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Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
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(*Edited in response to community feedback.)
> This great basin of water, the cradle of so many civilizations, now looks like a mirror of death. Let us not let our sea (mare nostrum) be transformed into a desolate sea of death (mare mortuum). Let us not allow this place of encounter to become a theatre of conflict. Let us not permit this “sea of memories” to be transformed into a “sea of forgetfulness”. Please brothers and sisters, let us stop this shipwreck of civilization!
> We are in the age of walls and barbed wire. To be sure, we can appreciate people’s fears and insecurities, the difficulties and dangers involved, and the general sense of fatigue and frustration, exacerbated by the economic and pandemic crises. Yet problems are not resolved and coexistence improved by building walls higher, but by joining forces to care for others according to the concrete possibilities of each and in respect for the law, always giving primacy to the inalienable value of the life of every human being
Worth reading in full https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2021/de...
Definitely not surprising hearing a pope using it in a speech.
Not sure about Gen Z and younger people though.
Out of curiosity, Who hosts the holy servers?
Again I don't want to demean anyone's death.
The Dicastery for Communcation [0]. They're ASN 8978, and geolocation for all their IP addresses says that they're actually in the Vatican city state.
https://cruxnow.com/church/2015/02/does-the-pope-write-his-o...
> My suspicion is that Pope Francis may have more to do with crafting his own speeches than did previous pontiffs, because Pope Francis’ talks strike me as more spontaneous, conversational, and unfiltered.
Anyway, a public figure is still giving the direction and “plot points” to their speech writer.
Even if Pope Francis gave the charge of writing his speeches to someone else, that would be an heavy responsability for that person.
* As Pope Francis noted, the machine “makes a technical choice among several possibilities based either on well-defined criteria or on statistical inferences. Human beings, however, not only choose, but in their hearts are capable of deciding."
* In light of this, the use of AI, as Pope Francis said, must be “accompanied by an ethic inspired by a vision of the common good, an ethic of freedom, responsibility, and fraternity, capable of fostering the full development of people in relation to others and to the whole of creation.”
* As Pope Francis observes, “in this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity.”
* As Pope Francis observes, “the very use of the word ‘intelligence’” in connection with AI “can prove misleading”
[1] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...
Yes, LLMs are more about knowledge than intelligence. AK rather than AI.
Though intelligence is possibly even less well defined than knowledge, so it's hard to tell.
We ought to avoid anthropomorphizing LLMs. It is muddle headed.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2023-12/vati...
I question both the organ and the action.
Are we sure? No. But neither should you be. Question but be open to answers you may not expect.
If Francis held Thomistic views on the subject, then even the brain, while needed for human intelligence, does not suffice for its operation, as functions like abstraction require the intellect, which cannot be entirely physical in operation since form cannot exist in matter without also instantiating the form, something by definition opposed to abstraction.
But as for the quote, it's incredibly clear how little empathy most people have towards others, to the point where AI will easily out-empathy them, both as a conversationalist and as a robotic assistant (such as a 24/7 robot nurse with no other patients).
> According to Archbishop Diego Ravelli, Master of Apostolic Ceremonies, the late Pope Francis had requested that the funeral rites be simplified and focused on expressing the faith of the Church in the Risen Body of Christ.
Always struck me as a simple man and that likely contributed to people liking him more when compared to his predecessors. RIP.
He spoke more openly about issues like poverty, climate change, and inclusion–his encyclical LAUDATO SI’ is a great read–, and he often used language and gestures that the "common man" could relate to.
Perhaps the way he dressed so simply–with the plain white cassock–also emphasized his overall approach: less focus on grandeur, more on service.
Elevating Escrivá to sainthood and creating a personal prelature for Opus Dei handed them unmatched moral authority—authority they used to push back on women’s autonomy, justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and quietly influence politics from Spain to Latin America.
Popularity doesn’t erase the impact of empowering hard‑right movements that have harmed lives across the globe.
