Pope Francis’s “common touch” and ability to connect easily with people is a huge loss to the Catholic Church, said an expert who recalled sharing a football joke with the pontiff.
Professor Anna Rowlands, who spent two years seconded to the Vatican during his papacy, said the religious leader had roared with laughter when she told him she was a Manchester United fan the first time they spoke at length.
The professor of Catholic social thought and practice at Durham University said his natural approach was to “find a point of human connection” with whoever he was speaking to.
She told the PA news agency: “He wanted to know what football team I supported, and I said that I was from Manchester, and so I was a genuine, bona fide Mancunian, Manchester United fan by origin, to which he just sort of roared laughing and turned to his aide and said, ‘you see, she must have a sense of humour’.
“And that was the first extended conversation I’d ever had with him. So his nature was to tease you slightly and to be good-humoured, and find a point of human connection with you.
“I’m a theologian. He was known for not particularly liking theologians. But his point of connection was to make a joke about my footballing affinities and despair of me.
“He was a totally normal, very at ease with people, kind of person.”
She said that despite his high office, he had a “common touch”, and while quietly spoken, he was “charismatic, warm, personable”.
Prof Rowlands was personally appointed by Francis as one of the few women to have governance roles in the Church, a job she said would previously have been held by a bishop.
She said his popularity within the Church extended beyond, because he was someone who showed “moral leadership” on issues ranging from the treatment of refugees to the climate.
Prof Rowlands told PA his death “is a moment which feels very brittle and fragile on the global stage”.
“It feels momentous, I think, to lose someone who has spoken up so consciously for refugees, who’s spoken about climate change so clearly, who’s spoken about the need to pursue non-violence.
“I think he’ll be mourned as a figure who’s got that kind of moral leadership, who had real character, and who was able to speak, without constant caveat, about basic human moral obligations.
“So for a Church audience, he was beloved for obvious reasons, but there is then a wider audience who, I think, will wonder, ‘who will speak for us in this way?’”
As for the direction the Church might move under a new pope, Prof Rowlands said it is difficult to predict but that a number of issues remain a “work in progress”.
She said: “Those questions of family, of relationships, of human sexuality, all of that is work in progress, and is not completed, and certainly that will have to become a part of the work of the next pontiff.
“But it’s impossible to know what kind of direction a pope might go on those questions, they remain open and not concluded.”
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