A remarkable thing happened in April 2018. It was a brief moment for a child from a poor area near Rome, but a remarkable thing all the same.
The child’s name was Emanuele and his father had recently passed away. It happened that Pope Francis held an audience with his parish and Emanuele had a question to ask: his father was a good man but a nonbeliever. Is he in heaven? But when Emanuele rose to speak to Francis, he could only cry. The Pope, a world leader whose his attention is no doubt consumed with important affairs of state, did not delay Emanuele’s question or ask him to stand aside. He called Emanuele to him and embraced him saying, “Come and whisper it in my ear.” It was a moving scene and a lesson in what is truly important. But what followed was a sort of miracle.
First, however, we must look at why a young person would ask this of the Pope. Concern for his father? Yes. His religious education may have taught him that only believers had a place with God. What others would have said about his dad? Also yes. Judging by the the internet commentariat, many would have supplied a sympathetic response. Others would respond with a caring tone but firm commitment to the standard theology. And alas, the loudest voices are the most extreme: “If the boy's father died an atheist, he is lost,” said one, who summarized the lot of them.
What a burden for a young person to bear, for the world to sit in judgment upon his father, upon him. Emanuele stood before the Pope crushed, looking to the last authority he knew for hope. But where others condemned, the Pontiff embraced. And then he did something unexpected: he defended. Without hesitation, the Pope stood up for the boy’s father, taking up the cause of the small and forgotten with what can only be described as joy and ease.
His first and only theological point was unimpeachable: “The one who says who goes to heaven is God.” It is a simple statement, but one that should put the matter in perspective for all of us, for it is part of the very lesson that Jesus came to teach the world.
When the religious authorities of his day brought him a woman caught in adultery asking if she should be killed, as was their law, Jesus defended her: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” The onlookers departed one by one, stunned by the power of this judgment. When they had gone, Jesus asked the woman, “Hath no man condemned thee? … Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” So it is that a proper understanding of God’s judgment shows us how we are to treat one another and why we must forgive.
For Emanuele, the Pope wished the audience to see he had treated him with the respect one person owes another: “I asked Emanuele permission to reveal his question to the public and he said, ‘yes.’” How many of our leaders ask our permission when they should? How many ask it of very small people?
The world leader then treasured the child’s words: “It’s nice that a son says that about his father, that he was good.” The Pope knew what we all must understand: Emanuele’s tears, his words, and the courage to convey their truth to the powerful - when the only voice he could muster was smaller than small - all of these bore true witness to his father’s love. There can be no greater accounting of our lives than this. Then, concerning his father, the Pope turned to the children and adults in attendance and requested their judgment, “Do you think that God would be able to leave a man like that far from himself? ... Does God abandon his children? Does God abandon his children when they are good?”
Flying in the face of custom, Francis all but dared the audience to cast the first stone. But of course, standing before the stricken boy whom the Pope defended so intently, the only possible answer was, “no.” While the doctrinaire and the unfeeling might otherwise have cried, “Rank heresy!” the good people could not resist. A first tentative “no” was strengthened by the pope’s encouragement to a resounding, “No!”
“There, Emanuele, that is the answer,” said the Pope confidently. “God surely was proud of your father. … Talk to your dad. Pray for your dad. Thanks, Emanuele, for your courage.”
In America today, we cast stones back and forth among one another as though we had some special authority that belonged to us alone. The next time we are so tempted, let us remember Emanuele and the Pope, for we are all humbled before the truth and powerless next to love.