VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Good Faith Media [Austin, TX]
April 30, 2025
By Lucy Huh
I remember the day in March 2013 when Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis. As a young 20-something postulant, I lived in a convent cut off from the outside world—no phone, internet or newspapers. After a continuous prayer vigil during the conclave, we were granted rare permission to watch the momentous announcement of our new pope on the community room television.
When Pope Francis meekly appeared on that towering balcony and asked for the people’s blessing before giving his own, it seemed to signal a new direction for the church, one that I loved deeply enough to dedicate my life to as a Catholic sister.
A year later, having left the convent but still devoutly Catholic, I was in Rome with my family, standing among the faithful in St. Peter’s Square waiting for his general audience. I felt a surge of hope when he greeted the flock, a smile never leaving his benevolent face. Here was a pontiff who embodied what Christianity should be—washing the feet of women prisoners, choosing to live in a simple guesthouse over lavish papal apartments, inviting the homeless into the Vatican for breakfast on his birthday.
To me, these weren’t calculated public relations moves but authentic expressions of a shepherd who rejected the trappings of papal luxury and lived the gospel values of humility and love. I was proud to be Catholic with this new pope from Argentina at the helm of our faith.
A cradle Catholic, I had grown up in complete trust and love of the Catholic Church and all that it stood for. I cherished the solemnity of the liturgical traditions, the candles and incense, praying the rosary and meticulously tending to the prayer corner in my bedroom.
However, two years after standing in reverent awe of Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square, the sacred foundation that had formed the backbone of my entire existence crumbled when I was sexually assaulted by a priest I had trusted since I was a young girl. My trust dissolved into shock as I saw his true face reveal itself, not that of a shepherd, but of a predator. In addition, I witnessed the ruthless machinery of the institution behind him activate in self-preservation.
What followed was a descent into a darkness painfully familiar to abuse survivors: denial, victim-blaming, silence and the soul-crushing realization that this institution would betray its sacred calling and readily sacrifice the very people they had wounded on the altar of its reputation.
Pope Francis’ death brings me to a crossroads of complex emotions as I process his passing through a complicated lens. As a survivor of clergy abuse who has remained Catholic, I find myself mourning a pontiff whose legacy carries both healing words and unaddressed wounds.
Pope Francis illuminated corners of the Church long shrouded in darkness and corruption. Denouncing clericalism as “a perversion of the Church,” he specifically rebuked priests who visually assert their elevated status above the congregation they’re meant to serve by wearing cassocks and lace.
He summoned clergy to abandon the trappings of power and instead embrace the authentic Christian virtues of humility and service. His vision embodied the values of his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi: “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”
This wasn’t mere rhetoric. Pope Francis embodied this vision by embracing the disfigured, sharing pizza with sick children from the hospital next door, and denouncing the “hypocrisy of those consecrated men and women who profess vows of poverty, yet live like the rich.”
For individuals historically marginalized by the Church’s teachings on sexuality and relationships, Pope Francis’ famous “Who am I to judge?” response created a seismic shift. Although the doctrine remained unchanged, his statement illuminated a path toward belonging for those previously relegated to the margins of Catholic life. His support for civil unions—while insufficient for true equality—represented unprecedented steps toward inclusion.
For clergy abuse survivors, particularly women, Pope Francis offered unprecedented acknowledgment. He became the first pontiff to publicly recognize systematic abuse of nuns by priests. He expanded Church law to include adult victims, though narrowly framed through “vulnerability.”
His rhetoric proved unflinching: “Sexual abuse is such an ugly crime… because a priest who does this betrays the body of the Lord,” and “As a priest, I have to help people grow and save them. If I abuse, I kill them.”
Yet these declarations rarely catalyzed institutional transformation. The 2019 abuse summit yielded discussion but limited action. While abolishing the “pontifical secret” theoretically allowed for document sharing with civil authorities, implementation faltered across continents.
His revised canon law explicitly codified abuse as a crime against human dignity. However, bishops who concealed abuse remained enthroned, and the promise of transparency vanished as church officials continue to stonewall investigations across the globe.
The pontiff, who identified abuse as a misuse of power, appeared ultimately captive to the very power structure he critiqued—a system that resisted accountability through institutional mechanisms he seemed unable to dismantle.
Like my relationship with the Catholic Church itself, my grief for Pope Francis contains multitudes—gratitude for the light he kindled alongside lament for fires left unlit. I honor his heart for the wounded while acknowledging the complex reality that his human limitations and institutional constraints left many wounds untended.
As I reflect on Pope Francis’ legacy, I see echoes of my own journey—the hopeful beginning, the painful revelations and the persistent faith despite institutional betrayal. Like Pope Francis, who spoke eloquently about a poor Church serving the marginalized while battling entrenched systems, I, too, exist in this tension between loving the church’s promise and confronting its failings. I choose to believe that Francis did what he could within these constraints, pushing against centuries of entrenchment with the tools available to him, even as I recognize the profound gap between his compassionate vision and the justice survivors deserved.
As the bells toll for Pope Francis, his final prayer becomes my own: ‘Lord, we ask you for this gift: that we too may be made new, so as to experience this eternal newness. Cleanse us, O God, from the sad dust of habit, tiredness and indifference; give us the joy of waking every morning with wonder, with eyes ready to see the new colors of this morning, unique and unlike any other.”
This prayer, spoken by a pope who both inspired and disappointed, captures the essence of faith itself—the audacity to believe in renewal despite evidence to the contrary, to trust that beyond institutional failures lies the possibility of true transformation.
May his successors transform the church into what God truly intends it to be—not a tomb of institutional self-protection but a sanctuary where wounds are tended, not inflicted, where abuse cannot take root, where power kneels in service, where the flock are treasured rather than exploited.
Only then will the church embody the resurrection Pope Francis proclaimed in his final message to us all—a call “to renew the gift of hope within us, to surrender our sufferings and our concerns to hope, to share it with those whom we meet along our journey and to entrust to hope the future of our lives and the destiny of the human family.”
For survivors of clergy abuse who choose to remain Catholic, this is our daily act of courage—to believe that “with You, O Lord, everything is new. With you, everything begins again,” even when the church has been the source of our deepest wounds. As Pope Francis proclaimed, “This is the greatest hope of our life: we can live this poor, fragile and wounded existence clinging to Christ, because he has conquered death, he conquers our darkness and he will conquer the shadows of the world.”
This paradox, this sacred tension between loving what has hurt us, is perhaps the most profound testament to the Easter faith Francis preached and what the timing of his death represents—a faith that persists not because the institution deserves it, but because resurrection always begins in places of deepest darkness.
Eternal rest grant unto Pope Francis, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.