Now that Pope Francis has gone to his reward I’ve been pondering my feelings.  When I saw his coffin in St Peter’s placed directly above the tomb of Peter himself and below Michelangelo’s magnificent dome with seven foot high letters I was very moved.

This is why, after all, I am a Catholic–because this is the church founded by the Lord Jesus Christ on the rock of Peter and his God-inspired confession of faith–“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

I was especially moved because Pope Francis was not my favorite pope. I loved John Paul II. His charisma, his strength and his creative intellect helped bring me into the Catholic Church. I loved Benedict XVI–a gentle, spiritual man a scholar and a man of prayer–and special to me even more than JP2 because he understood Anglicans. He established the ordinariate and signed off on my own ordination in 2006.

When Francis appeared on the balcony that afternoon in March–like many I had a feeling of foreboding. That initial distrust and human dislike continued, and in the first years of his papacy I found myself among the “popesplainers”–attempting to clarify his ambiguous statements and actions. I jumped to conclusions sometimes. I was judging and complaining like many others. Then I took a deep breath and learned to just shut up. If I disagreed with the pope I came to understand that it was all right to have a different opinion. I became grateful for his outreach to the poor, his compassionate witness, his holding the line on some of the contentious issues in the culture wars. Most of all I was grateful for the fact that he himself said he was not a dogmatic pope but a pastoral pope. If that was so I knew he would not even attempt to change the church’s established teaching. “OK” I hear you say, “What about him changing the teaching on the death penalty” Huh?” Well, he did change that, but what does “impermissible” mean anyhow? His studied ambiguity, like the studied ambiguity of some of the Vatican II documents, can be taken in different ways which is ok. We don’t have to have watertight certainty and definitions on everything all the time.

So reflecting further on his papacy now I’m increasingly thankful for this pope because he brought me to a place where I don’t have to base my faith in a pope. It should never have been that anyway. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”

Seeing Pope Francis lying in his coffin at the site of the tomb of St Peter in that timeless basilica of beauty, truth and goodness I’m able to thank God for his providential hand in human history, in the church and in my own stumbling pilgrimage through life. God’s got it. It’s ok. Pope Francis also had his part to play, and if I didn’t always understand or agree. If I became troubled or worried about his words and actions–well that’s ok too. He said he was going to make a mess.

The final thought is that God doesn’t just clean up messes, he turns them into works of art. He doesn’t just redeem and restore us. He renovates and improves what was wrecked.

And if the next pope is one I don’t happen to like? Well I’m going to thank God that he’s doing something beyond my own understanding and I’m going to trust him on that.