to me that a thoughtful leader would ask Joe Biden, our second RC president, to officially represent the United States at the Pope’s funeral in the next several days. But of course such a gesture would never occur to the gilded felon.
Matt McIrvin
@Nelle: In technology there’s always a difficulty with being an early adopter–you get the shiny new tech before everyone else, but it’s often a wonky buggy version with fundamental design flaws that get ironed out in later iterations, and you get locked into that in ways that are hard to change later.
The US was an early adopter of the constitutional republic and liberal democracy–there were antecedents, but we got it before much of the world. We have all of the early-adopter problems associated with that and our system might have just collapsed entirely. I don’t want to give up the principles it was based on, though, because as hypocritical as it all was, embracing those is the only way things ever get better here. It’s nice to imagine that we could have a great refactoring that leaves it better in the end, but the trouble is, the people currently in control only really like the poisonous aspects, and the whole idea of constitutional democracy really seems alien to them. So, perilous times.
RevRick
@Baud: @Princess Leia:
I am quite optimistic about the direction the Roman Catholic Church will take. When I went to Yale Divinity School in 1972, I had a professor, Dr. George Lindbeck, who had been a Lutheran observor at Vatican 2. Those reforms are now thoroughly entrenched in the life of the Church since they are now over 60 years old. Older clergy may have a whiff of nostalgia for the Latin Mass of their youth, but even they understand how ridiculous that would be. Pope Benedict was the attempt to turn back the clock, but even he finally realized that was not to be and stepped aside.
Revanchist regimes are always possible— witness our own Confederacy 2 — but they contain the seeds of their own demise. They cannot command the tides to halt.
A married priesthood is likely inevitable and once that wall is breached, women priests will follow. The direction is towards a dedivinization of the clergy and bringing them down to a human level. All the clergy abuse scandals which have rocked the church have made it clear that attributing too much mystical power and authority to those who occupy the pulpit and officiate at the Mass is not only dangerous but also deadly.
Will the next Pope be as charismatic as Francis? Can’t say. But I will say that an anti-Francis would be a disaster… and I think the Cardinals know that.
YY_Sima Qian
Despite the areas where he disappointed (Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine, for one), Francis has been such as refreshing change for the better following the long conservative JPII & Benedict era. Even as an atheist, I will mourn his passing. I sure hope the next pope sustains & builds on his momentum.
Soprano2
I have a lot of differences with the Catholic Church, but Pope Francis was better than many of those who preceded him. I liked that he was more humble than the average Pope, and the fact that he came from Argentina rather than a more Western country probably had a lot to do with that. He knew how bad what FFOTUS is, he’d seen it up close in his native country before. May he RIP.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I haven’t, and I mean to. Another good one is The Two Popes. Might stream that later today if it’s still on Netflix.
Betty Cracker
@PaulWartenberg: Haha!
On the general topic of Vatican intrigue, I highly recommend HBO’s “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope.”
Lapassionara
@SiubhanDuinne: Maybe Susie Wiles will seize the reins and put some reasonably appropriate words on his Truth Social account.
artem1s
@lowtechcyclist:
There is always schism. The western hemisphere was teetering on the brink of reformation over Vatican corruption until the elected John II who did his world tour and put a happy face on all the pedophile scandals. His election let the Cardinals lead Pope Nazi cover up the Catholic Church complicity in the Holocaust and murder of millions on Orthodox Slavs. And W put Scalia and Alito in place to bring the west back under the heal of the Vatican.
The reality is once the fundamentalist get their way and the world kills the last remaining secular governments the Xtians will turn on each other and start squabbling over the scraps. Europe avoided WWII when NATO stepped in and allowed the Three State option to proceed in Kosovo which ended the wars in the Balkans. Which was largely a redo of the Orthodox/Rome split and who would get control over the breakup of the Soviet block. Guess we know who won that battle (cough Putin cough).
9/11 redefining ‘terrorist’ meant no more trafficking guns to both the Ulsters and IRA and profiting off that bloodbath. So now we’re back to square one. Indulgences for everyone; salvation only for the rich; and the poor will be called upon to fight their ‘holy’ wars or be cast into hell. Next up, bomb, bomb, Iran and Armageddon.
Betty Cracker
@Lapassionara: Someone did — NBC News reports a perfectly anodyne condolence under shitgibbon’s name posted on the cheap Twitter knockoff.
