A Finger Pointing to the Moon: A Eulogy for Pope Francis

The following eulogy was delivered on Tuesday, April 29 by Anna Robertson, Director of Distributed Organizing for Discerning Deacons, during a memorial Mass for Pope Francis hosted by local Jesuit Works and the St. Joseph and St. Therese Parish Family. You can watch a video of Anna delivering the eulogy aquí or below the text of the reflection.

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In February, I was in Rome during Pope Francis’s hospitalization for double pneumonia. Things were hit or miss, and each morning brought the question of whether the pope would make it through the day. With democracy under threat and attacks on the vulnerable intensifying back home, I remember thinking, “We can’t lose you now!”

During those weeks, even from his hospital bed, Francis continued his unwavering moral leadership—calling on US bishops to walk with migrants, speaking truth to power, and maintaining his commitment to the people of Gaza and others suffering in conflict zones. In a world where leaders regularly demonstrate moral bankruptcy, he provided a courageous counterexample. 

“We can’t lose you now!” I protested. “But then again,” I thought, “it wouldn’t hurt to have you interceding for us in the Communion of Saints.” And that’s where we find ourselves now, isn’t it? Pope Francis has passed from this earthly life, and I, for one, have been bouncing back and forth between consolation and desolation, hope and fear. “We’ve lost you. What now?!”

There’s a Zen Buddhist expression that the Buddha’s teachings are like “a finger pointing to the moon.” They guide us, but sometimes we mistake the finger for the moon. So, too, with Pope Francis. When we find ourselves buried in worry for what comes next without him, it’s a sign we’ve gotten too focused on the finger (Pope Francis) and lost sight of the moon (the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ).

Last September, Discerning Deacons, where I serve on the staff team, helped to organize an encounter between Pope Francis and an international delegation of women serving in deacon-like ministries, which included two Canadian indigenous women. When Rosella, a survivor of residential schools, began speaking, Francis’ entire demeanor changed—he softened as all of his attention gathered with quiet reverence on Rosella. This was Francis at his best and most Christlike: not just intellectually committed to the peripheries but personally attuned to the human beings he encountered there, willing to be changed by their witness.

He sought to shape a Church that would be a witness to God’s mercy, made possible by his own experience of that mercy. “I am a sinner,” he famously proclaimed, insisting that from the depths of our own brokenness, we experience God’s mercy rushing in—”You are mine”—no questions asked. I suspect this disposition contributed to his ability to acknowledge some of the worst of the Church’s sins, such as his repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery that justified European colonization. He modeled a trust in God’s mercy that can offer the courage for prophetic action. If we truly believed in God’s unshakeable love and Christ’s resurrection, how might we be freed for action in the world?

Pope Francis wasn’t perfect, and as long as we remember that he was never the moon but the finger pointing to it, his imperfection need not create a crisis of faith. In Acts, people laid the sick in the streets hoping Peter’s shadow might fall on them. But Peter himself had said, “Why do you look so intently at us as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?”

A lo largo de su papado, el Papa Francisco nos recordó una y otra vez que nuestro Dios es un Dios de misericordia y encuentro, que nos acoge personalmente a los pecadores con los brazos abiertos y sin hacer preguntas, y que a su vez nos llama a salir de nosotros mismos e ir a las periferias, a los pobres, a los que sufren y a los oprimidos. Nos deja una Iglesia que, a través de la sinodalidad, es más capaz de acompañar a cada uno de nosotros en nuestra propia llamada a la misión, que es lo que la Iglesia siempre ha sido. Su legado nos invita a no venerarlo, sino a seguir lo que él nos indicó: hacia un Dios misericordioso que nos llama a las periferias, y una Iglesia donde el poder sirve en lugar de dominar y donde todos —todos, todos, todos— tienen un lugar y un hogar.

I will leave you with this quote from Pope Francis:

The Synod that we are now celebrating calls us to become a Church that gets up…A Church without chains and walls, in which everyone can feel welcomed and accompanied, one where listening, dialogue and participation are cultivated under the sole authority of the Holy Spirit. The Church that is free and humble, that “gets up quickly” and does not temporize or dilly-dally before the challenges of the present time. A Church that does not linger in its sacred precincts, but is driven by enthusiasm for the preaching of the Gospel and the desire to encounter and accept everyone. Let us not forget that word: everyone. Everyone! Go to crossroads and bring everyone, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the sick, the righteous and the sinner: everyone! This word of the Lord should continue to echo in our hearts and minds: in the Church there is a place for everyone.

This Church was never going to come into being through Francis alone. It always needed us, collaborating with the grace of the Holy Spirit. So let’s get to work.