The Pope’s death on Easter Monday, when Christians celebrate Christ’s victory over death, eases the Church’s sadness, Archbishop Richard Smith said just hours after the Pope’s death.
Archbishop Smith spoke with reporters after celebrating Mass at St. Joseph’s Basillica, saying, “For us as a Christian people, it really is tempered with a hope, and dare I say, even a joy.”
After Francis’ life “in service of the Risen Lord,” Archbishop Smith said, the Church prays he “meets him face to face and has embraced the Lord’s mercy.”
Archbishop Smith, who will be installed as the next Archbishop of Vancouver on May 23, met Pope Francis several times in Rome and accompanied him during the Pope’s 2022 visit to Canada, described the Holy Father as a man whose heart “bled for anybody that was suffering or in need.”
“I saw it personally,” he said. “He wore his heart on his sleeve.”
Archbishop Smith called his time with the Pope both historic and deeply personal, saying he sat in on meetings in Rome with Indigenous delegates, where the Pontiff “just listened” as they shared painful histories. “That taught me the importance of listening in order to hear,” he said.
In Canada, Archbishop Smith witnessed the Pope’s determination to bring healing despite the constant physical pain the Holy Father was experiencing. “He wasn’t going to let that stop him,” he said. “So determined was he to bring healing and to touch and to be – not just to impact, but impacted – by the Indigenous peoples.”
He said Pope Francis’ legacy is marked by his outreach to the poor and marginalized, and his bold decision to begin his Canadian visit not with state officials, but with a heartfelt apology to Indigenous peoples in Maskwacis, Alta. “He signalled right then and there … that the Indigenous peoples were his priority.”
Archbishop Smith said the Pope’s death is a global moment of sorrow but also a moment to recall his extraordinary impact on the Church and the marginalized.
“He held them in his heart. And I hope people realize how precious they are — were to the Pope — but also, by extension, how precious they are in the eyes of Almighty God.”
The Archbishop was asked by a reporter what he is looking for in the next Pope. “A surprise,” he answered. “What I mean is – every Pope is a surprise.”
Although speculation going into a conclave is natural, the outcome is “usually a surprise,” he said.
Pope Francis “broke the mould” in his choice of cardinals, Archbishop Smith said. Francis travelled the world choosing cardinals in countries that had never had cardinals before.
“And so we have a College of Cardinals now where a lot of them don’t know one another. They’re going to come from their own different perspectives, shaped by their own cultures, and so on. So it really does add to that sense of wonderment – who this could be.”
With Canadian Catholic News files
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