M31
@SiubhanDuinne:
yeah, assumes a ‘thoughtful leader’ not in evidence
artem1s
@chrome agnomen:
Pope Newt
Lapassionara
@Betty Cracker: Ah, thanks. I’ve been scanning the headlines, but had not seen anything.
p.a.
In my fantasy timeline Harris wins, appoints Scalito as Vatican ambassador (think he’d accept?) to be rid of him and fills his spot.
Jackie
@Princess:
That’s what ultimately killed him. Vance disdained everything Pope Francis symbolized. I’m disappointed the Pope met with him, but of course, the was a more gracious and forgiving person than I.
MazeDancer
Wonder if getting a Jesus 101 lecture from a dying Pope will have any impact on JD? Vance won’t show it, but just wonder if it will cause a little flinch.
“Bastions of hell”, JD. Pope was talking about you with his last breath.
And some media shift for Hegseth, huh?
BellyCat
@hotshoe: Spoken like a Reformed Catholic!?!? If not, well done!
Incremental positives do not outweigh overwhelming negatives. Pope Francis was the best of the worst. That’s some distinction.
His Ukraine position was a final dealbreaker for me— no biblical fig leaf to even attempt to cover that gilded horseshit crafted out of whole cloth. (Also, too, the pedophilia soft-tolerance crap)
Librettist
You lot will inevitably fix on the doctrinal or ideological, but round here they didn’t stop merging away parishes or closing schools during his tenure.
I’m not sure there is a fix for an institution so deeply driven by and for the ambitions of spare sons.
NotMax
Related.
Religious goods retailers wary as they navigate uncertain tariffs.
Gin & Tonic
@RevRick: Married Catholic priests are common in Eastern Rite Catholicism, apparently acceptable to the Vatican. I count several among my personal friends/acquaintances, and I have a few as ancestors. I believe the joys and challenges of marriage and fatherhood make them better able to understand and provide counsel to their parishioners.
Chief Oshkosh
@NotMax: Wot’s they callzit? Maxwell’s silver hammer? It’s common knowledge, innit?
NotMax
FYI. Shortish watch.
Top 10 Worst Popes in History.
prostratedragon
@PaulWartenberg: Was that an alternate title? I think it’s a great movie, pretty much agree with your take on it. Oh those poor, tender feet!
prostratedragon
@PaulWartenberg: Liz Truss! That’s who knocked off Queen Liz, as I now recall. These folks really are toxic.
Jackie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Available on Prime starting tomorrow. I believe it’s currently available on Apple+
jonas
Not sure, but may have had to do with some kind of ecumenical politics — trying to keep “the door open” to various conversations with the Russian orthodox patriarchate and the like.
Matt McIrvin
Maybe they should dig up Ratzinger, remove his head and put a stake through his heart just to be sure.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@SiubhanDuinne: Also, Spotlight. About the sex abuse scandal in Boston
Belafon
@chrome agnomen:
Probably the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Here’s an image for that.
Cliosfanboy
He was the first Pope since John Paul I that struck me as a kind man.
TS
@NotMax:
Also related – https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/facing-trumps-immigration-nightmare-us-bishops-conference-fails-lead
Facing Trump’s immigration nightmare, US bishops’ conference fails to lead
Well explains how the Bishop’s conference refused to talk with President Obama on birth control and raised funding to attack same – but now they drop refugee resettlement with only an op-ed in the Washington Post & no words against trump for what he has done.
Wonder if we will ever find a pope/cardinal or bishop who understands that women are mentally &/or physically impaired by continual childbirth until it is no longer possible for them to conceive.
Bupalos
And I thought Vance breaking the Buckeye’s trophy was bad.
They need to Keep this guy on a leash. Preferably tied to Twump!
jonas
@TS: There weren’t a lot of rich liberal Catholic donors who were going to slam their checkbooks closed if they took a hard stand against Obama and birth control, whereas a bunch of rich MAGA Catholics *will* if they speak out against Trump. Given that half the dioceses in the US are in bankruptcy proceedings now because of child abuse settlements, it’s now more about the benjamins than ever before.
Another Scott
Francis did some good things, and did some bad things. I wish he had not both-sides-ed the November election, but it’s done.
Peace and comfort to those who loved him.
Meanwhile, Science.org on a new, mostly invisible, color:
Neato.
And yet another indication that our eyes are not cameras. They, and our brains, are filters on the world, and reality is much richer than we can normally perceive.
