Francisco in the dance of death

Surely Pope Francis wouldn't have been bothered by the widely circulated joke that his death came just after receiving JD Vance, the xenophobic, ultra-conservative, and ultra-Catholic vice president of the United States. Joke aside, the coincidence underscores the idea that, despite his age, Francis died before his time. With him passes away one of the few world leaders, undoubtedly the most important, who acted as a counterweight to the fascist, fundamentalist, and obscurantist wave sweeping the West.

Francis has been a good Pope. It shouldn't be too difficult to recognize this, even for those who are critical or very critical of the Church, at least from the left and progressive perspective. Bergoglio wasn't an intellectual Pope like Ratzinger, nor a politician like Wojtyla, but he thought and practiced politics, and he did so by leading by example. He was a pontiff without his own doctrine, but one who made it his own. as Jordi Llisterri explains, the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council. The thinking that inspired Francis's papacy was that promoted by John XXIII; the program to be followed was that of the post-conciliar reform still pending.

This reform consists primarily of adapting the Church to the Gospels. Not to the wrathful, vengeful, and arbitrary God of the Old Testament, which is undoubtedly more to the liking of the powers that now rule the Earth, but to the letter and spirit of the Gospels, which present men and women not as playthings in the hands of a vigilant divinity but as rational beings free to do evil, but also good. Thinking reeds, to put it in the famous aphorism of Blaise Pascal (which we can read in the Catalan version of the recent winner of the Honorary Prize for Catalan Letters, Pere Lluís Font).

The letter and spirit of the Gospels signify humility, simplicity, and contempt for the powerful. It signifies joy in life and joy of the senses and the body. It also signifies respect and appreciation for one's neighbor and, therefore, the defense of diversity. It signifies rigor and demand: "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the middle of the sea." A Church degraded by the international network of sexual exploitation of minors and the cover-up of pedophiles has been one of Francis's most passionate struggles.

But there have been others: this Easter Sunday, after the blessing urbi et orbi, he once again condemned the genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza, and deplored the hatred against migrants (after meeting with Vance). Francis, Bergoglio, is now dancing the dance of death that could be seen in Verges on Good Friday or that Bergman included at the end of The seventh seal, and that makes us all equal. It's true that the human condition tends toward depravity, but Francis's legacy is not easy to neglect because it will remain written in the Gospels (also available in Catalan, translated by Joan Francesc Mira), a title that remains relevant for the time being.