The death of Pope Fran­cis has prompt­ed more praise, com­ment, crit­i­cism, clich­es and solemn analy­sis than I can com­pete with, or even match. Instead, I’ll share a few anec­dotes and a per­son­al con­clu­sion based on trav­els with three popes.

On papal flights, the Pope and his imme­di­ate entourage occu­py First Class, less­er staff are in Busi­ness. The 70 or so mem­bers of the Vat­i­can  trav­el pool pay Busi­ness and jam into Economy.
John Paul II, my “first pope” was media-friend­ly and in his ear­ly, vig­or­ous days, kept up a trav­el sched­ule that exhaust­ed we mere mortals.
As his health waned, cov­er­ing him for TV was com­pli­cat­ed by hav­ing to decide how close­ly to focus on his increas­ing frailty. Show the hands shak­ing from Parkinson’s up close? Cut  away when he wipes drool on the sleeve of his oth­er­wise immac­u­late robe?  Dit­to when he nods off in mid-ceremony?
Even­tu­al­ly, it became clear he was delib­er­ate­ly expos­ing the rav­ages of age and ill­ness as a mes­sage: “It hap­pens to all of us. Accept it.”
His spokesman Joaquín Navar­ro-Valls claimed that one morn­ing when he asked him how he was feel­ing, John Paul II replied: “I don’t know. I haven’t read the news­pa­pers yet.”
On the flight back from his last trip to Poland, I was among a hand­ful of  jour­nal­ists escort­ed to the seat next to John Paul II for a pho­to op.

He seemed bare­ly con­scious, but what struck me most was that the man who as a youth was forced by the Nazis to labour in a stone quar­ry, now had hands as soft and smooth as a baby’s.

No ques­tions were allowed. I bare­ly man­aged to say “Thank you for this oppor­tu­ni­ty, Holy Father”, when his per­son­al body­guard uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly hoist­ed me out of the seat.                                 

  DIFFRENT POPE, DIFFERENT CHALLENGE

The shy, deeply intel­lec­tu­al Bene­dict XVI observed the JP II prece­dent of com­ing to the front of the Press sec­tion to offer a bless­ing and take ques­tions. But unlike JPII’s will­ing­ness to expect the unex­pect­ed, they were pre-screened and lim­it­ed in number.
Bene­dict also had a ten­den­cy to lit­ter his hom­i­lies with obscure scrip­tur­al references.
For­tu­nate­ly, the trav­el­ling Vat­i­can press pool are the most col­le­gial col­lec­tion of my tribe I’ve ever worked with, espe­cial­ly the small coterie of “Vat­i­can­isti”, the Ital­ian word for jour­nal­ists who under­stand the doc­trine and assid­u­ous­ly track the arcane nuances of the Holy See.
What­ev­er the Bib­li­cal allu­sion, there was always a col­league on hand who would hap­pi­ly explain it to we sec­u­lar types.
Fran­cis tend­ed towards more famil­iar Scrip­tures and was by nature down to earth and accessible.
At the start of every trip he came down the aisle to shake hands with and offer a per­son­al bless­ing and/or take a ques­tion from every jour­nal­ist on board.
On a trip that includ­ed a stop in the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, which was in the throes of a reli­gion-dri­ven civ­il war, I asked him if he was ner­vous about going to a place where there were a lot of crazy peo­ple with guns, many of whom didn’t like Christians.

“Oh, there are good and there are bad,” Fran­cis said. “What scares me are mosquitoes.”
“Me too,” I replied. “I’ve had malar­ia twice.”
He laughed, wagged a fin­ger at me and said: “Did you bring your spray this time?”

                         DOES A POPE MATTER?

Being in closed prox­im­i­ty to three popes did noth­ing to change my aver­sion to organ­ised reli­gion, but it did pro­vide insights into how much and why hav­ing a pope matters.
On the flight from Philadel­phia to Rome, two seri­ous-look­ing men took the seats behind me, They iden­ti­fied them­selves as Amer­i­can Air­lines secu­ri­ty, and said they were there “to help ensure a safe flight”. (I thought it impo­lite to ask why they thought  plain clothes Swiss Guards and the Pope’s hulk­ing per­son­al body­guards might need help keep­ing the Vat­i­can-approved Press in line.)
The plane was still climb­ing when cam­era crews start­ed set­ting up tripods. The secu­ri­ty men ware horrified.
The seat belt sign was still on when Fran­cis stepped into the sec­tion to say hel­lo and take questions.
And rules be damned, the secu­ri­ty duo stood up to get a bet­ter view.
The fail­ings of the Roman Catholic church — cler­i­cal sex abuse scan­dals, and the iniq­ui­ties of the res­i­den­tial schools in Cana­da that tore chil­dren from par­ents in an effort to wipe out cul­tur­al her­itage, out of touch poli­cies and rul­ings on birth con­trol, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and more — are legion.
But com­pare the exam­ples and pro­nounce­ments of Fran­cis to the greed and self-cen­tered mega­lo­ma­nia of mod­ern polit­i­cal lead­ers, their toad­ies and ultra-rich enablers, none of whom have shown them­selves wor­thy of even being named in the same sen­tence as him, and the need for the moral fig­ure­head role of Pope becomes clear.
It’s why in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, the less-than-fer­vent believ­ers among the tens of thou­sands who wait­ed hours in line to pay their last respects to Fran­cis, far out­num­bered the tru­ly faithful.
It’s also a fair bet a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of them weren’t even Catholic.
They’re sim­ply peo­ple who recog­nise the need for a ref­er­ence point on a moral compass.
                                 RIP POPE FRANCIS

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