A lot will be written and said in the next few months about Pope Francis, his life, death, and work. In this writer’s less expansive world I was drawn to this man and his message simply because he seemed to both care for and love humanity. I say care first because it feels these days as if caring has been in some way stripped from the cadre of attributes that constitute love. Pope Francis fought against a wall of pressure asking him to care less about the world’s billions of people living through thousands of languages of love, cultures of diversity, and versions of vulnerability. He spoke to all either living under the tent of his Church or just living as best they can. 

Caring brings with it the cost of pain. The pain comes from the fact that to care is not a wholly rational process. Dogma and rules can keep the world’s airwaves full of the dust of shameless, unfeeling debate, but caring costs. Of all the things I miss most in our world today is the general commitment to kindness and caring. Pope Francis, it seemed to me, walked that un-winnable line of human caring where every position in politics and religion is eventually offended. To care imperfectly is human. 

Our country was initially designed to teach us within hard and rational guidelines, how to care for individual human beings. At the level of justice it is called ‘due process’ and due process makes painful demands on the practitioner. Pope Francis fought as a warrior for the right of all of us to care and be cared for, for caring is the language of the heart. No, we don’t all get what we think we want because we care, but for those who believe in God or alternately are working on a ‘good’ life focus, painful caring always seems to enter into the decisions of life and faith. Thank you Pope Francis for your hard fought message and well lived life.