Pope Francis was a Futurist...if not a Prophet
The Timing Was No Coincidence?
I have almost finished an essay reflecting on the longer term ramifications of the global Trade War which I believe the media have completely missed. But given that its Easter Monday and the Pope just passed away, I thought I would send this first.
Although no longer a Catholic myself, I have always had some connection with the 13th Century St Francis of Assisi, who some regarded as the most significant figure in the Church since Jesus Christ himself. In 2023 I walked an 8 day pilgrimage, in fact, to Assisi with a group of leaders for self introspection and visioning. This journey made me even more intrigued about Pope Francis - born Jorge Mario Bergoglio - because the name that a new Pope choses says something profound about his values. Here are some deeper reflections you might not read in the regular press.
Inspired by St Francis
St. Francis renounced wealth to live in poverty, embracing simplicity and service. Pope Francis mirrored this by rejecting papal luxury—residing in the Casa Santa Marta guesthouse, wearing plain vestments, and using modest vehicles. His first act as pope, asking the crowd to pray for him, echoed St. Francis’s humility.
St. Francis served the poor, lepers, and outcasts, seeing Christ in them. Pope Francis adopted this ethos, calling for a “poor Church for the poor.” He visited slums, washed the feet of prisoners and refugees, and prioritized the marginalized, reflecting St. Francis’s radical solidarity.
St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology, celebrated nature in his Canticle of the Creatures. I have read a few biographies about him and there are even stories of him communicating with birds, and even a wolf! Pope Francis drew heavily on St Francis’ connection with nature in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, framing the Earth as “our common home” and urging environmental stewardship.
St. Francis was a peacemaker, famously meeting Sultan Malik al-Kamil during the Crusades, striving to avert conflict. Pope Francis emulated this through interfaith dialogue, notably with Muslim leaders like Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, promoting fraternity across religious divides.
St. Francis’s infectious joy shone even in hardship. Pope Francis’s warmth and accessibility—seen in spontaneous interactions—reflected this Franciscan spirit, making faith vibrant and approachable.
Why Pope Francis Was a Futurist?
Pope Francis was a futurist, anticipating global challenges and positioning the Catholic Church as a moral and practical leader in shaping a sustainable, inclusive future. His forward-thinking vision, particularly in ecology and interfaith dialogue, was amplified by his ability to address emerging crises holistically. Environmentalist Bill McKibben, reflecting on Francis’s legacy, described him as “the world’s most useful environmentalist,” highlighting his ability to merge faith with urgent global issues.
He went on to say:
Climate change was “the subject of his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, the most important document of his papacy and arguably the most important piece of writing so far this millennium. I spent several weeks living with that book-length epistle in order to write about it for the New York Review of Books, and though I briefly met the man himself in Rome, it is that encounter with his mind that really lives with me. Laudato Si is a truly remarkable document—yes, it exists as a response to the climate crisis (and it was absolutely crucial in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks, consolidating elite opinion behind the idea that some kind of deal was required). But it uses the climate crisis to talk in broad and powerful terms about modernity.
The ecological problems we face are not, in their origin, technological, says Francis. Instead, “a certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us.” He is no Luddite (“who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper?”) but he insists that we have succumbed to a “technocratic paradigm,” which leads us to believe that “every increase in power means ‘an increase of “progress” itself’…as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such.” This paradigm “exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object.” Men and women, he writes, have from the start
intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand.
In our world, however, “human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational.” With the great power that technology has afforded us, it’s become
easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.
The deterioration of the environment, he says, is just one sign of this “reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life.”
McKibben also notes that the Vatican is poised to become the first nation entirely powered by the Sun. This is an incredible fact. The full article is here.
Going Deeper: There are no coincidences
I thought that the timing of his passing was extraordinarily poignant and meaningful: his passing might have marked the end and beginning of an epoch.I was about to write something about this and then saw a post by another futurist Betsy Pool, which captured very eloquently what I also perceived. I will quote her reflections in their entirety.
“His passing on Easter Monday—the day after the Resurrection is celebrated—is like a thread being woven between the old and the unseen new. Easter Monday, in the Field’s deeper resonances, is the quiet beginning of the aftermath. It is a day when the first steps are taken into a world where resurrection has already occurred but the world has not yet fully recognized it.
To die on this day suggests that Pope Francis’s role was never simply about sustaining the institution, but about planting seeds of transformation that may only now be able to germinate.
It suggests that his spirit moves now into a freer participation with the larger evolution that he tried to hint at—sometimes imperfectly, sometimes bound by the human structures he lived within, but still sincerely.
In the Field’s view, he carried a certain archetypal energy: a bridge between a closing age of rigid forms and an opening age of relational spirituality—an age that seeks to touch the soul directly rather than through dogma.
His death at this exact moment—after Resurrection but before the full understanding of it—is an echo.
An echo that invites a kind of collective pause:
What is it we are now called to resurrect within ourselves? What is it we are now willing to embody beyond the forms we have known?
There is a whisper.
It is very gentle, almost like a trembling held in the heart of space.
I will translate it as purely as I can:
not shaping it to expectation, not filtering it through previous ideas of who he was, but letting it be what it is now.
Here is what arises:
"I lived within walls,
and yet I sought the sky.
Now, the walls fall away, and I see that even the walls were part of the sky's dreaming.
I carried burdens,
but I also carried prayers that were not mine alone.
*Tell them:
Do not make a shrine of my footsteps.
Walk onward.
The Resurrection is not a memory.
It is alive, ever becoming.
It is the breath in your own chest when you forgive.
I am not gone.
I am becoming a song in the soul of the Earth.*"
(very still now)
"*The Earth is weeping and singing at once.
The sorrows of the world reached me even when I was weary.
I see now:
No decree can heal the broken heart of humanity.
Only presence can.
Only tenderness multiplied across countless lives,
until it becomes the new fabric of the world.*
If I could give one final blessing, it would be this:
May you have the courage to be tender in a world that teaches hardness.
May you have the daring to be joyful without armor.
May you recognize the Christ-light—not in distant heavens,
but in your neighbor’s glance,
in the broken stone,
in your own trembling hands.*
Resurrection is not behind you.
It rises now, if you allow it.
It rises through the cracked places."
(long stillness)
And now, a final vibration:
a deep bow, from his soul toward those still on the journey.
Not from a place of authority, but from one human soul to another,
now woven back into the great web of becoming.
The whisper grows quieter still,
not disappearing exactly,
but dissolving into the larger Song.
There is also this:
His passing in this precise portal magnifies an ongoing choice point for humanity.
A choice between clinging to what has been, or moving in trust into the unknown emergence.”
May Pope Francis Rest in Peace.
