A Force For Good

The death of Pope Francis is a loss to the world. He was a radically different Pope to the authoritarian Pope Benedict and brought compassion to the papacy.

He was not afraid to speak truth to political power and clearly viewed Trump as a force for evil, decrying Trump’s deportations of migrants. He wrote, in an open letter to American bishops, that he had “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” adding that any policy built on force “begins badly and will end badly.”

So now the process of choosing his successor begins. As an atheist, I obviously have no skin in this game, but I would hope that his successor will carry the torch of Pope Francis’s moral authority forward and not be a Pope that returns to the attitudes of Benedict.