J.P. Brammer writes an appreciation of the late pope: 'Francis advocated for the powerless, for those who have so little and yet are villainized by people in positions of authority.'
The late Pope Francis advocated for the powerless, for those who have so little and yet are villainized by people in positions of authority. Pope Francis met with Vice President JD Vance on Easter Sunday and then died. I'm not saying these things are related; I'm simply relaying the chain of events. Although the timing lent an additional element of cinema to the inherently dramatic event of a pope's death, the news could hardly be called a surprise. Headlines about the late pontiff's deteriorating health had been making the rounds, and anyway, given the criteria for the position, a papal passing is never too far-fetched. I've had plenty of time, then, to think about how I'd react to this moment. And yet, now that it's here, my feelings aren't what I expected. I guess I thought they'd be more mixed. Instead, I'm experiencing a simple, straightforward admiration for Pope Francis that I don't think I've ever felt for a world leader; as well as sadness for the loss of such a man, at a time when the very concept of principled leadership feels like it's on its deathbed. Like many lapsed Catholics, my relationship to the Church is complicated. I understood from an early age that I'd been born into one of the more intricate religions. I'd only completed one of the seven sacraments (baptism, the freebie) when I realized that, in most Christian denominations in Oklahoma, you could waltz right into a service held in a former furniture store or warehouse and say, "I go here now," and that was more or less that. Our ceremonies, meanwhile, were held in ornate buildings featuring marble and spires and headed up by men in robes, not a youth pastor with frosted tips and cargo shorts. I'm not saying our way was better, only that it would be substantially more difficult to make "The Da Vinci Code" out of, say, Methodism. Advertisement Yet I don't have too many nice things to say about the Catholic Church outside of the aesthetics, which are an unambiguous slay. The institution…