There are men who wear white not as ornament but as witness. Not as a symbol of power, but as a sign of burden. There are men whose every word is parsed and politicized, yet who still speak plainly, tenderly, to a wounded world. Pope Francis was one of those men. I find myself thinking of him now—not as a distant figure in Rome, but as someone who stood close to the suffering, who bent low to touch the wounded. He is gone now, passed from this life into whatever mercy awaits such shepherds. And in my grief—not loud, but steady—I return to the painting he quietly loved: Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion.
It hangs not in a church, but in the Art Institute of Chicago. It does not depict a serene Christ, nor a triumphant one. This is a crucifixion surrounded by smoke and broken glass. Synagogues burn in the corners. A Torah is desecrated. A man with a placard flees on a bicycle, perhaps exiled. A mother runs with her child. Above them, angels weep not from heaven, but from the margins of the canvas. And in the center: Christ, cloaked in a Jewish prayer shawl, is crucified not by Romans, but by the same violence that swept across Eastern Europe in the 1930s. This is not just theology. This is testimony.
Francis understood that. That is why he cherished this painting. He saw in it not only the suffering of Christ, but the suffering of humanity—the suffering of his people. “To understand the world, we need to lower ourselves,” he once said. “Only in kneeling, in humility, can we see clearly.” His papacy was marked by that posture. He lived in a guesthouse. He carried his own bag. He washed the feet of prisoners and refugees. These gestures were not theater. They were sacrament.
He warned us again and again: “The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people” (Evangelii Gaudium, §54). He did not build up walls. He opened doors. He called the Church a “field hospital,” a place where wounds are not judged but tended. And he was mocked for it. Called naïve. Called political. But he kept going. Because he had seen the burning synagogues, both literal and figurative. He had read the signs of the times.
And like Chagall, he placed Christ inside history, not above it.
There is something prophetic about that choice. In Laudato Si’, Francis wrote, “We are not God. The earth was here before us and it has been given to us.” He grieved the poor, the exploited, the displaced—not with platitudes, but with urgency. In Fratelli Tutti, he wrote, “The dignity of others is to be respected in all circumstances, not because that dignity is something we have invented or that we can control, but because it is real and exists beyond us” (§213).
It’s easy to forget how radical these words are, spoken from the balcony of the Vatican. But Francis was never interested in preserving appearances. He sought to restore the Gospel—not as museum piece, but as living bread.
I think of my own complicated relationship with faith. There were years when I stood in the sanctuary, hands folded. Years when I stood outside, heart clenched. But I never lost my reverence for what religion can be when it stops shouting and starts listening. When it kneels beside the broken instead of scolding them. That is what Francis modeled. He showed me, and many like me, that there is still a Church worth hoping for.
And now, in his absence, I find myself returning to the canvas. To the image he kept close. In White Crucifixion, there is a single candle burning at the foot of the cross. A small light. Unflickering. It seems almost out of place amid the violence. But perhaps that was the point. That a fragile light, held faithfully, can outlast the fires of hatred. That Christ, crucified again and again in every age, still radiates mercy.
There is a ladder, too—leaning against the cross. I've always been haunted by it. Was it used to raise the suffering body? Or is it there so someone might lower him gently, wrap him in linen, and begin again the ancient work of mourning? Francis would not have needed to know. He would have stood at the base of that ladder and prayed.
Now, he is no longer among us. And though I do not believe in an afterlife, I can still picture him in heaven. Not as a saint enthroned or spirit glorified, but simply as himself—plain and kind, in his worn white cassock. I see him sitting at the feet of his Christ, not asking anything, not needing answers. Just resting there. As if the long walk is over. As if the one he followed all his life had been waiting all along.
And the candle still burns.