My thoughts as Pope Francis nears his death—or doesn’t

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 22, 2025

I am praying for Pope Francis who, according to a report published a few minutes before I began to type this column, remains in critical condition. As my Catholic Culture colleague Phil Lawler notes, it is the wisest and best thing we can do for the Pope. Not following “the very excitable rumor mills around Rome.” Whatever will be will be.

The Pope looms large in our minds, doesn’t he? The Pope in general and this Pope in particular. How could he not?

Elsewhere I have written about the faith imparted to me by my recently deceased grandmother. A Portuguese-American woman who came of age in mid 20th century New Bedford, Massachusetts, there was a naturalness to her faith. The National Catholic Reporter’s Brian Fraga, who is younger than I but comes from the same town and ethnic background as my grandmother, nailed this quality once in an old Facebook post. He noted that devotion to Our Lady of Fatima is everywhere in his community. But not the apocalyptic speculation around it that so excites the wider Catholic world.

As it happens, I have cited in the past my grandmother’s passing on to me her Fatima devotion as the thing that saved me from the theological dissent that I associate with Fraga’s employer. Nevertheless, Fraga nailed something important in that Facebook post. The agita that I see in so much of American Catholicism—in so much commentary in America about Catholicism—just isn’t there for me.

I have felt this difference especially in the age of Pope Francis. My view of this pontificate is essentially the same as the pseudonymous memo posthumously attributed to Cardinal Pell. That it “is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe.” But, well, so what?

I feel about it as Austin Ruse does in a piece he wrote in 2023 about Opus Dei:

No matter what happens with the Vatican, I’ll keep doing Opus Dei.

This should not be viewed as a challenge to or disrespect for Pope Francis, or even of his canonical advisers. May God bless them abundantly one and all. This statement is merely the reality of my baptismal promises.

Likewise, no matter what happens with the Pope, I’ll keep doing Catholicism. This, too, should not be read as a challenge to, or disrespect for, the Holy Father. No, not even my favorable citing of the “Demos” memo. If our papa needs help, our goal must be to help him. And his collaborators. And his successors. Not out of any partisanship, any “party spirit,” this faction vs. that faction. But out of “the reality of my baptismal promises.” No agita necessary.

In fact, I did not even know we had a Pope until I was eight years old. My grandmother had taught me all about God, creation, Israel, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Bible, and the saints. She had neglected to mention the Pope. But then Pope St. Paul VI died and suddenly the Pope was a thing.

She gave me a prayer card of Pope John Paul I, which I put on my wall. That card lasted much longer than he did. I think I had it up there for three or four years. But our smiling Pope died a mere 33 days after he became Pope.

Then came the rock star. Pope St. John Paul II. I was too young to understand why my grandparents, staunch anti-Communists, were so excited by his election. But I saw the charisma with my own eyes a year later when I saw him in Boston. I felt the strength of his witness for the unborn when, as a teenager of the 1980s, I was quoting him in high school essays to disapproving teachers. His 1990s encyclicals and letters—on the world after the Cold War, on moral theology, on human life, on philosophy, on keeping the Lord’s Day—shaped my worldview for the rest of my life. So, too, the heroism of his final years—guiding us into the Third Millenium, pointing us to the Rosary and the Eucharist.

I’ve written elsewhere on what Pope Benedict XVI meant to me. I will just emphasize that I could never approach the liturgy in the same way again after encountering his beautiful thought.

As for Pope Francis, well, again, I sympathize with the criticisms. But not with the agita. God is allowing all of this for a reason.

Pray for our Pope.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.

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