Although I’ve spent most of my life as a lapsed Catholic, and have generally regarded the mother church as a corrupt institution, the selection of Pope Francis was, to me, a bit of a miracle.

Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday at the age of 88, seemed to embody not the church that existed but the church that wayward Catholics like me could admire.

And that was no small feat. Big institutions tend to be calcified and moribund – frozen against course corrections and impervious to self-reflection.

And yet, in March of 2013, after five rounds of voting over the course of two days, a papal conclave bestowed its blessings upon a radical Jesuit cardinal from Buenos Aires, a humble man named Jorge Mario Bergoglio. 

Cardinal Bergoglio took the papal name “Francis” after the 13th century nobleman

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