My sons are on spring break this week and I -- not needing to make the daily school drop-off -- was hoping to sleep in a little bit after a busy Easter Sunday.
Then my phone rang. Each of my boys has the same ringtone: It's Stewie from 'Family Guy' saying 'mom' over and over again. It gets your attention. Just before 5 am, it woke me up.
Bleary-eyed and with a serious case of bed-head, I answered it. It was my eldest, who happens to be in Rome this week on a school trip.
'Mom. The Pope died.'
I sat up, stunned.
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Just yesterday, I watched a live stream of St. Peter's Square, where my son attended Easter Sunday Mass. I not only spotted my son in the crowd -- he's insanely tall and was wearing a red shirt and tie -- but my son got what turned out to be one of the last pictures of Pope Francis.
I was right in front of a rather important individual. pic.twitter.com/l7PfWTLY2R
— Bob Uecker Fan (@goodolecharlie) April 20, 2025
I am not entirely surprised he died. Being Twitchy's resident Grim Reaper (by my count, I've written 47 obituaries for a wide variety of deaths, from Pearl Harbor veterans to celebrities to political figures and, now, a Pope), I pre-wrote most of Pope Francis' obituary on February 18, when his prognosis was grim.
When my son's trip to Rome was first planned, I was going to join as a chaperone. Only a handful of students signed up, and my presence was not needed, alas. But in the weeks up to the trip, we talked a lot about the Pope's health and the very real possibility he would die while my son was in Rome. I confess it's surreal it actually happened.
As I wrote in that obituary, Pope Francis lost most of his right lung as a young man following a respiratory illness. In February, he was diagnosed with a polymicrobial infection (a fancy way of saying his pneumonia was caused by bacteria, viruses, and fungi). Even the Pope said his time was limited, and -- after he seemed to improve -- it was revealed doctors considered stopping his treatment. My work in hospice taught me that patients know, and most terminal patients often have a rally before they pass.
It did not go unnoticed that Pope Francis was sans oxygen yesterday, something he'd been using regularly since discharge. My son mentioned how pale he looked in person and how weak his voice sounded.
He knew, I think, and wanted to say goodbye to the public.
I have been one of Pope Francis' biggest critics, and justifiably so. But today, I am not only praying for the repose of his soul and the outcome of the coming Conclave, I am coming to his defense against The Irish Times editor, who is attacking his solid record on women.
In many ways, Francis was a good and unpretentious man who eschewed personal pomp. But he did little to advance the position of women in the Catholic Church, writes Justine McCarthy.https://t.co/n6caUd9gpl
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) April 21, 2025
Despite his compassionate instincts on migration, the environment and pacifism, the pontiff shared a blind spot with the institution he led. He put women on a pedestal. There, they could do no harm.
“The church is woman. She is the bride of Jesus,” he declared more than once. Often, he said it in response to women’s demands to be allowed become priests.
'Womanhood speaks to us of fruitful welcome, nurturing and life-giving dedication. For this reason, a woman is more important than a man. But it is terrible when a woman wants to be a man,' he told students at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium last autumn. In protest, the college issued a press statement deploring Francis’s comments as 'conservative,' 'deterministic and reductive.' He responded that he had always extolled women’s 'dignity'.
'To masculinise women is not human. Women, I always say, are more important than men.'
...
For many women, his words were patronising. Former president Mary McAleese was one. In December 2022, she accused him of 'misogynistic drivel' after he rebuffed a suggestion that women were being 'deprived' by being excluded from the priesthood. 'The church is woman. The church is a spouse,' he had said in an interview with the Jesuit publication America. 'Therefore, the dignity of women is mirrored in this way ... That the woman does not enter into the ministerial life is not a deprivation. No. Your place is that which is much more important and which we have yet to develop, the catechesis about women in the way of the Marian principle.'
...
It is fine rhetoric to commend women as the best thing since sliced bread, but it rings hollow in the ears of those having to cope with bans on contraception, abortion, IVF and surrogacy, being made to feel inferior by institutional discrimination, and being told they should be grateful for the odd morsel of acknowledgment that they exist.
Whatever issues Pope Francis had with, say, traditional Catholics, the war in Gaza, or environmentalism -- he's right about women and their role in the Church.
It is not 'misogynistic drivel' to say that women cannot become priests. That has been the teaching of the Catholic Church since time immemorial, because the priest acts in persona Christi during the Mass -- literally, in the person of Christ -- as he reenacts the Last Supper and consecrates the Eucharist.
This may be news to McCarthy and McAleese, but the Eucharist is kind of an important part of the Catholic faith, and the rubrics about how Consecration is performed must be followed, or it's invalid. I suppose when you eschew other parts of Catholic teaching, doing away with the big ones is easy.
It's also not misogynistic drivel to say IVF, abortion, and surrogacy do more harm than good to women. Especially abortion and surrogacy. Because they do. It's especially rich to hear people who said Donald Trump was going to turn America into Gilead from 'A Handmaid's Tale' turn around and advocate for the abuse of women via surrogacy.
But I digress.
There was nothing Pope Francis, nor whoever his successor will be, can do to change where women sit in the Church. Abortion will never be allowed, and women will never become priests, no matter how hard they cosplay.
At the end of May, I will mark two decades since my conversion to Catholicism. I left the Lutheran Church of my upbringing because I believed in Catholicism, and because I had issues with my Lutheran Church that I could no longer tolerate in good faith. Rather than stick around at a church I disagreed with and make futile attempts to change it, I left for greener pastures. It's the height of hubris and ego to demand a church change to accommodate your beliefs when you're in the minority, especially since there are many flavors of Christianity out there.
I invite McCarthy, McAleese, and any other woman who felt slighted by Pope Francis to do the same. I hear the Anglicans need the numbers, anyway.
In the meantime, refrain from attacking the just-deceased Pope for being, you know, Catholic.
