Earlier this week, as even the most non-observant of you probably noticed, Pope Francis died at the age of 88.1I assume it trended on Tik-Tok for least 10 or 12 seconds. His funeral will be held on Saturday.
As a very casual Catholic, I feel that same sort of detached sorrow you experience when a distant relative who acknowledged you maybe once or twice in your life passes way. It’s sad that someone that I had some sort of connection with is gone, but I didn’t really know the guy. Although I’m certainly not qualified to judge popes,2Or anyone else, for that matter. Francis seemed like a fairly decent one to me.
I don’t really have a good frame of reference for evaluating popes because I haven’t had the opportunity to observe that many firsthand.3Or secondhand, I guess, since I’ve never actually met a pope. As someone who was born during the second sede vecante of 1978, John Paul II was the only example of papaldom4Don’t think that’s actually a word. I knew until well into my adulthood.
In the zeitgeist of the Cold War’s waning days, though, he was a pretty big geopolitical rock star. The name-check he received every Sunday during the eucharistic prayer5“…together with John Paul, our pope, and Joseph, our bishop…” is still lodged firmly in my brain. My grandparents had a framed picture of him in their living room. He was ominpresent in my life, even if I rarely thought about him specifically.
Next came eight years of Benedict XVI that felt really strange because JP2 had been the head honcho for literally my entire life (minus five days) up until that point.6It was also weird because it had been about a hundred years since the last Benedict and getting No. 16 all of a sudden felt like we had all collectively missed the first 15 episodes or something. I’m not sure that I ever totally accepted Benedict XVI as the pope. In my mind, he was just a seat-filler waiting for John Paul II to come back from the restroom or something.
I’m sure this is how many British people feel about their throne no longer being occupied by Queen Elizabeth II, although at least they had 73 years of Charles III hanging around awkwardly in the background to make that transition a little easier. They knew what they were getting; their new grand poobah wasn’t some random German guy who just showed up on a balcony one day.
And then there’s Francis.
Sure, he didn’t make a ton of sweeping changes as some predicted when he was elected in 2013, but Francis consistently pushed back against the regressive conservatism that dominates the Vatican and makes it difficult for modern-minded people like me to fully embrace the church. He seemed to genuinely care about the indigent and populations traditionally shunned by the church. He also regularly angered a lot of old-school clergy and cardinals, so he must have been doing something right.
I don’t think Maude Findlay would have been his number one fan, but she probably would have felt Francis could have been a lot worse.
Let’s get weird
Did you know that we Catholics have a lot of archaic and quirky practices? If not, every single media article for the next two weeks about Francis’ death and the selection of the next pope7Sponsored by Draft Kings is going to remind you.
Case in point:
The guy didn’t even live there, but they’re still sealing it off. Maybe he stashed some rare Funko Pops in there or something, but the real reason they’re doing it is because that’s what we always do.
It’s probably a good thing that none of Francis’ stuff is actually in there because that ribbon and wax isn’t doing much. In fact, short of taping a sign to the door that just says “Hey, don’t”,8Or “Heus, noli” since I guess it would probably be in Latin. this is probably the worst possible way to secure a room. That setup may have worked when Telesphorus kicked the mortal coil in 137, but this is the kind of security you see nowadays only in preschool clubhouses and Murder, She Wrote episodes. But again, it’s in the script, so that’s what we’re gonna do.
Get ready for lots of talk about smoke—black smoke, white smoke, no smoke—because that’s still our preferred method of relaying the selection of someone who will become the head of a worldwide organization with 1.4 billion people. He’ll also get a big hat because we really like big hats. And there’s going to be far more Latin being spoken than you’re probably used to.
Our devotion to ceremony and ritual is probably the aspect of Catholicism with which I connect the most deeply at this point of my life. None of it is necessary and most of it is open to some pretty valid criticisms, but there is something really comforting about all of it. I guess that’s the point, huh? Opiate of the masses and all that.
Anyway, getting back to Francis’ living arrangements, I’d like to point out that it was an epic move for him to stay in a guesthouse instead of the main apartment. It’s one thing to be the first Latin American pope, but being the Kato Kaelin of popes really kicks things up a notch. In my personal headcanon, Francis didn’t even stick to just one apartment; he couch-surfed his way across the Vatican and back for a dozen years.
“Great, we can’t watch Italian Idol on the big TV tonight because His Holiness is crashing on the couch again. And eating all of our Fritos.”
I would totally watch that sitcom.
In other news
- Speaking of King Chuck the Third, apparently he’s not allowed to attend Francis’ funeral because the monarchs of the United Kingdom are still above all that.
- Also not coming to the funeral: Our newly theorized and much hyped neighbors on K2-18b,9That planet really needs a better name. because they probably don’t exist.
- The BBC has published an interesting history of the real-life escape attempt which inspired the film The Great Escape.
The last two nights at the ballpark
The Brewers have an outfielder named Sal Frelick, which is a pretty solid baseball name in my opinion. If Sal had been playing 90 years ago, he definitely would have worked as a door-to-door shoe salesman during the offseason to make ends meet.
Over the course of his career, ol’ Salvatore would have scraped just enough cash together to buy that business and then—with a lot of determination, a dash of moxie, and a few loans from possibly questionable sources—turn it into a small chain of brick-and-mortar stores across the greater Milwaukee area. And you’d hear radio ads twenty years later for “Sal Frelick’s Footwear Emporium, now open in Oshkosh and Manitowoc,” which would make you think warmly about those days when he hit .220 but played solid enough defense to hang around on the roster and provide an occasional reason to stand up and cheer.
Anyway, the Giants lost on Tuesday night thanks to a pretty horrific sixth inning, but at least no one got injured. The highlight of the evening was definitely Hunter Pence—still one of my all-time favorites—throwing out the first pitch to his wife.
Then last night, the sixth inning once again turned out to be the pivotal frame, but the Giants came out on top with some timely hitting and multiple errors by Brewers infielders. There was a bit of drama in the ninth, but it all worked out in the end for the hometown squad.
Both nights were typical midweek April affairs at Oracle Park—cold, windy, and pretty empty up in the top deck. Looking forward to a little bit of sunshine and maybe even some warmth during today’s series-ending matinee.
- 1I assume it trended on Tik-Tok for least 10 or 12 seconds.
- 2Or anyone else, for that matter.
- 3Or secondhand, I guess, since I’ve never actually met a pope.
- 4Don’t think that’s actually a word.
- 5“…together with John Paul, our pope, and Joseph, our bishop…”
- 6It was also weird because it had been about a hundred years since the last Benedict and getting No. 16 all of a sudden felt like we had all collectively missed the first 15 episodes or something.
- 7
- 8Or “Heus, noli” since I guess it would probably be in Latin.
- 9That planet really needs a better name.
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