On the death of Pope Francis, I have been a little surprised by some of the evangelical responses. For a helpful comment, I would recommend this from Leonardo Di Chirico. I appreciate the death of any world leader – particularly where we feel the need to comment – can be a tricky business. Quite what do you say? Particularly if the person in question has said and done some things with which we might vehemently disagree. Let me raise some notes of caution.
The triumphalist response
I remember some of the gloating that went on in the immediate aftermath of the death of Margaret Thatcher. There were some fairly unpleasant, ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ responses. You don’t have to do much digging to find (or figure out) my personal views of the woman, but even I found these kind of response on the day she died more than a little crass. As much as you may think a person to be damaging and whose morals (rightly or wrongly) you have come to question, a person has nevertheless died and family (if not a number of others more broadly) are grieving. To revel triumphalistically in the death of another is itself somewhat morally dubious.
