Requiem for a Pope
William Cash• April 26, 2025
William Cash, former editor of the Catholic Herald, on Pope Francis’s funeral and legacy
The sight of Donald Trump and his Catholic First Lady being given a special dispensation to pray for a few moments before the coffin of Pope Francis was a reminder of how religion has returned not only to the forefront of US politics but is now centre stage in world affairs. This was made even more evident by the extraordinary sight of Trump and Ukraine’s President Zelensky sitting down in St Peter’s for a pre-funeral diplomatic chat, which Zelensky described as having the “potential to become historic”.
Joe Biden – a cradle Catholic who supports abortion – was also there, having been notably absent from the 2023 funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. The last US president to attend a papal funeral was George W. Bush for Pope St John Paul II – now raised to the altars of the Church – in 2005.
With St Peter’s basking in the deepest of clear blue skies, unscarred by the plume of airline traffic, President Trump’s presence in front of the Vatican’s phalanx of scarlet-clad cardinal-electors who concelebrated the majestic outdoor Mass is a reminder of how America, with its 60 million Catholics, has now become a global battleground for the Church and her future. The next pope will shape the faith of some 1.4 billion Catholics for a generation or more.
The cardinals resembled a praetorian guard of Roman senators during an interregnum vacuum of power. Trump had to be there, of course, as he was partly only in Rome thanks to the millions of diverse American Catholics watching the service back in the US. Some 59 per cent of US Catholics (especially Hispanics) voted for him.
Significantly, the first reading was in English by American Kielce Gussie, who works as a journalist at Vatican News. She read several verses from the Acts of the Apostles.
As a former editor of the Catholic Herald, I had a strange mix of feelings watching the Requiem Mass of a pope who liked to be known as the Great Reformer. Whilst in Rome back in late February, when Pope Francis was critically ill, I spent an hour inside the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore where he will be buried. He will be the first pope to be laid to rest outside the Vatican City walls for many years.
Having his tumultuous and controversial reign as pope end in what can only be described as an unfashionable budget-tourist neighbourhood of two-star hotels and kebab shops seems almost fitting. It is not a glitzy or wealthy area; it is poor and shabby. Other than the beautiful basilica – one of the Seven Basilicas that pilgrims hundreds of years ago visited on their way into Rome along the Via Francigena – there are few reasons to go there.
It was only when I found myself alone in the church, where I made my confession and attended Mass, that I learned another reason why Pope Francis may have chosen to be buried there. A small plaque revealed that it was in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore where St Ignatius Loyola – founder of the Jesuits – celebrated his first Mass on Christmas Day 1538.
Pope Francis, of course, was the first Jesuit pontiff; he was a bundle of paradoxes and contradictions but clearly a man bent on a holy mission. While he rests in the basilica, he will be keeping company with Rome’s famous Marian icon, Maria Salus Populi Romani, which he was especially moved by.
Pope Francis entrusted his apostolic journeys to the protection of the Salus Populi Romani, an icon that became a special friend as he prayed to her before setting out on all 47 of his papal journeys abroad and on his return to the Vatican – it is a Jesuit tradition. Ever since its foundation, the Society of Jesus has been especially devoted to this rarest of icons. Its extraordinary history explains why the church – one of the four papal basilicas of Rome – is regarded as perhaps the most important sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the Western world. Pope Gregory I (590–604) is said to have paused in prayer in front of the icon to implore for an end to the plague.
Popes have given generous donations to the icon as ex-voto offerings: from Clement VIII (1592–1605) to Gregory XVI (1831–1846) and Pius XII (1939–1958), pontiffs have given crowns and jewellery, praying for the intercession entrusted to Salus Populi Romani during various highly challenging times for the Church.
Again, this seems fitting. Pope Francis leaves a legacy of division as well as an almighty set of challenges to bring the Church back together. Catholics around the world, and especially in America, are looking for a pope to heal wounds – one who will unify the Church as it tries to overcome the daily siege of secularisation.
Throughout my time as Herald editor, it was impossible not to admit that Francis was blessed with a charismatic brand of unpredictable, almost fierce energy – often turning explosive – and had a special affinity with the young, poor, downtrodden and dispossessed. I certainly felt his holiness on the various occasions I was close to him, such as in St Peter’s Square when he blessed the crowd after the canonisation of St John Henry Newman. A friend recently described Francis to me as our “Good Shepherd tending to a flock under siege by packs of voracious wolves.” Whoever the next pope is, the first thing that must be done is to try to heal wounds.
