Brooks: Remembering Pope Francis the Great, who spent his last breath in service to others

The ping of incoming texts startled me awake.

Texts from family, texts from friends; all starting with the same two words. Oh no. Oh no.

I woke to a world without Pope Francis. That was the last thing this sad old world needed.

The first pope from the global south spent his final Easter defending the defenseless who are under attack.

Francis put his final day to good use. He celebrated one last Easter. He delivered one last homily; read aloud by someone else because he had so few breaths left. With his last words, he defended the defenseless — the victims of war, of violence, of the Trump administration’s cruelty.

He sent a Vatican representative to give J.D. Vance an earful about where Jesus Christ stood on the treatment of immigrants, but he still sent the vice president away after a brief meeting with three chocolate Easter eggs, one for each of the little Vance children. Then Francis took a lap around St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile and made the faithful smile.

“Every life is precious!” he wrote in his final, exclamation-punctuated sermon. “What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of our world! How much violence we see, often even within families, directed at women and children! How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and migrants!”

He left the world, and the church, a little better than he found it.

Every night since the start of the war there, Pope Francis placed a phone call to Gaza. He chatted with a fellow Argentine priest, Fr. Gabriel Romanelli, at the Holy Family Church, home to 135 parishioners and more than 7,000 neighboring families the church is trying to feed and protect amid the Israeli bombardments.

He placed his last call Saturday.

“I am with you,” he would tell them. “Don’t be afraid.”

Every two weeks, Pope Francis placed a phone call to a youth prison in Argentina, to minister to the young people there. On Holy Thursday, he made his final visit to Rome’s Regina Coeli prison, although he lacked the strength to say Mass or wash the prisoners’ feet as he usually did during the ritual.

This was a pope who had lived through war and authoritarian regimes. This was a pope who declined an apartment in the Papal Palace and chose to live at the Casa Santa Marta guest house and sometimes pop into the Vatican cafeteria to eat with the workers.

When I was in first grade, I loved going to Mass so much, I talked my teacher into letting me start First Communion classes a year early. I studied and I went to the convent for lessons after school, and one day a priest came to our house, celebrated Mass at our dinner table, and I was a 6-year-old communion savant.

But then they told me I couldn’t be an altar boy, because I was girl. I definitely couldn’t be a priest, because, again, girl. And there was no way I could handle a vow of obedience long enough to be a nun. So I drifted away and drifted away until I lapsed.

Francis wasn’t perfect. He made mistakes and he didn’t fix everything that needed fixing in the church. But he tried and he spent his last breath in service to others. His example gave me back some of the joy and comfort I felt as a little kid in a plaid uniform, standing in a cloud of incense, staring up at the stained glass windows and feeling sure that someone up there loved me, too.