Like much of the world, I was glued to my television this afternoon as you were introduced as Saint Peter’s successor. While I am a lifelong Baptist, my own personal faith always has been marked by a decidedly Catholic tinge, and I think it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to overstate the importance of the office of pope to the church, both Catholic and catholic.
You will be in my prayers as you help guide the church along the path set for it by Christ.
Chris Conley
I listened closely to your message. I was deeply moved by it and found it extremely profound despite its brevity.
I heard you share your benediction and blessings — your prayerful invocation of Christ’s holy and sacred “peace that passes all understanding” — not just with your fellow Catholics or even just your fellow Christians, but with and for “all the people, wherever they are.” With “all the peoples, and all the earth.”
I heard you prophetically declaring to that decidedly universal audience a God who loves “without any limits or conditions.” I cannot think of a message that is more truthful or that is more needed in our world today.
As people of the gospel, sometimes Christians can be heard speaking something that does not sound very much like good news. Thank you for your very different example.
As you reminded us, “all of us,” of God’s love, I heard your call for us — a call to unity and to mission. Importantly, I heard you calling for others to join you in a mission that is inherently progressive because it is inherently Christian: the mission of bringing Christ’s light into the world and of building bridges that unite us and bring us all together to Christ and his peace, not walls that separate us from each other and, in so doing, separate their builders from God.
“I heard you calling for others to join you in a mission that is inherently progressive because it is inherently Christian.”
As a fellow Christian, and as a fellow American dismayed by much of the current discourse in the United States surrounding the issue of migration, I can only offer my own amen to that calling.
I was touched by your clear vision of a church, both Catholic and catholic, journeying together in active service of the type of justice and peace that is “faithful to Jesus Christ” in that it makes “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” an announcement of missional purpose, not one of mere aspirational hope.
As a white American evangelical, I worry that too many Christians are so fixated on a future in heaven that they cannot see we are called to live out our faith here and now on earth. That we are called to respond to the bruised and damaged world around us with more than our “thoughts and prayers.” That we are instead called to sweat with those who labor and bleed with those who suffer. To break bread with the hungry and share our roof with the homeless.
Just as some heretics in the past lost sight of Christ’s humanity in the bright light of his divinity, too many Christians today seem to have lost sight of the humanity in and around us. I loved Pope Francis in part for his tireless efforts to remind us of the human dimension of our divine calling as Christians. I was thrilled to hear you strike such a similar tone, and to do so as a matter of first importance.
Only after hearing all these things did I hear you turn to your fellow Catholics, to the “Church of Rome,” to offer it your “special greeting” and to remind it that the church, to be truly catholic, must be a people of bridge-building dialogue and open hearts and arms, one that doesn’t exist in isolation but in presence and in love with “all who need our charity.”
It was only upon hearing your special word of greeting to your fellow Catholics that the truly ecumenical nature of your earlier comments fully struck me. I would not presume to know your personal thoughts, but what I heard in my own heart was a speaker keenly aware of his Catholicism, but equally aware that even above and before his Catholicism, as cherished as it might be, is his Christianity and his humanity — a humanity shared with all the world’s people, each made by a loving God with God’s own hands in God’s own holy image.
“I was deeply touched when you spoke in Spanish to your beloved flock in Peru.”
I cannot imagine a truer mark or stamp for a follower of the Christ of the kenosis who did not consider his own divinity an obstacle to his self-sacrificial love for humanity.
I was deeply touched when you spoke in Spanish to your beloved flock in Peru — to brothers and sisters who ministered to you as you ministered to them, accompanying and helping you as you travelled along your own path to Christ and his kingdom even while you were directing and assisting them along the way.
I hope that in the coming days and years of your papacy you will help some of our struggling fellow Americans revisit the way they view the world around us. I think we are conditioned to see the world as an “us” and a “them” constantly locked into a zero sum competition, and to see the world as one marked by scarcity not abundance.
Thank you for living, and speaking, out a very different truth.
Last, I could not help but hear an echo of the words of our Savior and Christ from the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew as you reminded the church that its walk must bring it near in love especially “to those who are suffering.” Again, I can only share my feeble amen, both for our shared church, and for me as I continue to struggle and limp along our shared journey.
With all of my prayers and love, I wish you the very best! May God bless and keep you. May Christ whisper to you the words he would have you share with his flock and give power to your voice. And may the Holy Spirit strengthen you for your journey and fill you with God’s comforting presence even in the most difficult challenges that await you.
Chris Conley is an attorney and graduate of the University of Georgia and of the Emory University School of Law. He and his wife, Mary, live in Athens, Ga., where both are members and deacons at First Baptist Church. They have one son, Aaron, who also is an attorney, and a miniature schnauzer, Oso, whose career path remains uncertain.
Related articles:
Pope Leo XIV is likely to continue the Francis agenda
Some Baptist leaders hopeful about Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo selection hints moderate direction for Rome | Analysis by Tyler Hummel