Even non-catholics like me could sympathize with the dismay of so many catholics at many of the positions/blunders of Francis.
Pope JPII was for my southern European social democratic Catholic family much more polarizing than Pope Francis. Pope Francis had politics that are mainstream and not at all controversial in my part of the world. Whereas JPII was perceived as the guy who was buddies with Reagan and Bush and a general supporter of American foreign policy. To what extent that was a fair assessment, I do not want to comment, since he did try to speak against the invasion of Iraq.
None the less, it is not true that Pope Francis is more popular with non-Catholics (Reagan, Bush and most of the US were not Catholic and big supporters of JPII). It was also JPII that started the interfaith dialogue. It is also not true that Pope Francis is unpopular with Catholics.
There are Catholics all across the globe with vastly different opinions on all kinds of issues.
As a kinda-sorta Christian (raised Catholic), I've long admired the Jewish approach to the Mourner's Kaddish prayer said when a loved one dies: It's not about the deceased, nor even about death — it's about G-d. It starts out (in English translation): "Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will."
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/text-of-the-mourner...
It fictionalizes and sensationalizes some details; and that’s ok because its purpose is to make you feel exactly the way you feel about it.
Pope Francis was a wonderful steward of Christianity and espoused the virtues that anyone would want to see in their religious leaders: humility, grace, an openness to listen and a strong voice against even prelates in his own church that are xenophobic or nationalistic. He wanted us to welcome all and to live as the bible said Jesus did.
The fear I have is that each swing of the pendulum goes in two directions. He was far more “liberal” than the conservative Catholic prelates of the USCCB, and I fear his actions — including rightfully limiting the Latin mass, will force the church to swing in the other direction and give in to the illiberal forces that divide us.
If I were to say one pope that many have been fond of, it's probably John Paul II.
I will always applaud a person who retreats — even just a little — from dogma and fanaticism.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/29/187009384/...
It's quite a bit above our pay grade to proclaim categorically who supposedly cannot be redeemed; it verges on blasphemy.
Cf. Job. 38:
1. Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?
3 "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
5 "Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 "On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—
7 "while the morning stars sang together and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?"
(etc.)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038&versio...
Which is "interesting", considering how much of the New Testament is about redemption and reaching out to outsiders. Aren’t we all supposed to be God’s creation, and wasn’t Jesus supposed to teach us about salvation, redemption and forgiveness?
(And by "interesting", I mean that it is yet another of example cognitive dissonance amongst fundamentalists. If anyone can be redeemed, it implies that atheists can, as well.)
> I will always applaud a person who retreats — even just a little — from dogma and fanaticism.
Indeed. He was not perfect but he was better than most. I hope the next one won’t be a catholic version of patriarch Kirill.
gifted all women indissoluble marriage, which was practiced by the Roman aristocracy as "confarreatio".
This was trashed as soon as possible, and the trashing was billed as great progress.
I'd researched popes' policies and statements toward the poor some years back, and he really had no peer going back centuries.
Partial exception in the late 1900s, under Leo XIII (1878--1903), in the encyclical Rerum novarum.
But yes, one thing is statements another is actions, regarding the latter the Latin Church's actions have often not been in keeping with their lofty writings.
lots of christians didn't like him, considering he was too progressive
This could also explain why some simple creatures, with no real conscious experience, don’t overpopulate heaven or Hell: they have no souls with which to populate it with. They are just matter, temporarily constructed into some form resembling a living thing.
So hell is empty, and evil is the result of soulless automatons created by accident in our world. So if you die and nothing else happens for you after, then you were a p-zombie, with no soul.
Perhaps he chose the “god is good” over the “god, despite being able, will not prevent billions of reasonable and decent people from suffering eternally” fork in the road. You can’t logically choose both, and if you’re the pope, you probably had better have a belief in the goodness of god.
There is an older stream of christian thought on heaven and hell, still somewhat present in eastern christianity, that they are not separate places people are sent to.
