Catholics around the world are mourning the death of Pope Francis, and those at St. Paul Catholic Student Center at Wichita State are no different.
The 88-year-old head of the Church died Monday, about a month after being released from a hospital where he battled health issues, including pneumonia. His cause of death was a stroke and cardiocirculatory collapse, the Vatican revealed on Monday afternoon.
“Obviously, there’s mourning whenever we lose someone, particularly a man who’s given his life in service for the church,” Father Drew Hoffman, the chaplain at St. Paul, said. “And so there’s sadness there, but we’re celebrating this the day after Easter, and our great confidence is — because of Easter, there’s nothing to fear in death anymore. So we’re confident in this eternal joy. There’s some sadness, but that sadness is overwhelmed by the joy of Easter.”
Hoffman said he tried to remind his parishioners of this message in his Easter Monday homily.
“It has been a good way to talk about Easter and what we believe about Easter and (about) anytime somebody passes away, Pope or not,” he said.
Ellie Stewart is a WSU sophomore and a barista at Credo Coffee Shop, located in St. Paul. She said she was surprised by the news about Pope Francis’ death, considering he had seemed to be doing better after leaving the hospital. But she said she found comfort in her beliefs.
“For Catholics, it’s sad when people pass,” Stewart said. “It’s very sad because they’re gone from our life, but they get to go on to something greater.”
Stewart said she thinks Pope Francis will be remembered most for his work helping people in poverty, while Hoffman said the Pope’s love for those historically marginalized by the church will be his legacy.
Hoffman pointed to a quote by St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis’ namesake: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
“The spread of that, the good news of Jesus Christ, he (Pope Francis) desperately wanted to present, and particularly to those perhaps on the margins,” Hoffman said.
What comes next?
To choose the next pope, the Church’s cardinals, senior members of the clergy, will go into a secretive closed meeting, known as a conclave. Those in the conclave must be under 80 years old because one of them will become the new pope.
In the conclave, cardinals hold multiple rounds of elections, and after each round of voting, send smoke through the Vatican’s chimney. The smoke is white until the cardinals have reached a conclusion by a two-thirds vote. Then, they send out black smoke indicating that a pope has been selected.
Hoffman said he has “no expectations” for who the next pope might be, or what attributes he will have, besides being “a holy man.”
“We will pray,” he said. “They’ve (the Catholic church) been doing this for a long time, so we’ll just pray.”
Hoffman encouraged anyone to stop by St. Paul if they have any questions. St. Paul is located at 1810 N. Roosevelt St. on the south side of campus.
