“Pope Francis has damaged my faith,” she told me. I held my tongue, reminding myself of my useless past attempts to respond to her antipathy towards our pope.
“I told my father today, and he says that Pope Francis has hurt his faith, too,” she added. One last dig.
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Last December, my mother was just a few days from the end of her definitive illness. Our pastor had seen her that morning and heard her confession. It was the last time we ever discussed faith as a religion.
There was nothing more important to my mother than her faith. She often reminded us that her vocation and mission was to give faith down to her four children and get us to heaven. With the same talents that made her a gifted schoolteacher, she taught us the teachings of the Church. She shared the faith with us in a way that was appealing, rich, interesting, and true – complementary and far beyond the standard parochial school catechism we received.
“Pope Francis has damaged my faith,” she told me. I held my tongue, reminding myself of my futile past attempt to respond to my mother’s antipathy towards our pope.
The faith she gave to me and my siblings was influenced by her own Catholic schooling in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her teenage faith was informed by her father, who became deeply angry, even traumatized by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. And he was focal about it. As an adult, however, my mother’s views on religion became less infamous. My father converted him to Catholicism months before her marriage, and I think his faith – real, but also practical and down-to-earth – tempered the reactionary impulses of her upbringing. Yet my mother’s religiosity has always been at the center of our childhood experience.
She taught us our prayers, the Scriptures and saints. Mother instructed us in moral doctrine, the last four things and the dignity of human life. Although I never heard the term Catholic social doctrine, she opposed the death penalty, supported justice for immigrants, was strongly opposed to racism, and stood with the pope on issues of war and peace.
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We had a picture of Pope John Paul II in our kitchen. I remember as a child remembering how lucky we were to have such a great leader for our congregation. Although my grandfather often viewed the hierarchy with suspicion and contempt, my mother developed a love for the pope and trusted the church to teach the truth.
Sure, there were holes in our religious formation, but this was not due to a lack of effort on their part. She passed on everything she had to her children. Our daily conversations often revolved around our faith: big, deep, eternal questions. Catholicism became an integral part of who I was – who we were – and even in dark times in my life, even when God seemed at a distance, my prayers went unanswered and my future was uncertain, my faith left never leave me.
We had a picture of Pope John Paul II in our kitchen. I remember as a child remembering how lucky we were to have such a great leader for our congregation.
Even when my relationship with my mother was strained from time to time, I was grateful to her for the faith she passed on to me.
That is why our division over Pope Francis was so painful.
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The election of Pope Francis in 2013 coincided with a period of personal conversion and spiritual growth in my life. Not only had I thrown myself deeper into practicing my faith, attending daily Mass and Eucharistic worship, but I had begun to understand my faith more deeply in terms of my relationship with God and encounter with Christ.
The trust that mom shared with me, the belief that she helped care for her, eventually became my own. Many people contributed to my education and training in the faith. But there is no question that the person who first watered the seed of my faith was my mother.
When Francis became pope, everything seemed to come together. Most of us remember those first months of his papacy: a whirlwind of powerful gestures, provocative words and unusual, surprising decisions. The worldwide goodwill generated by the beginning of his papacy created a “Catholic moment” in our culture. After years of media focus on church scandals and involvement in political culture wars, it was as if our new Argentine pontiff changed the narrative once when he stepped on the loggia, offered a modest wave and said the words “Buona sera.”
It was also clear to me that Pope Francis’ vision for the faith is precisely the cure for the embattled, embittered and polarized church in the United States.
While most of the world was focused on his public actions – paying his hotel bills, living in the simple Casa Santa Marta instead of the apostolic palace, washing the feet of young prisoners on Holy Thursday – followed I understand what he said. I was challenged when he cried days after his election, “Oh, how I would like a church that is poor and for the poor.” I was moved when he articulated his view of the role of papal authority in the homily at his installation Mass. “Let us never forget that authentic power is service,” he said, “and that the pope, too, in the exercise of power, must increasingly engage in that service which has its radiant culmination on the cross.”
What I and many other Catholics acknowledged in Pope Francis was how he put the principles of our faith – the Gospel of Jesus Christ – into action. This was reinforced by his words. In his homilies, addresses, and interviews, he constantly called on us to understand that without humility, repentance, conversion, transformation, and a heart full of tenderness and hope, our faith was hollow and self-reliant.
It was also clear to me that Pope Francis’ vision for the faith is precisely the cure for the embattled, embittered and polarized church in the United States.
•••
Unfortunately, not everyone in the American Church agrees.