In this view they are the same thing, simply the direct experience of the unattenuated light of god. A repentant person will experience this as mercy and all encompassing love, an unrepentant one will experience it as excruciating shame and terror. But they are both getting the same "treatment" so to speak.
Hell, whatever it is, is where people end up when they'd rather be there than be with Christ.
God will never force you to love Him and accept Him. He gives you the choice, the rest is up to you.
Is this a way of saying I don’t believe there is a place like hell?
As a Catholic, I often found myself both inspired and unsettled by him. His theology wasn’t always systematic, but it was deeply Ignatian, rooted in discernment, encounter, and movement toward the margins. Francis often chose gestures over definitions, and presence over proclamations. That doesn't always scale well in a Church that spans continents, cultures, and centuries.
His legacy will be debated. But I think what made him so compelling, especially to someone who lives in the modern world but tries to be formed by ancient faith is that he forced us to confront the tension between tradition and aggiornamento not as an abstract debate, but as something lived.
He reminded me that the Church isn’t a museum, nor is it a startup. It’s something stranger.. the best I can described it is a body that somehow survives by dying daily.
- Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.
It seems Pope Francis had his share of critics—those who opposed his beliefs or feared his vision. And yet, he stood firm and made people think. In that sense, perhaps even his enemies affirmed the impact he was making.
"Opponent"? "Antagonist"?
I think the problem with enemies is 1) vindictiveness and 2) ineffectiveness.
Everyone dislikes some actions and ideas, and thus dislikes people who express those actions and ideas. Every group has enemy groups, who they oppose and who oppose them, even if they're not explicitly named.
A problem is when people start opposing others who don't express the actions and ideas they oppose, because they resemble the people who do. Anger generalizes, sometimes to ethnic groups, sometimes to the entire world.
Another problem is when people attack others in ways that don't stop their actions or ideas. Violence doesn't seem to promote its ideas in the long term, and it can backfire. Jesus might be the greatest example of this.
The way to kill actions is through counter-actions, and the way to kill ideas is through counter-ideas. These counter-actions and counter-ideas can be ugly or violent, or they can be pretty or pacifist. But every action or idea opposes another action or idea, which could be considered an "enemy".
At the "world leader" level it's impossible to do a job in a way where everyone will think it's a good job, you're always going to piss off one group or another with practically any action in any direction.
IMO he took on one of the hardest tasks at the church which is "modernization". The way I look at it is the church is so old that it constantly needs modernization. But that comes at a steep cost as while you are attracting new parishioners, many of your older ones will scoff at the changes. And because of the church's age, this is something that must be done over and over and over again.
"In families, there are difficulties. In families, we argue; in families, sometimes the plates fly...In families, there are difficulties, but these difficulties are overcome with love. Hate doesn’t overcome any difficulty."
Naturally, the tiny but vocal minority of people who attended the TLM found Francis very activating. But it's important to know that those people are not broadly representative of the church as a whole. Most Catholics I know would barely offer a shrug if you told them (they certainly wouldn't already know) that Francis had restricted the TLM.
I think Pope Francis was committed to trying to dig through some of the shell to get to the godly bits of the religion, and this is deeply laudable. It was frankly weird to see the opposition to some of his seemingly obviously Christian stances. He'd say something like "I guess I don't really approve of gay people marrying, but I think we should be focusing on all of these suffering and dying poor people?" and then a bunch of people would bitch about it.
I'm not convinced that every Catholic you know constitutes a representative sample of Catholics worldwide.
It does make the news. This is something we should be aware of. Here's just one such story: https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pope-francis-samesex-bles..., not to mention the recent spats from VPOTUS.
https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Giussani's%20errors/...
I would like to know more. My impression is that most Christian institutions have long ago disentangled from scientific debate - providing interpretative value rather than alternative science. This is part of a larger trend to focus their scope and mission in modern life. Have the last few popes made comments on scientific issues?
(The exception is evangelical Americans.)
I know several priests who are scientists or teachers/professors.
