Francis’s papal kindness offers an enduring lesson in secular power.

One needn’t be Catholic, Christian or even remotely religious to grasp the depth of humility and kindness symbolized in the act of washing another person’s feet. It’s an incredibly intimate gesture from one adult to another, and one that forces a posture of, if not subordination, at least empathy and generosity. In ways both real and metaphoric, those who stand the tallest are the ones who must bend most deeply. And so the images of the white-haired Pope Francis — who died Monday at 88 in Vatican City — kneeling at the feet of prisoners and migrants, and gently cleansing and kissing their feet, are ones that will endure.

At a time when leaders are prone to boasting of their tremendous power, all while seeking ways to accumulate ever more, the former leader of the Catholic Church with its 1.4 billion members eschewed the idea that he was somehow better, wiser and more deserving than his fellow man. His willingness to kneel before the least of us is a lesson in what it means to be great. Francis offered unqualified respect to these individuals, not because they had earned it by words or actions, but because they were human. That’s all that was required.

Strip away Francis’s simple clerical robes, the holy scripture, the complicated history. What remains is a form of care and tenderness that is rare but need not be.

As the memories and accolades flow in advance of his funeral on Saturday, people have remarked on his humility, the ease with which he communicated, his ready smile, his ability to joke with both statesmen and children. In other words, people admired his refusal to allow his rarefied position to isolate him from the common good. They marveled at his ability to treat all with an even hand, rather than with petulance and distemper. They liked that he was not visibly enamored with the treasures and the plunder of the Vatican. He seemed to recognize that no matter how many layers of gilding encapsulated the Catholic Church, none of that could patch over its failures. Only a leader who was willing to get out there and do the work — awkwardly, imperfectly, honestly — could stir change.

In 2023, in a Holy Thursday ritual symbolizing humility, Pope Francis washed and wiped dry the bare feet of a dozen residents of a Rome juvenile prison, assuring them of their dignity and telling them “any of us” can fall into sin.

These are not the typical traits of politicians, captains of industry and self-made men and women. Most of them are not known to readily admit being wrong; they avoid apologizing for their weaknesses and wrongdoing. They spin, deflect and rationalize spurious beliefs. And much of the world smiles on them for being tough or determined or simply rich. Francis stood mostly alone in the limelight of global adoration for the extraordinary feat of remaining compassionate and humble against all odds.

Francis didn’t transform the doctrine of the church. His open-mindedness was most evident in his willingness to listen and to engage. Whether that was good or bad for Catholicism depends on the way in which Christians want religion to be an organizing principle for their life. Is it a set of rules that one either follows or breaks — and thus one is either good or bad, sinner or not? Or is religion a fundamental understanding that there’s value in each person, and the key point of this life is to maximize that value as best as one can?

Francis made it clear that he was a man and not a god. He was imperfect. His flaws and his willingness to admit them were his strength. Who was he to judge? He asked that question as he reflected on the relationship between the church and those who identified as part of the LBGTQ community.

“If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?” he said in 2013. “They shouldn’t be marginalized.”

He spoke those words to a group of reporters with almost a shrug, as if this was obvious. And now, in 2025, when those who are different in a multitude of ways from a predetermined norm — but especially those who are transgender — face vituperation and violence, Francis’s nonchalant observation echoes with a bracing compassion. He used his bully pulpit to extend a hand to his neighbors. Plenty of the powerful took no lesson from that example. In 2025, many of those whose voice carries far and wide can’t seem to resist their ability to judge, to assess blame, to point fingers and to cast others out. In his Easter message, ultimately his final public statement, he observed: “There can be no peace without freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and respect for the views of others.”

In Francis’s last days, his struggle was apparent. His frailness was so human despite all the security and protocol around him. He was an elderly man, who’d come close to dying during an extended stay in the hospital for respiratory ailments, who was recuperating at home and trying mightily not just to stay alive, but to be present. He appeared in civilian mufti earlier in April, greeting visitors in St. Peter’s Basilica — an old man in a wheelchair draped in a striped wrap. He was using oxygen to help his breathing.

His doctors had told him to rest. But he was out in the world, a place where billions listened to what he had to say and watched the way in which he lived. Many of those people were faithful Catholics, solemn believers who came to him in search of comfort or guidance or something that’s almost impossible to put into words. But plenty of others observed him as merely a man whose respect for life wasn’t predicated on a presumption of innocence but on a belief in redemption. In a violent world, with so much weaponry already constructed from metal, plastic and chemicals, he tried mightily to keep modern religion from being used as a spear, especially when the point of it was aimed at the weak.

“Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as people and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other people and groups,” Francis wrote in a February letter to U.S. bishops. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ … that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

“But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations,” he continued, “easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.”

Even as Francis stood near the pinnacle of the church hierarchy, he refused the notion that those at the top of the heap deserve to stride about with the greatest bluster. Instead, they are the very ones who should be giving comfort to those who can barely stand on their own tired, aching feet.

Washington Post, April 23, 2025

Column by Robin Givhan

What touched YOU the most about Pope Francis?

THE MORE YOU STUDY THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE MORE YOU WILL BE IMPRESSED WITH HIS ABSOLUTE, GENUINE LOVE FOR ALL OTHERS.

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