RIP Pope Francis

I was shocked to learn of Pope Francis's death after he appeared to be on the mend from an illness.  He was a pope as a pope should be, caring for the poor, speaking out for migrants, and being tolerant toward homosexuals as well as reconciling faith in the Savior to the need to preserve the environment.

Unfortunately, he did not change the trajectory of the Roman Catholic Church permanently, as the Church eventually drifts back to a more traditionalist ideology once a more modern pope leaves the scene.  There are some virulent critics of Francis in positions of power in both Europe and North America, and in the U.S., that goes double.  The American Church has too many cardinals and archbishops who bristle at reform and remain rooted in reactionism.  Many of them opposed Francis's efforts to modernize the Church, and some of them, like Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York - the closest the United States to a primate, or a national Church patriarch - has been friendly to Donald Trump.

It is the specter of Trump which the Church must fight back against in the same way Pope John Paul II led his energies in the fight against the leadership of the Soviet Union.  Trump has already compromised the global community with his intransigence, his bigotry, and his narcissism.  The Roman Catholic Church should be as strong a bulwark against the fascist tyranny of Trump as it was against Soviet Communism.  

While many of the faithful fear an emergence of an American-backed pontiff who will pursue a temporally arch-conservative agenda, we ought to just catch our collective breath and calm down once Francis' funeral is behind us and just sit back and take it easy through the interregnum.