The Second Sunday of Easter, 27 April 2025, Austwick
Peter and the apostles said, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’
Over the past few days we have all been moved by the death and funeral of Pope Francis. The Pope who died at Easter – and who, because of his faith in Jesus’ resurrection, died in certain hope of everlasting life.
Here was a leader who used his significant spiritual authority to challenge the temporal authorities of the church and the world to realign to the ways of God.
Francis’ first Papal Exhortation was entitled “Evangelii Gaudium”, “The Joy of the Gospel”, in which he called for a ‘poor church for the poor’ and for a church that came ‘out of the sacristy and got its hands dirty’. Francis actively practised what he preached, by his personal outreach to the most marginalised, and by, for example, moving out of the Vatican Palace and into rooms in the Santa Marta guest house, among the many from the world church who come and go there.
Francis continued to be an advocate for hospitality for the poor, for migrants and refugees, for the practice of mercy generally and the works of mercy in particular, for active nonviolence and an increasingly strong rejection of war. He declared the mere possession, as well as the threat of use of nuclear weapons, to be a sin, as well as making the Vatican one of the first states to sign and ratify the nuclear weapons ban treaty (officially known as the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons).
In day to day life Francis spoke off the cuff and made mistakes and asked forgiveness as a sinner, in contrast to previously guarded papal ways, perhaps wanting to avoid the mystique of creeping infallibility.
Possibly Francis’ most significant legacy will be his first Encyclical Letter, published in the run up to the 2015 Paris Climate Summit. In “Laudato Si – On Care for Our Common Home”, he called us to hear ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. [1]
The Pope’s real name was Jorge Bergoglio – he changed his name when he became Pope, to that of his favourite saint, Francis, who loved animals and the earth. As we worship here in Austwick Church, Saint Francis looks benevolently down on us from that beautiful Ingleby window, surrounded by his brothers and sisters the birds.
In “Laudato Si” Pope Francis wrote that:
I believe that Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. He is the patron saint of all who study and work in the area of ecology, and he is also much loved by non-Christians. He was particularly concerned for God’s creation and for the poor and outcast. He loved, and was deeply loved for his joy, his generous self-giving, his openheartedness. He was a mystic and a pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace. [2]
The Pope writes of nature as ‘a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness’, and shows how scripture celebrates this. The book of Wisdom says that “From the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator”, whilst in Romans, Paul says that “God’s eternal power and divinity have been made known through his works since the creation of the world”. [3]
It was notable that Pope Francis died on the eve of Earth Day, a day when people around the world celebrate the Earth and to ask governments and businesses to care for it well and to stop doing things which harm it.
Throughout his ministry Francis made such demands. “We must never forget that the natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone,” he said, “Our common home is being pillaged, laid waste and harmed with impunity. Cowardice in defending it is a grave sin.”
He made it his prayer to say: “May the relationship between man and nature not be driven by greed, to manipulate and exploit, but may the divine harmony between beings and creation be conserved in the logic of respect and care.” [4]
Will Francis’s legacy be in lives devoted to obeying God over and above any human authority?
Will we put ourselves among those who will pray the prayers of Francis, and, following his example, devote our lives to the active service of our common home and all we share it with?
Notes
[1] The Pope of Mercy and Nonviolence. London Catholic Worker, 22 April 2025.
[2] Pope Francis, Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home. Pentecost 2015, paragraph 10.
[3] Wisdom 13.5, Romans 1.20, quoted in [2] Pope Francis, Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home. Pentecost 2015, paragraph 12.
[4] Jesuit Resource, Pope Francis Quotes. Accessed 23 April 2025.
