His underappreciated plea for prayer and charity — and real love.
His underappreciated plea for prayer and charity — and real love
P ope Francis has died, and I have a regret. Early on in his pontificate, I wanted to write a book with his face on the cover. At the time, everyone seemed to be coming out with a book on the “Francis effect” or one or more aspects of the first pope from the Americas. More than one publisher had talked with me about the possibility of writing something about — or adjacent to — him. I never did. Truth be told: I think I killed all discussions with my buzzkill of a proposed title: “Why Is This Man Weeping?”
I think the pope would have been into my Debbie Downer–ing. Sure, he wrote an exhortation about the joy of the Gospel. But he was constantly, especially in the earlier years of his time on the global stage as the most recognizable spiritual leader alive, talking about weeping.
“All of us have felt joy, sadness, and sorrow in our lives,” but “have we wept during the darkest moment?” he asked in 2013, during one of the Easter season morning homilies in the chapel where he was living. “Have we had that gift of tears that prepare the eyes to look, to see the Lord?” Weeping, he said, “prepares us to see Jesus.” And Jesus “gives us the grace, to all, to be able to say with our lives, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ not because he has appeared but because ‘I have seen him in my heart.’ And this should be the testimony of our lives: ‘I live this way because I have seen the Lord.'” And seeing the Lord — receiving Him in the Eucharist — changes you, if you receive Him.
Honestly, behind the goofy book idea was gratitude: To say thank you to him for getting it. For getting us. For devoting himself to seeing and showing Christ to a people who are sometimes in utter agony.
The perfect cover photo of the book that will never be would have been Pope Francis’s embracing a man with a severe facial deformity during one of his audiences in Saint Peter’s Square. It seemed to sound an alarm: Love like Jesus, already. When Pope Francis visited the United States in 2025, the theme of the apostolic journey was: “Love is our mission.” He would often emphasize that the Beatitudes are a Christian’s identity card.
Fast forward to Covid. Even Donald Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, was affected by Pope Francis pastorally. And I’m not talking about the somewhat miraculous meeting they pulled off during the last full day of Pope Francis’s life on earth at the Vatican (during which Vance was seen somewhat uncharacteristically quiet and even childlike, in the best of ways). Earlier this year, Vance talked about being a scared new father at the start of the pandemic. As a baby Catholic — a recent convert — he was consoled by Pope Francis, who was in Saint Peter’s Square on a rainy Friday evening to pray for and with us. It was an empty square. All we could hear in the background were Italian emergency vehicles. It wasn’t a stretch to picture the reports we were reading of people dying in the hallways of Italian hospitals, as the system was overloaded by the need during the early pandemic. When Vance finally did meet Francis, he told the pope that he prays for him every day. I believe that. Even as Vance no doubt felt judged by Pope Francis, he also saw the spiritual fatherhood.
And now that I’ve started thinking about regrets, I have a few more. I wish Jennifer Fulwiler had had the opportunity to meet Francis. Jennifer is a former atheist; a wife and mom of six from Texas. Total computer coding nerd. In fact, in her youth, she probably could have been best friends with Carlo Acutis, an Italian millennial who was going to be canonized by Pope Francis the Sunday after Easter. He was a computer geek evangelist. Jennifer hosted a radio show on the Catholic Channel on Sirius (where I have a weekday feature). But her life took a turn (another one) when Kate Spade, the designer, died by suicide. “Just yesterday I was shopping for Kate Spade purses and paused to think what a perfect, problem-free life she must have,” Fulwiler wrote on social media in the summer of 2018, when the news broke. “Gosh, those kinds of assumptions are so wrong and dangerous.” Fulwiler is now a comedian. She was always funnier than most of the rest of us, but she decided to self-run a tour at serious venues around the country — as well as earn her cred at open mic opportunities, cheering along aspirants from all walks of life.
“I wear a Kate Spade bracelet every time I do standup comedy,” Fulwiler wrote in November 2019, alongside a picture of her onstage in a leopard-print sweater and jeans. “Putting on that bracelet before each show is always a meaningful moment, because it reminds me why I do this.”
Fulwiler was “gutted” when she learned that Spade had killed herself. “It reminded me that so many people who seem to have perfect lives actually have really deep, dark struggles that nobody sees. I had been dabbling with standup comedy for a while, but when I heard the news about her death, I instantly committed myself to it 100% and have not looked back since.”
“I know it sounds kinda ridiculous,” she wrote — and I can attest that it echoes what she says about it privately. “I realize there are more noble ways to make a difference in the world than to tell dumb jokes on a stage. But the truth is that this is the fuel that has driven me to power through everything I’ve had to overcome to launch this endeavor. Whenever I’m tempted to give up, I think of Kate Spade.” Jennifer reminds herself that “if sharing my failings through standup comedy adds even a little bit of hope into one person’s life who needs it – if laughing at me helps anyone at all feel a little less alone in the world – the entire thing has been worth it.”
Jennifer gets it. And if you’ve ever laughed so hard that you’ve started crying, or cried so deliriously that you may have appeared to be laughing, you know that the two emotions have something in common. They are releases when we don’t quite know what to say. Sometimes the pain is too deep, and words feel insufficient.
If Francis was the master of the image, it may have been his papal charism — to welcome people into the arms of the Gospel. Sort of how Saint Peter’s Square can look as though its colonnades are open wide to embrace you. Maybe you’re a baptized Catholic looking to return to a home you never really knew. You are despairing? You are looking for more? Come, meet Jesus.
Where we hope Pope Francis is now, there is no weeping. He cried his tears. And every report of Easter Sunday Masses and services that were packed and overflowing — including with people who are entering the Catholic Church — were flowers he had watered with those tears, which were even more powerfully prayers. And yet, he still implores us to see what’s right in front of — and within — us. Love more — like that Jesus we just celebrated on the last day of Pope Francis’s life.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.