Whatever you may believe or not believe

then we must surely at least acknowledge that Pope Francis had an impact on the world. 

I have a good friend who has spent many years in and around the Vatican. He is not a Roman Catholic but his work has taken him there to the Vatican library. He was still a student at university when he spent a year in Rome, most of it in the library which has become so familiar to him.  

Over the years he has sometimes made quiet remarks about the Popes who have come and gone during that time. He has known six of them. The first was Pope John XXIII. P... was a very young man then. I did not meet him until much later than that. He is a much older man now and he has seen a lot in his lifetime. I trust his judgment of these men.

P... is not a man given to criticism but I sensed he did not care for Pope Benedict at all.  When Pope Francis took up the position I sensed relief and I have heard more small stories about him than about any of the others.

Yes, apparently the morning after he was elected he really did question the two Swiss guard about whether they had eaten breakfast and sent them off to do it. Then, as the newly elected Pope, he went off and lined up with everyone else for his own breakfast and also lined up to pay his bill for staying. "It set the tone for his entire papacy." P... told me, "He never expects to be waited on. He is always thanking people. He smiles at them. You get the impression that he really does care about everyone."

Early in his papacy there are stories about Pope Francis going out into Rome at night. It is said he liked to simply walk around and talk to "ordinary" people.  Of course to him these same "ordinary" people were not ordinary at all. They were the very reason for his being there.  P... said he would sometimes glimpse Pope Francis going from one place to another in the Vatican and see him stop for a moment to chat to someone. "He stopped me and asked a question which showed he was extremely well informed," P... said of him once.

There was an email from P... this morning. "Cat, I have lost a friend. He was a good man. He tried and he kept on trying to the end."

I think I know what P... means. A pope has limited powers. He is not the all powerful leader many believe him to be. He has to work within the limits of a religious organisation which all too often has resented even a suggestion of change. It guards its powers with extreme jealousy. Trying to change that is something that cannot be done overnight. Pope Francis will be criticised for not doing this, not doing that, for being naive about some issues and not firm about others. He made mistakes - and admitted it. Those who know the inner workings of the Vatican well will, if they are honest with themselves, admit life was not always mentally and spiritually comfortable under this man. It should not have been. He saw it as his role to challenge their comfortable sense of self-satisfaction.

P... tells me, "He was basically a very good, honest man who did the best he could do until the end."  

Somewhere I have a letter from Pope John-Paul II's Ambassador or, as they call it, "the Apostolic Nuncio" in Canberra. It is a personal letter and relates closely to Pope John-Paul II. It is one of the few I have kept from what now seems a distant past, one that did not really happen. For all it is a personal letter it is also a very formal one. The language is very formal, very correct. Yes, it is written by a man whose first language was not English but it is more than that. There is a sense of "keeping distance".  

I wonder what a letter from Pope Francis might have been like. If he had actually written one himself to me about the same topic I suspect I might have found out something about his reading habits as a child and, within that, what drove him to be what he became.  It will be interesting to see what is made of his papacy now he has gone and who they choose in his place. 

RIP Francis. You tried to make a difference.