Pope Francis has been popping up in my news feed this week.
More accurately, I’ve been seeing the headlines of news items and op-eds inspired by the pope’s current illness — and by culturally-normative assumptions about what popes are and what their job is.
I’ve also been following what Vatican News has been saying.
Which, basically, is that Pope Francis is sick. Doctors don’t expect him to drop dead at the moment. And he’ll most likely stay in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital for another week: at least.
- “Doctors: Pope responding to treatment but not yet out of danger”
Vatican News (February 21, 2025) - “Pope has restful night, has breakfast in armchair”
Vatican News (February 20, 2025)
I’m concerned about his health, of course. Which is part of why I’m including him in my daily prayers: along with our community’s priests, and my family.
Don’t, by the way, be too impressed by my daily routine including prayer. It’s part of my daily routine. Like flossing my teeth and eating. It’s an important part: really important. In the long run, more important than flossing my teeth. And that’s another topic.
I’ve talked about popes, perceptions, and my native culture’s quirks before:
- “Principles, Priorities, Politics: and Being Catholic”
(September 21, 2024) - “The Pope Wasn’t Arrested (or) I’m Not Making This Up”
(January 11, 2021) - “Infallibility?”
(July 30, 2017)
Thank you very much for the reminder to not hype up prayer too much, too, Mr. Gill!
No problem! Just repeating what I’ve been told. Oddly enough, one of the Ash Wednesday readings talked about this: Matthew 6:5-8 ( https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/6#48006005 )
…which has also been used by some tightly-wound American Christians as ‘Biblical’ proof that prayers like the Rosary are wrong. There’s a long and sad history there. My take on the situation, in part, is that balance is a good idea: and that any idea can be taken out of context and/or distorted. Which is a whole passel of topics and I’d better stop now. 🙂
I take “Don’t babble like the pagans” like how I take the Lord’s words about not doing things like hypocrites. And I say that as an acting-loving man who learned that the word “hypocrite” is rooted in a word used to refer to an actor. But I haven’t mentioned the bottom line yet, and it’s this: God can transform even babbling and acting into a bunch of His holy instruments if He wills it and we let Him. They aren’t gonna be the low things that we fools think are the best things ever, but they are gonna be perfect by His standards that He even strives to help us reach.