Best wishes,
Scott.
raven
@Jackie: and Peacock
Scout211
Since this is also an open thread,
NotMax
@Another Scott
Aren’t there already too many shades of off-white?
//
jonas
@Cliosfanboy: I think John XXIII (d. 1961), who convened the Vatican II council, was also widely regarded as a very kind and compassionate person.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This whole thing just keeps on getting more twisted.
jonas
I read earlier this morning that Francis apparently requested not to be laid to rest in the Vatican crypt with most other recent popes, but in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore closer to the center of Rome. Kind of an interesting change-up there.
Deputinize America
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It was a great movie until the “jump the shark” twist at the end. I find that as an author, Harris tends to swing for the fences on being so relevant that the final product bears no resemblance at all to normal human impulses to retreat from exposing life details which could be the subject of controversy.
piratedan
Twas the tariffs that killed the Pope.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Deputinize America: I didn’t mind the twist, but I didn’t need it either.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: There are people with a mutation that gives them four types of retinal cone instead of three. In principle this should allow them to distinguish colors that we can’t, much in the way I can see distinctions that someone with red-green color blindness can’t. Their “color wheel” would be a sphere. But I don’t know if they have the underlying brain machinery to do it.
Sally
@Deputinize America: I so agree. You are the only other person whom I have heard think that they “jumped the shark”. I enjoyed the film till they did that, then it was completely ruined. Was just propaganda after that, to me.
He didn’t “both sides” the election. The republicans were “mean” (regarding immigrants), and the Dems were assassins (regarding medical care during pregnancy). Vote the lesser of two evils. Talk about thumbs on the scales. I am sorry he died before he could see how many millions of adults and children will die due to the shuttering of USAID. Lesser of two evils.
hotshoe
No, lucky me :)
Was raised in a time and place where church-going was socially mandatory if a family did not want to be shunned by the neighbors, my parents chose Unitarian. Which I guess, looking back, barely qualified as “church-going”: no sermons about hellfire, no confession of sins — but we went every Sunday morning, dressed in our nice cothes, read the Bible in Sunday school, sang hymns … so basically Christianity without the trauma.
My sincere hatred of Catholicism arose from them killing millions of people by deliberately preventing condom distribution for HIV/AIDS protection while telling lies about condoms being ineffective. Governments were directly responsible for their own inaction, but the Church’s murderous interference was the ultimate cause.
Never forget, never forgive.
And of course in the good ol’ USA, the unholy alliance of Catholic extremists and Evangelicals leads directly to the Dumpster election, to cancelling USAID, stopping PEPFAR distribution and thus to hundreds of thousands more HIV deaths coming in this next year.
There’s plenty to despise and little to love about the Church which gets praise for taking care of orphans when they are the force which creates orphans to begin with.
artem1s
@jonas:
They raided the public schools tax dollars to pay for that via vouchers. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine saw to it that those parishes in NE OH that had the audacity to hold THE CHURCH accountable got punished and good. The Diocese of Ohio bankrupted the urban parishes paying off lawsuits, sold off the properties and/or saddled cities with vacant run down buildings – many of which are still vacant and/or boarded up. All the parish members who could had already white flighted out to new suburban parishes. Of course they left the inner city parochial schools open cause they had a whole new revenue stream to steal from the poor they abandoned. The poor inner city kids lost their public school funding to the Catholic Church and the charter school grifters. Akron got robbed to the tune of a billion dollars over the coarse of ten years or so. Now the rest of the country is following suit, jumping on the charter school, parochial school bandwagon and stealing public school money too.
sab
@artem1s: A retired priest formerly at St Vincent St Mary’s told my husband that only one family at the school is paying full tuition. Everyone else is getting vouchers.
WaterGirl
Well, fuck.
Tony Jay
Given that Francis himself apparently appointed a large majority of the Council of Cardinals, even with the transactional ebb and flow of Church politics, I’d assume that the revanchist elements within the Catholic establishment will be looking to outflank the more ‘liberal’ faction by making a concerted push for whoever is the most conservative African candidate to get the job. Like their fellow neoAxis-adjacent smartarses in the political sphere, they’ll be willing to swallow a brief period of melanin-discomfort if that will give them a vital opportunity to retake control of the Church and lay the groundwork for the next Conclave.
If we start hearing ‘anonymous insiders’ talking about the need for The Church to start looking outside of the White, Eurocentric norm for the next Pope, that’ll be why.