Historians will surely regard Pope Francis as one of the most progressive, paradoxical and divisive popes in over 2,000 years of Christian history. The progressive nuances of his political playbook often showed what even his own British friend and biographer Austen Ivereigh referred to as a “certain sharpness, even bitterness” in his character when it came to score-settling or defying tradition, particularly in handing out red hats to those archbishops who might normally expect one.
He enjoyed being a papal “disruptor”, but his modernising agenda often seemed designed to punish traditionalists. My heart missed a beat when Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals, who led the papal funeral Mass, said in his measured and enlightened homily that Francis “opened his heart” to everybody. Some orthodox Catholic leaders – such as Cardinal Zen – might not agree, nor would the late Cardinal Pell, who was imprisoned on spurious claims of sex abuse whilst bravely trying to reform Vatican finances.
When Fiducia Supplicans, which was designed to appear as though it allowed the blessing of same-sex relationships, backfired, he had to row back and issue clarifications. It damaged his authority, and a 2024 Gallup poll found that 30 per cent of American Catholics had a “disfavourable” view of Pope Francis – the highest recorded.
Bishops in Africa – led by Cardinal Ambongo – jointly declared that they could not apply the “pastoral” blessings proposed in the Vatican declaration without causing scandal. As a result, Francis quickly adopted a volte-face and gave African bishops an exemption on this highly contentious issue. But the Holy See’s authority was damaged, and the “for clarity” memos became embarrassing.
Pope Francis also reopened the liturgy wars, which seemed unnecessary. Last year, the Herald was involved in getting an “Agatha Christie II” letter together after newly hardened restrictions were imposed on the Traditional Latin Mass. A 2024 variant of the original 1971 letter was published in The Times, with new signatures gathered thanks to the Catholic composer Sir James MacMillan and Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society.
As editor, I received many letters despairing of Pope Francis’s seemingly open hostility towards traditional Catholics, at a time when many younger Catholics were actively embracing the Latin Mass as a way of bringing fresh energy, vocations and numbers into the Church. I couldn’t understand – and still cannot – why the Pope embarked on a course of action that wilfully divided Catholic communities. “The Catholic Church is Being Ripped Apart,” wrote The New York Times.
Pope Francis often also seemed somewhat disconnected from his own priestly flock. Back in November 2023, I recall us publishing a remarkable poll of US Catholic seminarians undertaken by the Catholic University in Washington – it found that 80 per cent identified as “traditional” or orthodox, and rejected the progressive Francis agenda. It said that young liberal priests had “all but vanished”.
It seemed clear that the direction Pope Francis was trying to take the Church was at odds with the feelings and views of mainstream Catholics who believe the Magisterium has been harmed, even vandalised, by excessive progressiveness over the past 60 years – seemingly for its own sake and out of apathy towards traditional Church teaching and morally rooted Western culture.
As editor, I often felt that our mission was to “hold the old City gates” against the forces of progress, secularisation and the soulless digital age. I use the word City, in upper case, as I felt our team of scribbler knights and editors were actually – if it doesn’t sound too ridiculous – trying to hold the gates of the City of God. Sometimes, alas, as our Herald foot soldiers stood on the battlements, it felt as if the ancient gates of the Catholic Church were under siege by progressive forces within the Church itself.
Looking back, it feels a shame that rather too much of my time – and that of the brilliant Herald team, now led decisively by Serenhedd James – was spent channelling our intellectual and reporting energies into trying to fathom exactly what Francis was thinking, and often finding ourselves half-defending him in the spirit of constructive criticism rather than focusing on stories that celebrated the real meaning of the living faith of the Catholic spirit today, as interpreted through the Gospel and scriptures. We spent too much time, inevitably, on Pope Francis’s politicisation of faith.
Pope Francis will not be easily forgotten; he made his mark on the world, and worked to the very end, defying doctors’ orders. But he has left the Church – and the next Successor of Peter – with a range of challenges that are unenviable in their complexity. He was an agent of change, and saw himself as a force for spiritual good, driven by his Jesuit missionary zeal. He had a great passion for the poor and relinquished the red shoes.
It was almost impossible not to be moved when, at the end of the Requiem Mass, the Canticle of the Blessed Virgin Mary was said and we heard the fitting lines: “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.” But let us pray that the next pope will take the Church in a more conciliatory and less polarising direction.
(Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)