By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I did not sleep well the night before I first saw Pope Francis in person.
I was not worried or nervous. Instead, I was flying to Italy in April 2013 on a Judge Memorial Catholic High School trip put together by Latin teacher Tim Soran and his very-organized wife Jen Parsons Soran.
My wife Vicki and our three children joined me. I’d lost my ability to even doze on a plane about a decade earlier, so I was up all night envying any family member who was sound asleep.
Needless to say, I was exhausted when we got to our Rome hotel early the next morning. And then I was slightly annoyed to learn our tour guide had planned a full first day of activities.
My jet-lagged fatigue turned to exuberant joy, however, when I heard we were leaving in a few minutes to see Pope Francis.
After a short bus ride, we arrived at the Vatican just in time to hear the new pope address an overflowing crowd in St. Peter’s Square. I have no idea what he said, but it was a gift to be near him.
I’ve not always felt that way about popes. I’ve lived through five now, seen three in person, and not disliked any of them.
But Francis was my favorite, by far.
The name “pope” derives from the Greek word for “father.” Although the pope really is just the bishop of Rome, we Catholics consider him to be the “father” of the Church. We even call the pope “Holy Father.”
For reasons explained in my 2021 book Monastery Mornings, I had a difficult relationship with my own father. Over the years, that translated into a skepticism and suspicion of fathers generally, and even of God the Father. Popes too probably.
I felt differently about Francis, for a variety of reasons. For one, there was his chosen papal name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi.
When receiving the sacrament of confirmation, young Catholics adopt a saint’s name as a role model and a kind of new spiritual identity. Years ago, I chose St. Francis of Assisi too.
I also immediately liked the new pope’s familiar clergy affiliation.
He was the first Jesuit elected as pontiff and Jesuits taught me at St. Joseph High School in Ogden. I knew them as good and honorable men.
There was also an abundance of what I call charming “humble Francis stories” in the news after he was elected pope.
After donning his white robes, he rode the bus with fellow cardinals rather than taking the papal car. The next day, he visited another church official in the hospital and chatted with patients and staff.
And famously, he insisted on paying—in person—the hotel bill he incurred while staying in Rome for what turned out to be his own election as pope. How could you not like that guy?
Right after the election of Francis, there also were early and then ongoing signs that this new pope was going to be a pope of the people.
At his first papal audience, he said he chose the name Francis out of concern for the poor and the outcast. For the next dozen years, he walked the walk of that concern.
He told us that the Church should be a “field hospital,” concerned more with those who suffer than with defending its own interests.
He embraced children who unexpectedly wandered into the middle of his papal audiences, gave one his seat, and even instructed nervous guards to let a little boy play on the stage.
What a breath of fresh air for a church reeling from a scandal in which it abused its own children and then covered it up!
Pope Francis kissed a man with a severely deformed face. He transformed part of St. Peter’s Square into showers and a barbershop for the homeless. He apologized for the role of the Catholic Church in the abuse of native peoples.
He shattered the ecclesiastical glass ceiling by appointing women to high church offices. He stunned (and delighted most of) the world when he asked, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”
He was so loving and inclusive that in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ Francis even found room for our beloved pets in Heaven. He wrote, “Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place….”
Francis was a pope who by word and by action taught the Catholic belief that life must be respected in all of its many phases. From conception and after birth. As we live and how we die.
He was the pastor we wanted, the counselor we desired, the example we needed. I never really met him, but I loved him as a father.
I did not sleep well the night after Pope Francis died. This time it was from worry and angst—where will we find another such pope?
His departure to Heaven is terrible timing for the rest of us.
The world is in crisis. Wars rage. Fewer people are calling themselves Christian.
More than ever, we need men (and women) leaders like Francis who understand the parable of the good Samaritan and the lesson of the good shepherd, and who take to heart the Gospel admonition that we must love our neighbors—all of our neighbors—as ourselves.
In the next few weeks, Catholic cardinals will travel to Rome from all over the world to meet in a conclave in the glorious Sistine Chapel and pick the next pope.
Much like when a similar group of cardinals elected Francis in March 2013, we Catholics believe the Holy Spirit speaks to those cardinals and guides their decision.
I hope and pray that they listen…again.
(The Salt Lake Tribune published a version of this story on April 21, 2025.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
