“Will not be too fast those we love”

Text written by Dominique Lang, journalist at Pilgrim and assumnist religious.

“Pope Francis is 88 years old. We forget it too often when we see it in activity, chaining diplomatic meetings, travel, catechesis, celebrations. It must be said that over the past years, man has not been unemployed. If not, if only to conduct the structural reforms necessary to take out the Catholic church out of financial and human scandals, is an exhausting work that his predecessor in particular had not succeeded in carrying out. Ditto for synodal dynamics, huge pastoral process, to help dioceses around the world to be more fraternal and less administrative.

Throughout his appearances, everyone has understood his last years that the age of Pope Francis is there. These knees which no longer wear it and now force it to be in a wheelchair. This sometimes too short breath which pushes him to give up, at the last minute, to this or that speech. The hospitalization in progress at the Gemelli hospital further revives concerns for this man whose respiratory capacities have long been limited.

It is touching to see how, through dioceses and families, a spontaneous movement of prayers has risen to be in communion with Pope Francis in these difficult times. “If a part of the body suffers, all the others suffer with it,” said Saint Paul already, in his time, to characterize Catholic communion (1 Co 12, 25). It is therefore of respect and silence that we need, before the mystery of the life path of Pope Francis and all the people we accompany in the disease or the great age.

Not sure that in our mediated world in excess, such restraint is still possible. The trays of the continuous information chains are teeming with experts and vaticanists of any hair who come to decipher information however very simple and elusive by nature. That of the life of a sick man. Even more disturbing is this atmosphere at the end of the reign carefully maintained, for years, by certain detractors of François to already project himself on the election of a next pope, with his share of sordid forecasts and displaced “papabilizations”.

Admittedly, the work of journalists is complex, and deciphering the information concerning the life of this global icon that is Pope Francis is legitimate. Are we not all happy to understand what is going on and will happen in Rome? But with the economic reality of the media world, the race forward to the one who will have the premiere of the facts or the announcement of a new tragic, sometimes seems to take precedence over the primary respect which is due to any human being. However, Jorge Bergoglio too is entitled to it.

On Wednesday March 5, 2025, Christians will enter the time of Lent where everyone will be marked with the sign of ashes, recalling the fragility of each of our lives. A time to stop running after rumors and fake news, and to heal our fascination with images and fury of the world.

In his message for the sick on February 11, 2025, Pope Francis invited everyone, already, to participate in this “hymn to human dignity”, in this “song of hope” that our sick brothers and sisters manifest and those who attend. Their voice “goes far beyond the rooms and beds of hospitals”, stimulating “in charity the harmonious act of all society”, “capable of bringing light and heat where it is most necessary” .