Evangelicals have a simpler dogma where the individual minister or church has more sway (hence the joke about the man on a desert island with a hut, a church, and a church he doesn’t go to). It’s a more populist form of worship, which has ups and downs.
I found it inspiring. I'm genuinely sad about the Pope's passing. He was a man who followed the teachings as he understood them.
As such, they've traditionally been more open, and a disproportionately high proportion of Jesuits have been scientists. At one point about 1/3 of all members of the Jesuit order were scientists.
"The pope's astronomer"[1] is a jesuit, and the Jesuits have a long tradition in astronomy, with the result of numerous lunar craters (e.g. McNally) and several asteroids named after Jesuits. More than once, Jesuits have also tangled with the question of extraterrestial life, e.g.[2a] - a question fraught by the question it would raise about what it would mean for belief [2b].
Wikipedia also has a long list of Catholic clergy scientists[3]. When reading it, it's worth considering that if anything they had more influence as teachers (e.g. Descartes, Mersenne were both educated at Jesuit colleges), and that the order ranged from low thousands to a few tens of thousands during the centuries the list covers.
With respect to the last few popes, the most notable recent intervention is Pope Francis making clear that he saw the theories of evolution and the Big Bang as real[4]. But already in 1950, even the deeply conservative Pope Pius XII, while expressing hope that evolution would prove to be a passing fad, made clear that catholic doctrine officially did not conflict with evolution. John Paul II formally acquitted Galileo, and stated that "truth cannot contradict truth", when talking about evolution vs. catholic doctrine. [5]
[1] https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/07/27/vatican-observatory...
[2a] https://aleteia.org/2020/08/28/jesuit-astronomer-calls-extra...
[2b] https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/men-black-belief-aliens-no...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scient...
[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis...
[5] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/vatican...
But the College has a mind of its own, and there is going to be some furious horse trading happening behind the scenes to steer the result in one direction or the other.
I don't think that was necessarily what he was doing.
He tried to rebalance it to include a lot more cardinals from the developing world–who on average tend to be more conservative, at least on some issues. He arguably avoided the more outspoken conservatives, but he would have caught up a lot of quieter conservatives in the process.
Whereas, if he just wanted to stack it with progressives, he would have focused on adding cardinals from the developed world, where Catholic progressivism is arguably the strongest.
Starting from his chosen name, since Franciscans and Jesuits have not been very close historically (although the founder of the latter was inspired by St. Francis).
From what I read, it's exactly as you say: people expect either a reaction swing to conservativism or a a big swing towards modernity. Pope Francis was old and could not do much, but he tried to set a path for the latter, afaiu.
Those are all political terms for politicians and their platforms or parties. They do not translate to Catholic doctrines or teachings. Y’all are simply parroting what the lamestream media wants to impose, a political veneer on non-politicians who are shepherds, pastors, teachers.
And the Catholic Church exists on the world stage, and is involved in politics. Its leadership can be and is political.
Bishops and Cardinals are very much political animals.
This is a Catholic media group. It uses the words as above. Think Karl Rahner or Yves Congar.
In the US, reactionaries are dumping lots on money on the church, and many bishops have embraced right wing politics, stupidly aligning with evangelicals who deeply despise Catholicism in the process.
Some of the moves made are comically dumb. The archbishop of New York decided to make a big show about denying communion to the notoriously vindictive former governor of the state. That governor subsequently changed the look back period for civil sex abuse lawsuits, which has bankrupted or is in the process of bankrupting dioceses as they are forced to own up to their failures to protect children.
His speech yesterday (he dictated it I guess) was very very political, not on the usual level, felt like a finally "all out" for me.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/urbi/do...
The salient parts that support your view:
---
There can be no peace without freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and respect for the views of others.
Nor is peace possible without true disarmament! The requirement that every people provide for its own defence must not turn into a race to rearmament. The light of Easter impels us to break down the barriers that create division and are fraught with grave political and economic consequences. It impels us to care for one another, to increase our mutual solidarity, and to work for the integral development of each human person.
