The Pope I knew supported me even at my lowest hour

I’ll always remember the primary time I met the Pope in 2013.

I had by no means met a Pope before and was on edge. The Vatican is designed to overwhelm guests with energy. We stroll by means of lengthy corridors to his workplace, a person in an exquisitely tailor-made tailcoat main us; Swiss Guards of their full uniforms salute as we move.

The wall work are past description; you may do a Renaissance artwork course simply within the rooms we undergo. I’m taken into the assembly, with my colleagues, cameras clicking, TV current. It’s surreal. The others are ushered out and we sit both facet of a desk.

“I’m senior to you,” he says, with a degree look. I really feel a way of disappointment: I didn’t suppose he was like that. “Certainly you’re, Your Holiness…” I start.

He interrupts, smiling, “by three days”. He was inaugurated that a lot earlier than me: in March, earlier that year.

We each giggle and there are the beginnings of a friendship.

The second standout time I bear in mind with the Pope is round 2016 – in a small room within the trendy block of flats in Rome the place the Pope has lived since his election.

I’m with him and an interpreter. We converse of prayer, of God’s love in Christ, of the work of God’s Spirit in a world of struggle, of human weak spot together with ours. I take heed to his knowledge on how one can lead a world church.

On the finish of the assembly, I nervously ask if he would do a recorded message for an occasion in Trafalgar Sq. a few months later. He grins. “Have you ever bought your telephone?” I reply sure. “Let’s document it now, earlier than anybody tries to cease me!” He delivers a fluent and off the cuff message in regards to the work of the Holy Spirit of God, profound in theology, accessible and highly effective.

The third fond reminiscence is of a roasting scorching night in 2023. I’m at an unlimited stadium and gathering place in Juba, South Sudan; the group stretches to the horizon, some have walked 9 days to be there.

On the stage are three chairs. Within the centre, the white clad figure of the Pope. To his proper sits the moderator of the Church of Scotland. I’m on the left. It’s the Pilgrimage of Peace: we every handle the group, and every converse on to completely different individuals. The president and cupboard are sitting within the entrance row.

No punches are pulled. The Pope challenges corruption, violence, energy in search of. He turns to the ladies within the crowd and tells them of God’s love for them of their agony of struggle, rape and starvation. He speaks of the necessity for a authorities that loves. Impressed by his instance, the moderator and I are equally direct.

As the group responds with singing, with cries and tears, a flight of cranes flies over our heads in direction of the setting solar. It’s the common pastor of Christians talking God’s name to a authorities that appears unwilling to pay attention, within the listening to of the individuals for whom they’re meant to care.

What number of instances did we meet? I’m not positive, however many. We final spoke when he rang after the announcement of my resignation final November.

There was little warning, only a name and his voice.

This was typical of the person who was, above all, a pastor. On daily basis, he used to ring a delegated phone quantity to speak to the congregation of a bombed out monastery in northern Gaza. It was at all times his intuition to attach and to consolation.

The final time I noticed him in particular person was in St Peter’s Sq., the good basilica behind us as he convened a gathering of Christian leaders – from Orthodox to Pentecostal and all between. He was, as typical, humble and type, as a couple of of us spoke. We knelt in silent and united prayer earlier than an ikon of the Jesus’ crucifixion, the group behind us additionally silent because the solar shone down from a cloudless sky.

It at all times appeared to be sunny after we met. It was most likely probably the most diverse and largest gathering of church leaders for the reason that reformation. He convened it not by power, however by love and it was in mutual love that for a second such a big a part of the greater than 2bn Christians had been represented collectively earlier than Jesus Christ in in search of God. As all of us left, he shook my arms with each of his.

Francis was someone who made people want to know God – and God’s love – as he did. He was not excellent, however he was passionate for God. He was supremely relational – no matter standing – and he lived out his name for the shepherd to be near the sheep. He noticed those that sought, nonetheless poorly and fallibly, to observe Christ as brothers and sisters. Whether or not they had been in prisons or palaces, slums or stadiums, made no distinction.

He lived merely, like St Francis, from whom he took his title. He lived out Mary’s track, the Magnificat, in Luke’s gospel – that revolutionary hymn to the reversal of energy. As Mary the mom of Jesus sang, so Francis obeyed – calling on the highly effective to serve, the wealthy to be sacrificially beneficiant, the rulers to be on the ft of the dominated.

He was a supreme master of symbolic actions that preached a sermon immediately.

In 2019, at his request, the leaders of government and rebels in South Sudan gathered for a 36 hour retreat at the Vatican. As soon as once more, the then moderator of the Church of Scotland and I labored with the Curia and co-led the occasion. On the finish, he spoke on the witness and name of Christ – beautifully, profoundly.

Then he stood, walked spherical to the South Sudanese leaders – the towering Dinka and Nuer included – and knelt to kiss their sneakers, saying, “I urge you, make peace”. It’s on YouTube.

Their alternative as to what to do – and so they have but to behave as they need to – was squarely earlier than them. The image spoke in tones of absolute authority; by means of it the voice of God was saying, “act rightly like my servant Francis”.

So, what now? God’s universal, fractured and suffering church is a lot higher than any Pope (not to mention Archbishop). As I discovered even within the small nook that’s Anglicanism all over the world, centuries of historical past and a world presence deliver a complexity – which implies that even Roman Catholicism is an organism, a dwelling ecology, not an organisation.

It may be irritating – I noticed and heard his frustration. To the skin observer, little could appear to vary. It is going to be a long time earlier than we see whether or not the issues Francis did bear fruit. The next Pope may well be from Asia or Africa, with a deep conservatism on points we think about within the UK to be so apparent they want no dialogue.

However they can even discover that bending the attitudes of 1.2bn Catholics to a single agenda is unthinkable. They arrive from each nation on earth and converse each tongue below heaven. The Pope isn’t the CEO of Rome Inc., however the Holy Father. His name is to like God and love individuals – and thru his common primacy, to allow Catholics first (and all others additionally) to like God in Christ and to like individuals.

That is his legacy: to be a Pope of affection, serving the God of affection, who emptied himself, taking the type of a servant, like Jesus Christ. That love was returned – and it’s that love that God’s church known as to sow, nurture and see from it a harves, in God’s time.