Pope Francis in my life

FILE – Pope Francis attends an interreligious meeting with young people at the Catholic Junior College in Singapore, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, file)

I never met the Holy Father in person. But he has in many ways affected my life. Truth be told, it was hard for me to understand and love him – it was a process that took a lot of time and a lot of grace.

I was once a nominal Catholic who was reintroduced to the Catholic Faith by some sedevacantist friends – some of whom have thankfully returned to the fold – and who gradually found his way back into the Lord’s flock.

One afternoon, I added a prolific Catholic author on Facebook, Dr. Jose Mario Bautista Maximiano. He sent me a message asking me to help him review what was then the primer of his movement which he wanted to set up in defense of the Church and the Holy Father, particularly, Pope Francis: LOVE OUR POPE MOVEMENT.

He mentioned how this movement may not align with my “ideological/philosophical tastes” (i.e., traditionalism) but nevertheless he wanted my insights. I obliged, gave him some pointers, and went on my way.

I was still suspicious about the Holy Father and even as I started defending him publicly I always had this unease about him. It came to the point that while I was defending him publicly in certain things, I could not shake off certain feelings of bad-will towards him.

Then came one of my lowest points in which I kept having thoughts about wanting him gone or dead after a particularly controversial issue which I publicly defended him on. I was frankly confused and I understood nothing about him. I only saw his teachings from the lens of philosophy.

This led me to seek out those who I believed were knowledgeable in these matters. Long story short, I stumbled across an online community of Catholics who showed a great understanding of both traditional and modern theology, particularly Scholastic theology. These Catholics were also some of the most down-to-earth people who would sometimes speak with each other as if they were on a video game voicechat. They have made Thomism very accessible for the layman.

I started asking them – especially one of them, Hasan, a rather knowledgeable person who was a convert from Islam – about certain difficulties I had about the Pope’s contributions to the Magisterium. Instead of simply answering me as a “popesplainer” would, he took the effort to introduce me to the principles of Scholastic dogmatic and moral theology in order to showcase various precedents of the Holy Father’s teachings in Tradition.

He also insisted that I begin making progress on my spiritual life—which I began to seek out after I ruined a particularly important thing in my life thus far. I began to see – for the first time in my life – a world with new eyes. Around the same time, I realized that I was blessed with such grace by God that, in order to fulfil justice, I decided to support the Church in a more tangible way.

This brings me back to Dr. Maximiano. A few months after our initial conversation, he asked me if I wanted to join the LOVE OUR POPE MOVEMENT as a convenor. I wavered for a while, but eventually – after my encounter with Hasan and a growing appreciation for Pope Francis – I decided to join. Around the same time, Hasan began telling me about a missionary project he was working on which involved certain traditional Catholic priests and converts from Islam, operating under the direct approval of the Holy Father himself.

And so I sought to explore avenues of working with the St. Nicholas Tavelic Network for Morisco Catholics (TavNet). As the community operated mainly online, I was able to encounter a diverse community of young, eager, and devout Catholics—many of whom have been excluded by their own local dioceses out of fear of persecution. I began to realize, slowly, the meaning of Pope Francis’ call for renewed evangelization, dialogue, and synodality.

This was then further solidified when Dr. Maximiano asked me to write an epilogue for the third volume of his book on SYNODALITY.

Reading the draft of that book really opened my eyes to why Pope Francis chose the synodal method for dealing with our current crisis in the Church, guided by the principles of listening, discernment, and active mission.

I began to realize the value of listening and discerning together, even with those who seem closed off to what you have to say. It was Dr. Maximiano who first approached me, knowing my traditionalist inclinations, to hear what I had to say about his movement. I saw how Hasan – in his many communities – was able to speak to his people in ways that they could understand: from the Islamic cultures of the converts to the traditionalist leanings of some of his friends, etc.

And finally, I realized that an authentic scholastic theology is not deskbound: it is inherently connected with mission. Many of our greatest theologians were missionaries and preachers. These things that constituted, I would say, the core of Pope Francis’ pastoral theology – things that I initially took for granted – suddenly made sense to me. I began to understand what Pope Francis meant by not being “rigid” (stuck to only one method), as compared to keeping options open, or why his criticisms of certain ecclesiastical movements [in Evangelii Gaudium] were actually built on solid foundations.

For all this, I am grateful not only to them and God, but also to our Holy Father Pope Francis. Without him, I would have never sought to look deeper into the rich Tradition of our Faith. And I am grateful to Christ God that I could appreciate His Vicar and the richness of his contributions to Church teaching while he was still alive.

Daniel Tyler Chua is a writer, founder and president of the Collegium Perulae Orientis.