I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the “weapons” of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death!
May the principle of humanity never fail to be the hallmark of our daily actions. In the face of the cruelty of conflicts that involve defenceless civilians and attack schools, hospitals and humanitarian workers, we cannot allow ourselves to forget that it is not targets that are struck, but persons, each possessed of a soul and human dignity.
The sentiment sounds great but I think we now see in the real world with Ukraine that if you rely [too much] on others (re: US), you have a real problem if they are no longer there for you. Peace through strength is real.
But Love him or Hate him. Rest in peace.
>> Love has triumphed over hatred, light over darkness and truth over falsehood.
This is interesting since I thought he was displeased about recent world events (e.g. Trump's election, shift towards deglobalization, ...).
I sincerely hope the new pope will be as human, humble and pushing for renewal as Francis.
I think that after such a pope, people won't be satisfied with just another symbolic figure with empty gestures, hard conservative views and no real substance.
The world would be better off if many a leader these days, religious or otherwise, would be a bit more like him.
> Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, the Vatican has announced. - Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to lead the Catholic Church in March 2013 after Pope Benedict XVI stood down.
> May the principle of humanity never fail to be the hallmark of our daily actions. In the face of the cruelty of conflicts that involve defenceless civilians and attack schools, hospitals and humanitarian workers, we cannot allow ourselves to forget that it is not targets that are struck, but persons, each possessed of a soul and human dignity.
Yes. I agree with you and hope so too.
I understand that a leader of an organization that acts on historic time scale might be reluctant to take sides in contemporary conflicts. Nevertheless always washing your hands in every conflict is not morality, it is cowardice. It enables evil and is in direct conflict with "narratives and morals matter".
How to describe such a unique pontiff? Coming from "the end of the world," as he said, he truly represented a peculiar voice.
He stands alone as the greatest international symbol of our age, an embodiment of its most salient characteristics. A man whose presence will remain indelible in our minds, and who really made his presence known in the Church.
His fierce defense of his ideas, no matter what, marked the Church of our time forever. Catholics will never forget him. Traditional Catholics, in particular, will always vividly remember his legacy.
May he rest in peace.
source: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2025/04/francis-pope-who-w...
Surprised noone here has mentioned yet that Pope Francis was only the second pope ever with a social-media strategy (Pope Benedict was the first, in 2012 [0][1], and didn't get as much traction as Pope Francis).
"The Most Followed World Leaders on Social Media 2022" [2] ranked Pope Francis 3rd in 2022 with 53m followers, which is/was still low compared to singers, sports stars, celebrities and tech figures. It would obviously be crass and reductive to try to estimate the Pope's impact this way (and not, say, country visits, appointments, encyclicals, other official statements, reaction/criticism by other religous/political figures, administrative and legal actions, measures of popularity by specific groups, by factions, by country, by politics or religion), but as traditional media channels become less relevant, the Vatican will presumably have to move with the times, as in many other ways.
Maybe the better question (as Dick Cheney would have put it) is which voices do/don't determine the media narrative on Pope Francis' papacy?
As to your take (that he was wasn't that far out of line with Catholic doctrine, but often portrayed as more liberal and constantly taken out of context), that's the debate we're largely about to see happen.
[0]: "Pope Joins Twitter: Benedict XVI's Screenname Will Be @Pontifex" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4897631
[2]: https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/the-most-followed-world...
Maybe he was merely good at pointing out the obvious, maybe it's what the church needed/needs?
Hopefully, the next pope will also champion unity, inclusivity, and peace, and oppose religious dogmatism. This will define the future of Christianity. Many challenges remain for the institution.
May we live his consistent reminder of refraining from hurting and hating each other regardless of country, race, religion, politics, etc.
Under his watch he did not move the church to fully acknowledge or deal with the historical and widespread abuses the organization he led was involved with. He had opportunity to be the leader to bring the organization around and he did not. Let's all hope his replacement will.
