Speaking to the Irish Independent, Dr McAleese said she had fully expected Easter 2025 to be Pope Francis’ last as head of the Catholic Church.
“When the balcony curtains opened at the end of the Easter Sunday Mass, we saw a very sick and very determined man. His face very bloated, his voice a hoarse whisper, his arm barely able to be raised in blessing,” she highlighted.
However, she added that the blessing was in “his being there on the day of the Resurrection”, and that the blessing was also in his “touring endlessly around the crowd, expending his last breaths in last smiles of encouragement and pastoral care.”
The former head of state said the Argentinian pontiff knew he was supposed to rest but he didn’t.
“He knew death was imminent. He was unafraid. He believed in life after death. He wanted us to believe in it too and to be unafraid.”
Discussing Pope Francis’ legacy after 12 years at the helm of the global Catholic Church, she said he “leaves more leaven than legacy, more things undone than done, and an internal existential mess still to be addressed by his successor, perhaps with the help of synodality or perhaps not. Time will tell.”
But she added that the world had heard his voice in defence of immigrants, the poor, the abused, the marginalised, the forgotten, the oppressed, the victims of war, the care for the earth, and above all hope.
“A good man who did what he did. It was less than he could, but more than his predecessors back to John XXIII,” she said.
Noting that Pope Francis died in the job and on the job, she said his legacy would be vigorously debated even as his coffin was being prepared and speculation about his successor mounted.
She paid tribute to Francis’ exercise of moral power in his insistence on the sacredness of human life, the sacredness of the earth and his promotion of interfaith dialogue, notably his joint promulgation with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad el-Tayeb of the 2019 Abu Dhabi Declaration on Human Fraternity.
Evaluating Francis’ papacy, and his contribution to internal reform to avert the collapse of the Church in the Western world, she highlighted his promotion of synodality, and how many felt he had opened up Church governance to women, and that he was a pope who did not judge homosexuals and had made efforts to promote greater protection of children within the Church.
However, she felt he had not substantially changed the Church’s magisterial teaching and therefore his legacy was ultimately “a flip-flop, perplexing legacy”.
She also lamented the glacial pace of reform in “outdated teachings” on priestly celibacy, human sexuality, human reproduction, access to the sacraments and the systemic exclusion of women from ordination.
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