WaterGirl
At least he got to stick it to Vance and put him in his place last week. Not a bad last official act. I am very sorry this pope is gone. He has been the best pope of my lifetime.
J.
I’m rooting for Cardinal Benitez.
...now I try to be amused
@RevRick:
About time. Priestly celibacy has long outlived its original political purpose, which was to stop priests passing their parishes on to their sons.
mrmoshpotato
The Pope Met JD Vance, Then Died
ETtheLibrarian
Not Catholic or a Catholic whisperer, but went to a Catholic schools for 6 years and grew up in a predominantly Catholic area so I have paid just enough attention to assume that the next pope will be conservative and more into the bureaucracy than the supposed mission.
Soprano2
@TS: It’s telling that holding down women is seen as extremely important to the American bishops, while what FFOTUS is doing with immigrants and refugees is barely worth a mention. It lets you know what their priorities are.
Citizen Alan
According to the Prophecies of St. Malachi, Francis was/is “the Last Pope.”
According to the Left Behind series, the next Pope will be handpicked by the Antichrist to help bring about the One World Religion during the Great Tribulation.
Jes’ sayin’.
Papa Boyle
The Pope died defending a sofa JD Vance was trying to seduce
Melancholy Jaques
I don’t follow Vatican politics. Is there any reason to think this won’t happen?
Where is Father Guido Sarducci on this?
hoytwillrise
There are no ‘good’ popes until they recognize the divinity of women & stop covering up sexual abuse by it’s so called priests. All the rest is bullshit, including the idea of infallibility.
Sandia Blanca
@Tony Jay: I love this for JDV!
TB Hill
@hotshoe: 100%
Steve in the ATL
@Tony Jay: this post should be required reading for anyone who has ever posted “first!” or “Frist!” This, my friends, is how it’s done.
Arabic Tony, when are you replacing Russell T. Davies as the showrunner on Dr. Who? It can’t happen soon enough!
Steve in the ATL
@Papa Boyle: well played
arrieve
Late to the thread, but I actually saw (well, caught a glimpse of) Pope Francis in Santiago in 2018. I was on my way to Antarctica and everything in the city was shut down because of his visit, including all the restaurants. I had eaten lunch in a mall and then took a wrong turn on the way back to my hotel, and got stuck on the wrong side of the barricades. I almost missed seeing the Pope because he was in a small beat-up car and I expected something much flashier. Picture here.
karen gail
I know that the death of Pope will leave a hole in the lives of many people, I remember how broken up some were when a Pope died.
But I not only lived in Catholic neighborhood for a time as a child, where I heard and watched as men came home drunk on Saturday nights to beat wives and children, go to church on Sunday, go to confession and believed that they were free from sin. Wash, rinse, and repeat. I heard time after time how these were “good, hardworking, christian men.” It made no sense to me, since someone who broke arm of child when angry was still a bad person no matter what.
I had Catholic cousins; they were so strong in their religion that a number of boys served as altar boys and later went on to be priests. They turned against a daughter who had become a nun and left after being raped by priest; they were willing to blind themselves to the abuses.
Years later, I started reading the history of the Roman Catholic Chruch; and was left with belief that this was an evil religion who did more harm than any war.
Elizabelle
@arrieve: Way cool.
Steve in the ATL
We were in Rome when JP II passed away. Man, they go nuts over there when a pope dies! People were waiting in a 20-hour long line to see his dead body, cooking in the Roman heat. You all probably saw my wife and me when the BBC cameras panned on us for a few seconds. No? Oh well.
Steve in the ATL
@arrieve: you have some great photos. We actually had beautiful weather in Santiago; guess we lucked out. But we didn’t find that most people we encountered spoke English, which was problematic because most of my Spanish was, as the owner of a wine store noted, bad words from Mexican Spanish. He wasn’t wrong!
Enjoyed a day trip to Valparaiso, but it was sketchy as hell. Also, neither the funiculars nor the telefericos were functioning in either city. Got our steps in, though!
Tony Jay
@Sandia Blanca:
I thought I’d been too subtle!
@Steve in the ATL:
I’d very happily take on that role. Kudos to R.T.D for trying to tidy up Chibnall’s appalling mess, but he’s not exactly making it a must-watch. And I have such plans!
catclub
@billcoop4:
A quick check online tells me that Francis appointed 80% of the college of Cardinals,
That seems like much more rapid turnover of Cardinals than I would have guessed. Essentially zero cardinals serve twenty years?
brantl
@Suzanne: or flying pants as flags.