May the next pope feel emboldened to further this as the church itself becomes less of a lumbering monster.
1. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/catholic (definition 1)
“If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch,” Francis said while pretending to throw a punch in his direction.
He added: “It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”[0]
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/charlie-hebd...
Why not? The concept of proportionality between an “offense” and a response that characterizes the liberal worldview was entirely missing here. If one chooses to take offense about some deeply held personal view, whatever it is, then fine; but let your response be proportional.
The music of Beethoven is sacred to me, let’s say, but I’m not prepared to murder you if you mock it, or miss a note in performance.
The pope’s threat of physical intervention himself seems at odds with the teachings of his own faith, too, as I understand them. Turn the other cheek, and all. But that would be for adherents to say for sure.
No wonder he never cared when muslims murdered Christians in Nigeria this year. Just 50 in Easter.
Such an attitude is abhorrent and shameful.
Which _other_ churches besides the Catholic Church? Well, Catholicism is more encompassing than many people are aware of.
For instance, you might have heard of the "Roman Catholic Church." Besides the Roman Catholic Church, aka the Latin Church (which primarily uses the Roman Rite), there are 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, each with their own liturgical traditions, theological emphases, and cultural heritage. All of them are in full communion with the Pope.
Note: While many Catholic parishes do offer live-streamed services, for the benefit of the sick and homebound, they do not fulfill the Sunday obligation to attend Mass if you are able to do so in person.
Popping into the church connected to your nearest Catholic university is a good bet, but you can probably find a Jesuit priest nearby even if you aren't in the Americas.
Martyrs were mauled by lions regardless of their work in spreading the word of God. Jesus himself died just like the common thieves next to him. The Catholic Church is built by people, and people sometimes die.
And for political side - in Poland, he was seen as way too leftist/liberal for the conservatives in Church, and too pro-Russian for the liberals in it - he had not condemned Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I found this surprising and genuinely thought-provoking.
[1] https://www.wn.catholic.org.nz/adw_welcom/pope-says-kirill-m...
Francis was not sexually liberal. He was marxist. He believed in liberation theology.
As someone who knew personally the man from a spiritual exercises' house in Spain(obviously when he was not yet Pope), I never liked the guy.
He was the friend of dictators. Loved so much Raul Castro, and Maduro, never criticised them, but criticised the affluence of western democracies. His business was the poor and he loved poor makers.
His support for Putin and not denouncing the takeover of absolute power was jarring for someone in his position.
You can be a leftist religious leader, but you have to report abuses when you see them, specially if the abuses are made by your friends. Of course you will lose them if you do.
Francis was too weak in character to oppose them. But as a Pope, that is your job.
Disease is not a fistfight.
I wonder if a Pope's funeral can serve as an occasion for backdoor diplomacy - the world needs a lot of that.
If the next Pope is young and energetic, he may want to use his first few days making a mark in history by putting people from different side of different conflicts.
Paraxodically, he may have more chance putting the Israelis and Palestinian around a table (or at least provide the optics for a deal that would be discussed in the usual boring transactional way.)
On the other hand, one has to wonder what a populist pope would do (interfere in elections ? Make a u turn on climate, migrants, etc... ? Go back to hardcore conservatism ? Or fall into irrelevance ?)
Francis was the favorite pope of the Poor and of the Atheists.
The conventional wisdom is that Benedict was a hardline, conservative nut who had to resign for unknown reasons and was replaced by this well-loved, progressive guy. As seen in this thread, lots of people liked him and his philosophy, and his progressive take on things which always made the news, as he focused on the poor and traveled the world.
However, I've heard the conspiracy that Benedict was forced out, possibly related to his investigations into the child sex abuse scandal, maybe because he was finding important people involved. He was always very focused on the Church itself. And Francis was chosen, almost as a patsy, to end those investigations and instead be the friendly Pope out away from the Vatican.
I just always thought Benedict's resignation was surprising and there was something more to the story.
