FRANCIS was a polarising Pope. As I watched his funeral on TV last Saturday, like so many others I noted the respect and love that charged the crowds in attendance. For them, Francis led a life exemplifying Christian teaching rather than just talking about it. 

So what kind of Pope would be a worthy successor to this truly great man? If you’d asked me this question in 1960, I’d have given you a very different answer from now.  That was the year my brother was ordained a priest in Rome and our whole family made the trip to witness this auspicious occasion. A couple of days after the ordination, we were given an audience (along with some 5,000 others) with the relatively new Pope, John XXIII.

I remember how unimpressed I was with this overweight, smiling and joking pontiff. This wasn’t how a Pope should act. Why couldn’t he follow the dignified demeanour of his predecessor, Pope Pius XII? Lean, unsmiling, upright and dignified – that’s the kind of man who should be leading the world’s Catholics. 

Which goes to show you how the time and society in which you live shapes your thinking.  I don’t remember a single thing that Pius XII did; the man who followed him, John XXIII, called the Second Vatican Council and sent a blast of fresh air bowling around the corridors of Catholicism. 

They are striking, the similarities between Pope John and Pope Francis. Both big beefy men, both ready with a smile and a supporting hand, both servants of the Church and not remote leaders. 

The man laid to rest in Rome (even in death Francis wanted to side with the sidelined of society) repeatedly used the words “Love” and “Mercy".  When asked his views on homosexual relations, he replied "Who am I to judge?"

It was statements like that which divided Catholics throughout t he world. Some saw it as a Christ-like openness to those traditionally sidelined. More traditional Catholics  thought that answering such questions was exactly what the Pope’s job was. One traditional Catholic woman I know, apparently sane and sensible, declared that Francis had mercifully had a deathbed conversion to orthodoxy. She saw his Pontificate as a series of disastrous decisions that breached Catholic teaching. Like many, Cathoic or otherwise, she saw the Pope’s job as being literally to lay down the law. 

That ‘s how my generation were taught to view Catholicism. Not content with the Ten Commandments, they added seven more of their own. If you signed up to Catholicism, you had to keep the Church’s rules, especially regarding matters of sexuality.

Paradoxically, that picture of a Good Catholic is easier to live than the one Francis called Christians to live. You kept the rules, you were a member in good standing, and you’d get your reward in heaven. Francis, in contrast, took his cue from the Sermon on the Mount. There were no “Thou shalt nots" in the Sermon on the Mount, instead it outlined what kind of person we should strive to become. Rather than lay a minefield of dos and don’ts, it depicted Christianity as a call to follow the path Jesus took. 

The world is poorer for the absence of the man who phoned suffering people in Gaza every night to lend his support for those being shelled and shredded. 

Perhaps the best legacy Francis left us was that a devout Catholic didn’t have to be a sourpuss. In picture after picture we see him smiling, reaching out to touch and bless those around him. Clergy, he believed, should have the smell of the sheep about them. 

If you want to depress yourself, consider this: Pope Francis is dead; Donald Trump is alive.