Kristin Brey
Since putting down roots in Milwaukee and especially since becoming a mother, I’ve felt a deeper urge to live in service of others, to build community, to find shared meaning
When I woke up on Easter Monday, I certainly did not expect that the first piece of news would be that Pope Francis died overnight.
I took it as a good sign that he was feeling well enough to bless thousands of people on Easter Sunday and had even managed to summon the strength (and patience) to meet with Vice President JD Vance after successfully dodging him just a day prior.
So when I read the news of his passing, I wasn’t expecting any kind of emotional reaction. I was raised Catholic, but it’s been decades since I’ve identified as such.
And yet, there it was. A subtle twinge of something.
Not grief, and not guilt (despite the aforementioned Catholic upbringing). More like reverence, maybe even reflection on losing a spiritual leader who, in many ways, represented both the best parts of what Christianity instilled in me, and stirred a recent, cautious curiosity I’ve had about finding my way back to church.
Sunday Mass was non-negotiable part of growing up
Like so many of my fellow Wisconsinites, Catholic school and Mass on Sunday (or sometimes Saturday evening) was a non-negotiable foundation of my childhood. I spent many services squirming in a pew, mentally checking off each part of the service like mile markers on a long road trip and always quietly asking my parents if we could leave after Communion (which usually was only granted if the Packers were playing).
I never really felt “God” in those pews. I felt bored.
By the time I was in high school, other members of the congregation might have assumed my piety since I was often reciting the First Reading or singing in the choir. But that wasn’t me taking religion seriously. That was me taking any chance I got to perform on a stage very seriously.
Eventually, my parents’ insistence on attending every Sunday softened — especially after the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. We became Christmas and Easter Catholics. Then, not even that. And with their detachment, any tether I had to the church disappeared altogether.
Because, as I got older, my issues with Catholicism became sharper and deeper — and more complex — than simply not “feeling anything.”
It was the hypocrisy. The performative rituals. The judgment. The sexual abuse. The inability to reconcile Catholic views with my personal politics. And simply the fact that the Vatican could sell just one piece of art and feed a staggering number of people in need and yet consistently makes the choice to not.
Catholicism that was preached not what I saw church practice
So much of what I’d been taught about Jesus at Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish in the 1990s — his compassion, humility, radical love — felt completely absent from the Church I saw in practice as an adult.
Then in 2013, there was a new Pope who, within months of his selection, answered a reporter’s question about gay priests with, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”
Now that was a different clerical tone than any Catholic kid had ever heard before.
Over the next 12 years, Pope Francis consistently made headlines as the living embodiment of everything I hoped Christianity could stand for. He reminded me of the Jesus I learned about in religion class as a child — the one who fed the hungry, cared for the sick, sheltered the homeless, loved fiercely, and, yes, even befriended prostitutes (although in fairness, I learned that one after Catholic school).
Pope Francis hosted lunches on his birthday for people living in poverty. He personally washed the feet of prisoners, immigrants, Muslims and women. He openly criticized both the “new tyranny” of unfettered capitalism and the “idolatry of money."
He condemned the greed of wealthy nations for creating the conditions of climate disaster. He relentlessly used the most powerful pulpit on Earth to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. He insisted priests could bless same sex couples and made the decision to invite a group of trans women to the Vatican for pasta, meatballs and tiramisu.
Pope Francis embodied love, humility and fearless inclusion
Everything I have learned, read, and shared about Pope Francis in the days since his death paints the picture of a man whose actions embodied love, humility, and fearless inclusion. He dedicated his life to transforming the Catholic Church into an institution characterized by compassion and an ethos defined by "welcoming the stranger."
He reminded me not of why I left the Church, but of what I always wanted it to be — and what I might still be longing for.
Since putting down roots in Milwaukee and especially since becoming a mother, I’ve felt a deeper urge to live in service of others, to build community, to find shared meaning. Maybe even reclaim some of that moral grounding that religion can offer. I wouldn’t say Pope Francis alone sparked this renewed curiosity to reconnect with a faith community, but he gave shape to it. He offered an example of what Christianity could be: tender, humble and radically kind.
As we mark his passing, I don’t mourn Pope Francis as a spiritual father. But I do mourn him as something even more rare: a quiet revolutionary, gently shaking an ancient institution and nudging it toward compassion. He was a bridge, not just between faith and doubt, but between the weight of tradition and the urgency of transformation.
For many of us who slipped away from the Church, he represented the kindness we were always looking for. The kindness many of us still strive to embody.
Even without the incense. Even without the pew.
Kristin Brey is the "My Take" columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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