As for whether there was something more than the conventional wisdom to the story... I'm not really sure the news of his successors death is the correct thread to spawn that conversation in as it's getting to have little to do with Francis.
Jokes aside, he seemed like a genuinely decent human being and enough of a humanist to cast aside some of the drier absurdities surrounding the bureaucracy of Catholic Church administration, and ideology.
Even as someone who's deep in the skeptically agnostic camp on any questions about supreme creators (after all even a firm atheist can't be absolutely sure there is no genuine God) I had more respect for the apparent practical concern for humanity of this pope, particularly compared to the more typical nature of historical pontiffs.
Why so? There is no reason for one to exist so not having one is the obvious case.
We could of course assume anything, that we are av stylization, that the world is a large ice cream, that what we see is not the reality, whatever
If we go for that, sure, we cannot be sure of anything. But we then must also believe that we may live in a large ice cream.
When I think about it being the Pope is quite a position, probably the most unique in our world?
You have to be:
- A head of state, meaning taking positions though UN votes, etc.
- A "CEO", there is a lot of "business" decision to be taken to run the Vatican and the Church. I mean the Vatican can be seen as a giant museum (no offense) with a lot of people flowing in everyday so that need to be managed.
- But first he is a religious, spiritual leader and has to steer its evolution.
- Many also still see him steering an entire civilisation. Whether you are a Catholic or not, he is at the center of something.
Tough job...
In the end, nobody was really happy with him. On the other hand, he definitely had a will and a spine to stick to his own opinions - I guess that counts for something.
This is true if you live in a bubble. Most Catholics don't hold strong opinions on the Pope. The people who do are, as usual, the extremes on either side - not the majority.
There were vicious attacks to Pope Francis on the newspapers by the most orthodox professors there.
It's in keeping with the convention that stories that have "significant new information" are on topic for HN, and that includes major mainstream news stories when they first break.
- The pope was not only a very important religious and political leader but also wrote and spoke about the relationship between humans and technology [1, 2]
- I joined Hacker News due to its links but stayed for the community of smart and thoughtful people (and the great moderation). Oftentimes, a HN submission acts as a seed crystal for "off-topic" discussions that people want to talk about. As the people that make up this community get older, and as the times change, the topics we discuss change, too. At some level, technology always has political, moral, ideological implications. For me, HN is one of the best places to discuss these.
[1] https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pu...
[2] Tim Cook on how Pope Francis influenced his thinking: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1541230109287507
This isn't a headline service or newswire. It's a place for discussion too. He was the head of a large institution that has a lot of influence. And the views of the institution on emergent technologies is very much relevant. Those views are greatly shaped by the one at the top for their stint. This post isn't about religion.
I understand the intention behind keeping the thread respectful, especially in the context of someone’s death. That said, I find it difficult to fully separate reflections on Pope Francis from reflections on the institution he led. The papacy is not just a personal role—it is deeply representative of the Catholic Church as an institution, with all the historical and present-day weight that carries.
It also stands out to me that similar moderation reminders don't usually appear in threads about other public figures. That gives the impression that this topic is being treated as more sensitive or "untouchable" than others, and I think it's fair to question why that is.
I'm all for thoughtful conversation, but part of that includes being able to engage critically with the institutions and roles that public figures embody—even in moments like this.
It's fine to talk about the larger institution he led; please just keep to the HN guidelines, which apply equally to all threads on HN, and which, in particular, ask us to be thoughtful and substantive, and to avoid generic tangents.
(I've edited my top comment, to clarify what I think should be deemed on/off topic.)
Friend, this is not true. "dang" himself has often exhorted posters in this same manner and language when a notable death may attract inconsiderate commentary.
See the search link provided by tomhow in this branch of the same discussion:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
> Edit: I mean Ukraine war.
Yes but it's not clear yet who will win, and the church cannot afford siding with the losing side, especially that now it's weakest it's been since medieval times.
Edit parent meant Ukraine war, not the Israel conflict quote Pope had.