Just before noon Mass on Monday, the bells of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Providence tolled 88 times. One for every year of Pope Francis’s life.
Inside, right next to the altar, there’s now a portrait of the holy father draped in black. A steady stream of mourners kneel there and say a prayer. Among them, Diane Constantino.
“It’s a sad day because he’s passed, but he died on a beautiful day,” she said. “It’s the first Monday of Easter, Easter Monday, so it’s a time for joy.
“We hope that we get a beautiful, holy man as the next pope and we can only wish for the best.”
Pope Francis never set foot in Rhode Island. But his moral leadership resonated here, in the most Catholic state in the nation. A lot of Rhode Islanders admired him.
“He had the common touch,” said Monsignor Robert Mancini, the rector of the cathedral. “People just loved him. They loved the Pope anyway, but when someone is as personable and as down to earth as he definitely was, it’s easy to love.”
But Pope Francis brought something more: compassion for the most vulnerable among us and a willingness to speak truth to power.
This past weekend, backed up by the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, he pointedly reminded Vice President J.D. Vance about the moral duty to protect the dignity of migrants.
He also cared deeply about the plight of civilians in harm’s way in Gaza. The pope’s daily routine, starting October 9, 2023, included a WhatsApp call with the last Catholic parish in Gaza. These nightly calls continued even during his recent hospitalization for pneumonia.
For Palestinians in Gaza, they were a lifeline, a vital reminder the hardships they are facing have not gone unnoticed.
Former Rhode Island attorney general Arlene Violet, a former nun, said she hopes the next pope will carry on that tradition. As she sees it, the most important part of the job description is to speak with moral authority. The pageantry of the papacy is secondary to that deeper purpose.
“I mean you’re an anachronism, unless you’re willing to speak the very message you’ve been called to lead on — that is, the message of the gospel, the message of Jesus Christ,” Violet said.
A global pastor with a lasting legacy
From the moment he stepped out on the balcony in March 2013, Pope Francis cast himself not so much as a theologian or a defender of orthodoxy.
He saw himself, first and foremost, as a pastor.
“He was a man of the people,” said Walter Richardson, a parishioner at Christ the King in West Warwick. “Despite his age limitations, he traveled all over the place, which was so important. Certainly, he had his finger on the pulse of the Catholic Church.”
As Monsignor Mancini put it, “He is the father of our family. So we’re grieving like any other family would grieve at the loss of their father.”
Pope Francis brought new leadership to the Diocese of Providence during the final days of his papacy, appointing Bishop Bruce Lewandowski to fill the seat left vacant when Bishop Richard Henning moved up to Boston.
Bishop Lewandowski speaks Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English. His work in Baltimore has tended to focus on immigrant communities. He seems to share not only Pope Francis’s passion for social justice, but also his humble approach.
At his first press conference, April 8th, Lewandowski asked the audience for restaurant recommendations and urged people to use his first name, calling him “Bishop Bruce.”
“There are two things about Pope Francis that I find inspiring and instructive to my ministry,” he explained. “One is his accessibility (and) closeness to people. The other part of this is the call to live the gospel with joy.”
Father Robert Lacombe noted the appointment could mean Pope Francis has a lasting impact for the local church, just as Saint Pope John Paul II did 20 years ago. One of his last appointments was Bishop Thomas Tobin, who shared John Paul’s values and was sometimes defiant of Francis.
During his homily at the cathedral’s noon mass, Father Robert Lacombe noted the similarity in the timing of these two prelates taking office, nearly 20 years apart.
“We don’t call that a coincidence,” he said. “We might call that providential.”
The suggestion being that Bishop Lewandowski, like Bishop Tobin, could become a sort of living extension of the man who put him in office, no matter who the next pope might be.
Many Rhode Island Catholics were also struck by another parallel with Pope John Paul II, who struggled visibly through one last Easter before finally leaving this world. He died six days after Easter in 2005.
On Sunday, Pope Francis’s last words to the faithful were, “Cari fratelli e sorelli, Buona Pasqua!”
“Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter!”
The crowd in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday burst into applause. Some burst into tears. Many here in Rhode Island were moved by that moment, too.
Said Arlene Violet: “I love that he went with his boots on. That was so good that it happened that way. For him to come out and wish everybody happy easter and to love one another. That’s my kind of pope!”