Since the early days of this papacy, there has been a growing and concentrated effort to underscore the message of Pope Francis. Catholic media and public figures who were once considered credible orthodox and faithful to the magisterium began to doubt his words and teachings. Statements were not taken out of context and interpreted as “insults” to devout Catholics. His encyclopedia of care for creation, “Laudato Si ‘,” was filled with critics who decided on his belief in “troubled science” and his critique of capitalism.
As this papacy progressed, the reactions of various media organizations and magazines popular with American Catholics ranged from positive to cautious to suspicious. When the pope’s apostolic call on marriage and family, “Amoris Laetitia,” was released on April 8, 2016, many of these stores became openly hostile.
Since the early days of this papacy, there has been a growing and concentrated effort to underscore the message of Pope Francis.
Opposition to Francis – backed by the publication of a document signed by four cardinals claiming that “Amoris Laetitia” violated immutable Catholic doctrines on marriage, adultery and objective truth – has become cruel. Well-known Catholic apologists who openly encourage opposition to Pope Francis and the bishops – including extremist voices such as Michael Voris of Church Militant and popular YouTube commentator Taylor Marshall – have wildly popular multimedia platforms and go largely unchallenged by church leaders.
This is not just a social media phenomenon. Many Catholics across the country hear figures such as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò – the former Vatican City of the United States who attacked Francis several times after calling the pope to resign in 2018 – praised from the pulpit. Articles disparaging the pope are shared among Catholic groups and posted on parish websites. I have several friends who belong to Catholic book clubs where members refuse to read anything by Pope Francis.
Since I started writing and speaking publicly about this phenomenon, I have heard from hundreds of Catholics who have divided their families and communities about Pope Francis. In some parishes – and even in diocesan seminaries – negativity against Francis has become so common that those who support him feel compelled to keep their opinion to themselves. One priest told me that several seminaries referred to their seminars as “Francis-free zones.”
One priest told me that several seminaries referred to their seminars as “Francis-free zones.”
Francis’ less reactionary critics have done little to limit the rise of their much crueler opponents. This story also did not receive significant public attention from American bishops as Catholics who support the pope. Often, they will actively discourage others from speaking out publicly against these reactionary leaders, claiming that doing so would give them the attention they desire. But as we have witnessed in the United States and international politics, the “establishment” can no longer pay to ignore these powerful populist movements.
What motivates those who led this attack on Francis’ reputation – money, politics, ideology or, at best, deep convictions – the whole thing has become a major derivation of Christ’s mandate to preach the Gospel spread to all creatures and to build the kingdom of God here on Earth. The focus is driven very far from what Jesus asked us to do. And things do not improve.
•••
My mother, who had never read anything that Pope Francis actually wrote, was convinced that he became a heretic by her friends in the church, members of her Catholic book club and by watching “The World Over Live” , a weekly talk show on EWTN, hosted by Raymond Arroyo, who has often voiced papal criticism.
Somewhere in Francis’ papacy we often argued about him. Before, for each of the two sessions of the Synod on the Family, for example, they reiterated the common assertion among Francis ‘critics that the Synods were’ rigged ‘and that they were little more than cars for predetermined changes to’. e lear. In the same way, as a bishop she considered moderately and progressively appointed to lead an American diocese, she would insist – relying on comments she read in Catholic media – that these decisions were further proof that Pope Francis deliberately tried to destroy the church. Every attempt I made to clarify or correct this story was immediately dismissed.
At one point, I realized I would never convince her, and I tried to avoid the subject instead of making more division. When she got sick, I raised the topic a few more times, but it was clear that her views were banished. She even had a coffee mug with the word ‘Viganò’ written on it in capital letters. And every conversation we had about religion turned into an argument about Pope Francis. That I was not able to talk about God with the person who gave me my faith when she was dying was anger.
My experience is not unique. This division in the church is a tragic situation that is detrimental to families and communities of faith. It is completely against the Gospel and the message of Pope Francis. As the pope said in his homily on November 29, “There are always those who destroy unity and stifle prophecy.” I have experienced this division in a very personal way. The impact of public opposition to the pope is not theoretical; it does real harm to the body of Christ. What leaders among us will respond to the urgent need for action to promote unity in the Church?
Sure, there are difficult agreements to resolve, and not every division will be healed on this side of heaven. But we can not lose sight of who we are as Catholic Christians. Through our baptism, we are united as brothers and sisters with Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. Jesus entrusts the care of his sheep to Peter and his followers. The Church teaches that Pope Francis is the visible basis of communion for all believers, and the healing of these wounds can only begin in unity with him.
[Read this next: Why do some Catholics oppose Pope Francis?]