Origuy
On the subject of Pope movies, there’s also The Shoes of the Fisherman, with Anthony Quinn as a Ukrainian priest who is freed from a Soviet gulag to become the pope. Laurence Olivier is the Russian leader, Piotr Ilyich Kamenev.
brantl
@M31: we only lecture on compassion that would work on JD Vance would have to be administered with a baseball bat.
WTFGhost
M’friend, you failed to notice Pope Francis’ evil dance with the devil, decreeing that a good Catholic could support Donald Trump, a murderer (because he executed prisoners – murder, by the Catholic Church’s teachings, even if later forgiven), on an even footing with Kamala Harris, because Kamala Harris would allow people to get an abortion, without punishment by the forces of Caesar, even though the Catholic Church’s prohibition was about the judgment of God – not Caesar.
Once you accept that America is a free country, and should not be making laws based upon religion – and if dead Pope Franky didn’t understand that, someone should have explained “religious freedom” to him, “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” like the punishment of secular crimes – you gotta stop looking at “abortion would be legal, there, if not for religious-based laws” and start looking at more obvious examples of character, like, someone gleefully executing prisoners before he’s no longer President.
I know, I know, Pope Franky was like a lot of Americans, but, as the leader of Catholics around the world, he was supposed to care enough to do some real research and make a sound decision, rather than “hmm, deliberate murderer, who rushed killings to avoid letting people live,” vs “would allow more religious freedom, so infidels could SIN more!”
I’m not blaming Pope Franky for the loss of USAID and the deaths of millions, of course; that’s all Trump’s. He does get to blame himself, and if we were in the “Lucifer” universe, the poor bastard would end up in a hell haunted by Donald Trump able to do anything he wanted, all because Pope Franky got his deepest desire, to see a good Pro-Lifer as US President.
I wouldn’t even feel a bit sorry for him, if it wasn’t Trump’s face he’d see at every turn, because *eww*. Didn’t the man ever read Dorian Grey, or at least a plot summary?
ETA: Oh, yeah. Trump also failed to care for the sick and the needy, during Covid-19. Just in case you needed to know he’d gleefully watch the poor and needy die. WWJD? Probably not keep lying about a pandemic, in hopes of being able to hold rallies and spread illness. But hey, Franky, no hard feelings. You’re dead, after all, and beyond fixing your screwups.
BellyCat
@hotshoe: Agreed on all points raised.
For me, mandatory Catholic classes and church every Sunday by my Jesuit trained, bigoted Mother who smirks when she says the phrase “the N word” (without saying the word) as if she’s cooth enough to know that one can’t use The Actual Word, but the whole smirk thing manages to be even more rascist.
Oddly, I got to go to parties with her friends (all hippies and lesbians) while growing up but, today, she’s fallen down the RW puke funnel, entirely.
I now even refuse even funerals and weddings (my prior exceptions after turning 18) in Catholic Churches. No ragrets… Not even a single letter.
PaulWartenberg
@NotMax:
General Pope, one hopes.
https://www.nps.gov/people/john-pope.htm
WTFGhost
@Baud: My fear is, they’ll have to go right wing to “improve readership,” and “extend their market share” because of the “tough new operating environment competing for difficult-to-reach eyeballs among the click-bait”.
You can’t blame them for teaching horribly wrong things, so people come away with hideous behaviors from those teachings, because… well, I mean, just like the NYT, “people might believe all kinds of damaging bullshit, that comes straight from us, but, our right wing readers aren’t threatening to firebomb us any more, which means we must be doing something right!”
@Princess: By helping to elevate Vance, the pope earned that “honor” IMHO, for good or ill – ill, I assume.
@Baud: alas, once the front pagers release the nym, some ruggie who has no idea what a “b…a…u…d…” means but chose it because it was four random letters that hadn’t been used yet….
@Suzanne: yes, but they’ll bundle them all up, like ballots, and burn them to make smoke, so you’d never know which pants spontaneously ignited.
@NotMax: It was then stolen, by Maxwell, who went on a crime spree, while roadying for the Beatles….
@Matt McIrvin: Well, they’ve been saying they can “do this” if they ever had “real power” for so long, it’s long past time they were forced to reckon with how they never had a chance to “do this” because the entire idea was stupid in the first place.
They think they can hoover a trillion and a half out of the US economy, and somehow, a trillion and a half dollars of demand will just *poof*, appear, in the face of hundreds of thousands of job cuts. Why?
They don’t know. They just know that only “conservative” brains can figure out where the 1500 *billion* dollars of new spending, without any government support, is going to come from. Which is usually a time to take the nice meds and see if those crazy ideas go away for a while, but Republicans have figured those are MIND CONTROL pills, because when they take them all those TRUTHFUL INSIGHTS and THE VOICE Of GOD goes away.
ChrisSherbak
Very much ‘inside baseball’ sort of thing, but Fr. Martin in an article in America (https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/04/21/pope-francis-death-jesuit-obituary-249957) explains that Pope Francis was released of his Jesuit vows when he became a bishop (I thought I knew they were not allowed to take higher office – TPTB were always worried about the Jesuits – but I guess this is how they manage it) but he was STILL a Jesuit by training and in thought word and deed.
Réquiem æternam dona eis, Dómine, et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Requiéscant in pace.
Temp Decloaked Lurker
@Tony Jay: LOL. This story redeems the regrettable fact of their meeting.
WTFGhost
@Jackie: Pope Francis said it was just fine to vote for the Trump/Vance ticket, I’m sorry to say – on a par with voting for the Harris/Walz ticket, in fact.
@MazeDancer: Vance didn’t love Pope Francis very much, because he wasn’t a family member, or even a fellow American, so he would have no trouble figuring that the pope’s disapproval is something you blow off. Face it: if the pope was meeting with folks in Gaza, Vance would be glad with seeing him iced, because you can’t concern yourself with “human shields,” much less “innocent victims of war.”
@TS: Again, DO NOT BLAME THE CATHOLIC CHURCH! This is just like the Washington Post or the New York Times not caring if their readers are *informed*, so long as they are *reading*.
The catholic church needs the membership of right wing assholes, I reckon. They won’t cross them. And again: MARKET SHARE! You don’t expect a venerable institution to just *fold* and teach only the *truth* in the face of wickedness, amirite? You have to keep people coming, so that you can try to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice, by… you know, shutting up in the face of right wingers. Because that worked out well, except for every single time it’s been tried.
@…now I try to be amused: The church has always been anti-sex, as well, during my lifetime – not “don’t do it,” but, “only within a sanctified marriage,” “no birth control, except timing of cycles”. Some think spilling seed is a big sin because of Onan (whose sin was disobedience to the law – the view that masturbation was bad was a minority view, *I* was told), so even a blowjob is off limits.
@Citizen Alan: Not arguing, merely pointing out that the “Left Behind” series is in a different fictional universe than Malachi’s prophecies. The Tribulation is a protestant fiction, though they both share the book of Revelations. One key difference, is, the “Left Behind” people don’t believe in sin, once you’ve become Christian. All sin is wiped away, and you can’t be kept out of heaven, so, you can do anything you want.
Catholics still believe you mustn’t die with a mortal sin on your soul.
Tony Jay
@Temp Decloaked Lurker:
If Vance starts throwing up orange bile over the next few weeks I’m claiming all the movie rights.
Paul in KY
Best pope since Paul VI, at least (we never really got to see what John Paul I would have done).
Paul in KY
@Princess: Sorta Like Queen Elizabeth II having to chat with Liz Truss.
Elizabelle
The Pope’s cause of death was a cerebral stroke and cardiocirculatory collapse, per the Vatican.
Elizabelle
@Paul in KY: That may be the only thing most humans ever remember about Liz Truss. Even the lettuce has moved on.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@hotshoe: I cannot agree with that.
Too many decent Catholics have been there for me and mine at too many pivotal points, including a truly wonderful nun, for me to wish for the destruction of the Catholic Church. I am not Catholic, either, and yet, these good people helped me stay sane and keep it together.
Let us instead strive to separate church and state. Separate our churches are infinitely kinder and our state is less Torquemada-like.
Rest in peace Pope Francis. I do wish you had stayed with us longer.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: What an epitaph to your ‘service’. You made the queen so sad/sickened by you as PM she just up and died.
Sasha
@ChrisSherbak: You can take the priest out of the Jesuits, put you can’t take the Jesuit out of the priest.
Sasha
@WTFGhost: The gist I got was that Francis let it be known that it was just fine and perfectly okay as a Catholic to vote for Harris/Walz, even if your pro-life proclivities might lead you to Trump.
Sasha
A friend of mine who I can only properly describe as a militant lapsed Catholic was absolutely devastated over Francis’s passing. She really loved the guy.